The Vegetarian Student's Guide to Germany: Supermarkets, Mensa and Cheap Eats
The Vegetarian Student’s Guide to Germany: Supermarkets, Mensa and Cheap Eats
Your first week in Germany, you queue at the Mensa with a tray and a payment card you barely know how to load. The menu says “Zucchinigulasch” and “[VG]”, and neither tells you whether the sauce was built on meat stock.
Almost one in ten people in Germany say they are vegetarian or vegan (Clean Energy Wire on the BMLEH nutrition report 2025, retrieved 2026-09-24). Roughly 420,000 international students eat alongside you (ICEF Monitor on DAAD data, retrieved 2026-09-24). The hard part is the vocabulary and the canteen mechanics.
Key Takeaways
- The Mensa is the cheapest hot meal of your week, subsidised by your Semesterbeitrag.
- Canteen menus use a fixed code: [VG] vegan, [VEG] vegetarian, [LAB] animal rennet, [GEL] gelatin.
- Eight German words cover most surprises: Gelatine, tierisches Lab, Molke, Butterschmalz, Schmalz, Speck, Saft, Sud.
- Shop the discounters, then compare the Grundpreis (price per kilogram or litre) instead of the pack price.
TL;DR: Eat vegetarian in Germany by learning the Mensa’s menu codes, buying staples from a discounter’s plant-based own brand, and checking the German words that hide animal ingredients. The canteen is where your money goes furthest.
Which German supermarket should you actually use?
Build your base shop at a discounter (Aldi, Lidl, Penny, Netto), then use Rewe, Edeka and dm for specific things.
| Chain | Best for | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Aldi (Nord and Süd) | Cheapest baseline shop | Two separate companies. Best value for oats, rice, pasta, tinned pulses and frozen vegetables. |
| Lidl | Vegan own-brand depth | The Vemondo range sits beside the animal products, and Lidl has price-matched almost its whole plant-based range since October 2023. A 2025 ProVeg study put its vegan basket 18 percent below the animal one (Lidl, retrieved 2026-09-24). |
| Penny | Cheap vegan own brand | Food for Future covers cold cuts, plant drinks and ready meals (Penny, retrieved 2026-09-24). |
| Netto | Basics near campus | Two different companies share the name: Netto Marken-Discount (Edeka group) and the black-and-yellow Netto. |
| Rewe | Range and fresh produce | The widest mainstream plant-based selection. Rewe Bio’s vegan Spätzle won a V-Label Award in 2025 (REWE Group, retrieved 2026-09-24). |
| Edeka | Big stores, regional goods | Most branches are independently run, so size varies. Vegan own brands sit under EDEKA Herzstücke and EDEKA Bio. |
| dm | Pantry staples between trips | A drugstore, often the cheapest source of oats, nuts, seeds, peanut butter, plant drinks and dmBio pulses. |
Shelf prices change weekly, so treat any figure online as a snapshot. What holds is the Grundpreis: German retailers must print the price per kilogram or litre next to the pack price (Verbraucherzentrale Baden-Württemberg, retrieved 2026-09-24).
How the Mensa works, and what its labels mean
The Mensa is run by a Studierendenwerk, a non-profit student-services body, and it is subsidised. Each canteen prints its own legend, but the codes repeat nationwide.
Take Studierendenwerk Karlsruhe. Each dish carries a tag: [VG] vegan, [VEG] vegetarian, [S] pork, [R] beef, [G] poultry, [LAB] animal rennet, [GEL] gelatin. Allergens follow in brackets: (ML) milk, (Ei) egg, (So) soy, (We) wheat (Studierendenwerk Karlsruhe, retrieved 2026-09-24).
[LAB] and [GEL] are separate flags, not allergens. Animal rennet and gelatin are not allergens, so they never appear in the highlighted allergen block on a package either. They show up only in the ingredient list, which explains most of the surprises vegetarians hit here.
The vegan option is often the cheapest. On that Karlsruhe menu, the vegan bratwurst cost 2.40 € against 2.60 € for the veal one, and Karlsruhe runs a dedicated Vegane Linie with a vegan dish daily.
In Munich, students paid 0.90 € per 100 g at self-service counters, plus 0.50 € to 2.50 € on meat and fish dishes, and mains at the per-dish canteens ran 2.95 € to 5.25 €. Munich says three quarters of its offering is vegan or vegetarian (Studierendenwerk München Oberbayern, prices as of 1 October 2025, retrieved 2026-09-24).
Four sentences cover most canteen questions. “Ist das vegetarisch?” “Ist da Gelatine drin?” “Ist das mit tierischem Lab?” “Ist die Soße mit Fleischsud?”
The German label words that hide animal ingredients
| German | English | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Gelatine | gelatin | Animal skin and bones. In gummy sweets, jelly, some yogurts and desserts. Not vegetarian. |
| tierisches Lab | animal rennet | Sets many hard cheeses. “Mikrobielles Lab” is the vegetarian version. |
| Molke | whey | Often Molkenpulver in crisps, baked goods and ready meals. Not vegan. |
| Butterschmalz | clarified butter | Concentrated butterfat for frying and pastries. Not vegan. |
| Schmalz | rendered fat | Almost always Schweineschmalz (lard). Not vegetarian. |
| Speck | bacon | Diced pork that flavours soups, sauces and “vegetable” sides. |
| Saft | juice | Harmless alone, but Bratensaft, Fleischsaft and “im eigenen Saft” mean meat juices. |
| Sud | cooking liquid, stock | The liquid something is cooked or roasted in (Duden, retrieved 2026-09-24). Gemüsesud is fine; Fleischsud and Hühnersud are not. |
Our guide to common ingredients in German food covers the rest, and hidden animal ingredients in German food covers the dishes where Speck and Gelatine do the most damage. Germany’s vegan labels are voluntary, so the ingredient list is the final authority (Verbraucherzentrale Bayern, retrieved 2026-09-24).
Where the cheap protein actually is
The cheapest protein is not in the vegan substitute aisle:
- Haferflocken (oats): the cheapest breakfast in the shop.
- Linsen, Kichererbsen, Bohnen: dried is cheapest, tinned is fastest.
- Tofu and Tempeh: the cheapest ready-to-cook block in the chiller.
- Erdnussbutter (peanut butter): the most protein per euro in the spreads aisle.
- Nuts and seeds: plain bags from the baking aisle or dm.
Our vegan pantry essentials list covers your first shop.
How to check a product without speaking German
- Find the Zutaten (ingredients), a dense block near the nutrition table.
- Read the first three. EU lists run largest to smallest by weight.
- Check the highlighted allergen block. It catches milk, egg, soy, wheat and nuts, but never gelatin, animal rennet or meat stock.
- Look for “vegan” or a V-Label on the front. Both are voluntary, so absence proves nothing.
- Photograph the list instead of decoding it in the aisle, then scan the barcode or run the photo through an app.
- Compare the Grundpreis before taking the bigger pack. Large is not always cheaper.
Scanning before you buy covers what vocabulary misses, and vegan grocery shopping in a language you do not read goes deeper, including for diet-safe shopping while working abroad.
Your first week, in order
Get the campus payment card on day one, because the guest price can be nearly double. Shop once at a discounter, top up at dm, and check tomorrow’s Speiseplan the night before: every Studierendenwerk publishes it with the [VG] and [VEG] tags applied.
That is the system: a canteen you can read, an own brand that undercuts the meat shelf, and eight words that reveal what a package hides.
Check before you eat. The Verify Veg app scans a barcode or reads an ingredient list from a photo and flags ingredients against your diet (vegan, vegetarian, halal, kosher, Jain and more). Download on the App Store - Android is coming soon.
Written by Samir Narain, founder of Verify Veg. Verify Veg helps people check packaged food against their diet by scanning barcodes and reading ingredient lists from photos.
Note: Verify Veg provides ingredient-based compatibility checks, not certification. Recipes and preparations vary by restaurant, region and cook, so always confirm with the restaurant, brand or vendor.