By Community Correspondent Tony Bishop-Weston

Since the release of the Livestock's Long Shadow report by the United Nations and the Oxford EPIC study on diet few people can argue against the fact that vegetarian diets are the healthiest and most environmentally sustainable on the planet.

The quest is now on to find the tastiest vegetarian foods.

Croydon based nutritionist Yvonne Bishop-Weston and Croydon MBE from Young Indian Vegetarians Nitin Mehta joined Anngela Bryant a trustee from The Vegetarian Society, Peter Langsam from Planet Organic and Reto Frei from Tibits Restaurant to judge five of the UK's top vegetarian Sausages for National Vegetarian Week The blind taste test meant judges were left to their gourmet taste-buds alone to judge the sausages and their was a unanimous agreement that the herb flavoured ones were best.

Nitin Mehta a lifelong vegetarian admitted that sausages was not really a variety of food he was an expert on but preferred the herby flavoured ones.

Yvonne said "Normally I'm expected to judge things based on a health and nutrition basis for a healthy diet - this was purely on taste"

Interestingly she said that the best tasting sausages were also higher in protein than their meat based counterparts and lower in saturated fat and calories.

Other foods tasted at the event at tibits restaurant included an awesome ice cream made only of cashew nuts, cocoa and agave cactus syrup, delicious egg free cakes, tasty toasted omega 3 seeds, a high protein trekking bar and a dairy free, organic, fair trade chocolate bar with cranberries.

These can all be bought from Croydon health food stores.

National Vegetarian Week celebrations culminatye in a huge festival this weekend in Bristol on the waterfront