Public Servant Lifestyle

It may be possible that you are eating everyday items that seem to be vegetarian, but which do include animal derivatives.

This guide does not seek to identify every animal product ingredient, just to raise your awareness of the variety of things you will need to be watching out for if you decided to go for the whole hog with animal free food.

What's on a label?

Different products have different labelling requirements. Food products are generally required to list all ingredients constituting more than 0.1% by weight. Most other categories (including alcoholic beverages, medicines, health and body care products, etc...) have much less stringent requirements. Medicines, for instance, are only required to list active ingredients. Fortunately most companies are very responsive to phone calls and letters about their ingredients and many have toll-free numbers for such inquiries. But watch out, most capsules are made with gelatin.

Slaughterhouse Number 5

Among the most common animal ingredients are products made from boiling down (rendering) surplus animal fats and tissues. These include lard, animal shortening, gelatin, cholesterol and tallow, which are animal derived by definition. Alternatives to gelatin include agar-agar, carrageenan, and cornstarch. Gelatinized starch refers to starch softened by boiling.

Also common are stearates, which includes almost any ingredient with -stear- in its name; and glycerides, including glycerin and almost any ingredient with -glycer- in its name (including datem, which stands for diacetyltartaric acid esters of monoglycerides). While these are sometimes derived from pure vegetable sources, they are generally produced by rendering a combination of animal and vegetable fats.

Dairy derivatives

There are numerous common milk products including cream, many varieties of cheese, butter, yogurt, etc. Less well-known are the fermented koumiss and kefir and Indian ghee and paneer (you'll need to be aware of these when ordering in restaurants). Margarine and soy milks are easy replacements for butter and milk. Vegetable oil marked 'vegetable ghee' can be found in some places. The most difficult to avoid, however, are the individual constituents of milk: primarily lactose, casein and whey.

Lactose, or milk sugar, should not be confused with the much more common lactic acid, or with galactose, which are not dairy derived. Lactose is generally indicate by -lacto- while lactic acid is indicated by -lact- in an ingredient name. Lactic acid can be safely assumed to be vegan unless its part of a compound such as a stearate (described above). Because of the large number of people who cannot properly digest lactose (lactose-intolerant), this ingredient is less common in commercial foods, but is frequently found as a base in medicines and other products.

Casein

Casein, a class of milk proteins and the primary constituent of cheese, is ironically often found in foods marked "non-dairy". This includes almost all varieties of soy cheese, which are generally marketed to people who are lactose-intolerant, not vegans. The non-dairy label was created to protect the dairy industry and indicates foods that were not primarily milk-based despite their similarity to dairy products. Happily, the label dairy-free means what it should.

Whey, the liquid remaining when casein is removed from milk, is often found in commercially prepared baked goods and as a binding agent for flavored chips and similar products.

Also worth mentioning is rennet or rennin, which is the agent used to coagulate many hard cheeses. Rennin is an enzyme taken from the stomach lining of slaughtered calves, which means that many cheeses are not really vegetarian. Cheeses with microbial rennet are, however, becoming very common.

Insect Life

The largest commercial insect product is honey (one variant of which is propolis). Unfortunately, honey is extremely common as a sweetener in natural foods, which often avoid most other superfluous animal ingredients. Maple syrup and white grape concentrate are good substitutes for honey in cooking. Other bee byproducts include beeswax (common in cosmetics), royal jelly and bee pollen.

Carmine, cochineal and carminic acid are red coloring agents made from a particular variety of beetle and are commonly found in colored pastas, drinks and natural cosmetics (yeuch). Cochineal is to be found as a colourant in some brands of crisps. Taste that yummy beetle crunch! Shellac is another beetle derivative, occassionally used (along with beeswax or other waxes) to coat produce such as apples.

Silk is produced by silk worms (who are generally killed in the process) and is occassionally found in body care products in addition to fabric. Satin, which originally meant a particular kind of silk fabric, now almost always refers to nylon-based fabrics.

Other Things to Note

Egg products are usually very easy to spot, and can be replaced with a variety of alternatives. Albumin (or egg whites), isinglass (a fish extract), gelatin, and whey are commonly used to remove sediment from wines, beers and other beverages (so there goes your favourite pint down the pub).

Lanolin is a waxy fat extracted from sheep wool found in many body care products, indicated by -lan- or -lano- in compound ingredients. Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) is generally made from lanolin or fish oil, while D2 (ergocalciferol) is microbially sourced. Most vitamin D, including the kind in fortified milk and infant formula, is the D3 variety.

Collagen, elastin and keratin are other slaughterhouse byproducts made from hair, skin and connective tissue that are also typically found in body care products such as shampoos and moisturizers.

Musk, and less commonly ambergris, civet and sepia, are animal extracts used in perfumes and scents.

Sugar?

White table sugar (labelled cane sugar or sucrose or simply sugar) is often made from sugar cane. The production of white sugar (and some brown sugar) from sugar cane involves a whitening step that is often accomplished by filtering the sugar with activated bone charcoal. While no animal products remain in the sugar, some vegans choose to avoid refined sugar and many products marked vegan exclude it as well.

Alternatives to cane sugar include beet sugar (about as common as cane sugar), maple and date sugars, and partially refined cane sugar (labelled as unrefined, unbleached, turbinado, demerarra or raw sugar). Other non-sucrose sugars (including maltose, dextrose, glucose and fructose) are also fine.

Natural? Organic? Vegetarian? Cruelty-free? No Animal Byproducts?

Bear in mind that labels can be deceptive. For instance, the label natural says nothing about its appropriateness for vegetarians and natural flavours or colours may include animal ingredients (though they often don't). Similar warnings apply for organic.

Sadly, vegetarian is a very loosely used word, and usually can only be relied on to mean 'no red meat'. Check for chicken, fish, meat stocks or flavors, and other ingredients mentioned above. More trustworthy are the labels 'veganand to a lesser degree '100% vegetarian' (the latter may still include eggs and dairy).

Packages that display logos trademarked by vegetarian societies are the most reliable.

It's Kosher

These are small logos that mark an item as suitable for people observing Kashrut (Jewish dietary law), and occassionally prove helpful for vegetarians reading ingredients. Among other things, Kosher law forbids eating meat with dairy which means that items marked as kosher may contain meat or dairy but not both. Foods marked "pareve" or "parve" have neither, although they may still contain eggs, fish, or honey and occassionally gelatin. More usefully, pareve foods are almost certain to have vegetable-derived stearates and glycerides and exclude almost all animal-based colourings or flavourings.

But what about..?

There are many products that are commonly rumored to include animal ingredients and the above covers most of the less obvious of them. Many others are indeed vegan (unless the label indicates otherwise), including: calcium compounds, caramel color, cocoa butter, cooking charcoal, enriched flour, enzymes (other than rennin), Heinz ketchup, lecithin, molasses, paraffin, red #40 and spices.

For more information on what is - and isn't - part of a vegetarian diet, visit the website of the Vegetarian Society - which features recipes, nutrition basics, tips for beginning vegetarians and links to local societies: www.vegsoc.org

PSP Ltd is not responsible for the contents of external websites.

More information available in Main Courses, Deserts, Entertaining, Eating In, In Your Kitchen, Dining Out, Healthy Alternatives, Vegetarian, Starters