What Is Follow Your Heart Original Vegenaise?
Vegenaise is one of the oldest names in vegan condiments — Follow Your Heart launched it in 1977, more than a decade before "plant-based" was a marketing category, out of a small vegetarian restaurant and market in Canoga Park, California. The name is a mashup of "vegetarian" and "mayonnaise," and it's still positioned as the flagship product of a company that built its entire identity on egg-free, dairy-free staples long before Whole Foods aisles were full of them.
It's worth knowing that Follow Your Heart was acquired by Danone — yes, the dairy giant behind Activia and Danonino — in February 2021. That doesn't change the ingredients in the jar, and Follow Your Heart's product lineup has stayed vegan since the acquisition, but it's the same pattern you'll see with a lot of "heritage" vegan brands: the founders' names stay on the label long after a much larger conventional food company starts signing the checks. Worth a mental note, not a reason to avoid the product.
Original Vegenaise comes in a squat plastic tub in a few sizes (16 oz, 24 oz, and 32 oz are the most common), sold refrigerated rather than shelf-stable, which is a meaningful difference from something like Hellmann's vegan line — more on that below.
Ingredients
The full ingredient list on Original Vegenaise:
- Expeller-pressed canola oil
- Filtered water
- Brown rice syrup
- Apple cider vinegar
- Soy protein
- Sea salt
- Mustard flour
- Lemon juice concentrate
Eight ingredients, and it reads like something you could plausibly reconstruct in a home kitchen — that's very much the brand's whole pitch. Soy protein does the emulsifying work that egg yolk handles in traditional mayo, canola oil supplies the bulk of the fat, and brown rice syrup adds a touch of sweetness to balance the vinegar and mustard flour. There's no sugar, no modified starches, and no stabilizer gums on this label, which puts it on the "cleaner" end of the vegan mayo shelf compared to some competitors that lean on maize starch or added sugar to hit a similar texture.
Declared allergens are soy and mustard. It is gluten-free (no wheat-derived ingredients) and certified Non-GMO and Kosher Parve, per the packaging.
Is Follow Your Heart Original Vegenaise Vegan?
Yes — Original Vegenaise is 100% vegan. There's no egg, dairy, or honey anywhere in the formulation, and it carries a certified vegan label. This one's genuinely low-risk: Follow Your Heart's entire packaged food business is built around plant-based staples, unlike a mayo brand that also happens to sell an egg-based product under the same name elsewhere in its lineup.
That said, the "vegan mayo" shelf is one where reading labels still pays off, because several major brands sell both an egg-based original and a separate vegan version side by side under near-identical packaging — mixing them up in a shopping cart is an easy mistake. If you're ever unsure whether a specific SKU, flavor variant, or private-label copycat is actually egg-free, run it through the spvegan.com ingredient checker before you buy.
Nutrition Facts: How Does It Compare?
Vegan mayo brands are all built on the same basic formula — oil, an emulsifier, water, and acid — so the nutrition numbers tend to land in a tight band. Here's how Original Vegenaise stacks up against two other widely distributed vegan mayo brands, per one-tablespoon serving.
| Product | Serving Size | Calories | Fat | Saturated Fat | Sodium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Follow Your Heart Original Vegenaise | 1 tbsp (14g) | 90 | 9g | 0.5g | 70mg |
| Hellmann's Vegan Mayo | 1 tbsp (14g) | 70 | 8g | 0.5g | 100mg |
| Sir Kensington's Fabanaise | 1 tbsp (15g) | 90 | 10g | 1g | 95mg |
Vegenaise lands in the middle on calories and comes out lowest on sodium of the three, though the differences here are small enough that no one is choosing between these based on nutrition panels alone — taste, texture, and what's actually in the jar matter more, which is where the real differences show up.
Taste and Texture
This is the part of the review where Vegenaise gets genuinely divisive, and it's worth being upfront about it rather than just repeating the marketing copy. The mustard flour in the ingredient list isn't a background note — in blind taste tests against other vegan mayo brands, Original Vegenaise consistently reads as noticeably more mustard-forward than a traditional mayo or than competitors like Hellmann's Vegan or Sir Kensington's Fabanaise, which lean more neutral. Reviewers who go in expecting an exact clone of Best Foods or Hellmann's real mayo tend to come away disappointed on that specific point.
Texture is the other consistent callout: Vegenaise is noticeably thicker and less silky-smooth than conventional mayo, closer to a soft spread than a pourable dressing straight out of the tub, and it doesn't loosen up as much even at room temperature. That thickness works in its favor for sandwich spreading and as a dip base, but it's less convenient if you're trying to whisk it into a thin dressing or drizzle it over something.
None of this makes it a bad product — plenty of longtime vegans specifically prefer the tang, and it's the mayo a lot of people grew up with if they've been plant-based for more than a decade. But if you're coming from real mayo and want the closest possible match, it's fair to set expectations: this tastes like Vegenaise, not like a stealth swap for Hellmann's.
Vegenaise vs the Competition
| Product | Vegan? | Base Oil | Soy-Free? | Gluten-Free? | Flavor Profile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Follow Your Heart Original Vegenaise | Yes | Canola | No | Yes | Mustard-forward, thick |
| Hellmann's Vegan Mayo | Yes | Canola | Yes | Yes | Closest to traditional mayo |
| Sir Kensington's Fabanaise | Yes | Sunflower | Yes (aquafaba-based) | Yes | Milder, slightly sweet |
Follow Your Heart also sells a Soy-Free Vegenaise and a Grapeseed Oil Vegenaise for anyone who wants the brand's flavor profile without the soy protein — worth checking out if the mustard-forward taste appeals but the allergen list doesn't.
Price and Where to Buy
Vegenaise is sold in the refrigerated section — not the shelf-stable condiment aisle — at most major natural grocery chains (Whole Foods, Sprouts) and increasingly at mainstream supermarkets like Kroger, Walmart, and regional chains, plus through delivery services like Instacart. A 16 oz tub typically runs somewhere in the $6–8 range, with larger 24 oz and 32 oz sizes offering a modest per-ounce discount if you go through it quickly. That's a real premium over Hellmann's Vegan Mayo, which is shelf-stable and usually priced closer to a standard jar of mayo — part of what you're paying for with Vegenaise is the refrigerated, smaller-batch production the brand has used since the 1970s.
Because it's refrigerated rather than shelf-stable, it also has a shorter open-jar shelf life than something like Hellmann's — worth checking the use-by date if it's been sitting in your fridge door for a while, rather than assuming it lasts indefinitely the way a bottled mayo alternative might.
How to Use It
Vegenaise works best in the applications where its thickness and tang are assets rather than obstacles: spread straight onto sandwiches and wraps, stirred into potato or pasta salad, used as a dip base with herbs mixed in, or as the foundation for a tartar or remoulade sauce where the mustard note is welcome rather than a surprise. It's a less natural fit anywhere you need a thin, pourable, neutral-tasting mayo — whisking it into a Caesar dressing or a thin aioli usually means adding extra acid or a splash of plant milk to loosen it up and taming the mustard with additional garlic or lemon.
If you've tried Original Vegenaise and the mustard flavor is the sticking point, it's worth knowing the brand also sells Grapeseed Oil and Soy-Free versions with slightly different profiles before writing off the brand entirely — the "Original" formula reviewed here is the most assertive of the lineup, not necessarily representative of everything Follow Your Heart makes.
Who Should Buy Original Vegenaise?
Vegenaise is a strong pick if you want a genuinely short, recognizable ingredient list, don't mind (or actively like) a more assertive, mustard-tinged flavor, and are using it mainly as a sandwich or wrap spread rather than a neutral base for dressings and sauces. It's also the pick with the longest track record — this formula has been on shelves since the 1970s, which counts for something if you want a product with decades of consistency behind it.
It's a worse fit if you're trying to replicate the exact taste of traditional egg mayo as closely as possible (Hellmann's Vegan is the closer match), if you have a soy allergy (check the Soy-Free version instead), or if you want something pourable enough to whisk straight into a vinaigrette without thinning it first.
Final Verdict
Original Vegenaise earns its reputation as the OG of vegan mayo rather than just riding on nostalgia — the ingredient list is short and legible, it's genuinely vegan and gluten-free, and the sodium numbers are actually a little better than some newer competitors. The mustard-forward flavor and thicker texture are real trade-offs, not flaws exactly, but they mean this isn't automatically the right pick if what you want is an invisible one-to-one swap for regular mayo. Judged as its own thing rather than an impostor, it holds up.
Rating: 7/10
