Oh the humanity!

(CNN) — Many salivate over the mere image of a juicy hamburger or a glistening rack of ribs, but vegetarians aren’t usually among them.

But apparently, that’s what the readers of VegNews, the nation’s leading vegan magazine, have been doing for years without their knowledge.

With the help of an anonymous reader tip, the author of the vegan blog, quarrygirl.com, accused VegNews of using food images of meat in its magazine and website and passing them off as meatless. The allegation prompted the San Francisco-based publication to confess that it had, “from time to time,” used stock images that turned out not to be totally animal-free.

“The pictures we’ve been drooling over for years are actually of MEAT!” she charged.

To support the allegation, the irate post compared pictures of recipes on VegNews.com with photographs from royalty-free image service, iStockphoto. One example shows an image of a “veganized” Brunswick stew recipe from VegNews.com and an identical image from iStockphoto titled “chicken breast-soup-stew-pepper.”

“Get your barf bags ready!” quarrygirl.com editorialized.

In perhaps the most egregious example, the post compared pictures of “Vegan Spare Ribs” and “Barbecue Ribs Dinner,” pointing out where the bones were apparently edited out of the image.

“Veg News has written tens (possibly hundreds) of articles extolling the virtues of a vegan lifestyle, while purchasing rock-bottom priced stock photos of MEAT, EGGS, DAIRY and other completely non-vegan things,” the post said.

In response, the magazine admitted that “Yes, from time to time, after exhausting all options, we have resorted to using stock photography that may or may not be vegan,” in a plaintive letter addressing the controversy.

HT: Jawa