Ikea's 60-cent vegan hot dog: The price isn't the question

Ikea's 60-cent vegan hot dog: Cheap, yes, but what's it made of?

A vegan hot dog for €0.60. Less than a vending machine coffee, less than a loaf of bread. Ikea is repeating the same price for its meat-free version as it already charged for its classic sausages, and the detail, more than the recipe, is what's puzzling: how can that figure be sustained on a shelf where any vegetable substitute from the supermarket costs triple?

Why Ikea can sell a vegan hot dog for €0.60

The short answer is that it was never a product designed to make money. Ikea's hot dogs have been at that price for years and are part of the business model: the lure that keeps customers inside the store after navigating the maze of flat-pack furniture. A cheap hot dog doesn't compete with a burger joint. It competes with going home. And in that fight, the profit margin doesn't matter.

What is Ikea's vegan hot dog made of?

That's the question that remains open when you look closely at the label. Soy is suggested as the base, and the suspicion of additives, sweeteners, and flavorings runs through any conversation about processed plant-based food. The most common argument is textbook: if the product was already 0% meat before, the recipe change is less revolutionary than the sign suggests.

And then there's the uncomfortable precedent. There was a time when, as recalled, those same hot dogs were made with horse meat. It's not urban legend from a pub chat: it's part of the product's history.

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Sixty cents for a hot dog, vegan or not. The reasonable doubt was never the price, which always added up, but what exactly you were eating. And that, for the moment, remains officially unanswered.