Jain: the ingredients a label will not flag for you
A Jain diet excludes things no labelling rule anywhere is designed to highlight. Potato and onion are not allergens and not animal products, so nothing on a packet draws attention to them.
What the practice excludes, and why
Jain dietary practice follows from ahimsa, non-violence, taken further than most traditions take it. It excludes all meat, fish and eggs, and honey, on the basis that taking it harms the colony. It also excludes root and underground vegetables, because harvesting them uproots and kills the entire plant rather than taking a part of it, and because the soil around a root is understood to hold many small organisms that are destroyed along with it.
In practice that rules out potato, onion, garlic, carrot, radish, beetroot, turnip, sweet potato, yam, ginger and fresh turmeric. Many observant Jains also avoid mushrooms and fermented foods, and some avoid eating after sunset. Observance varies, and a household's own practice is the thing that governs.
Why labels are so unhelpful here
Food labelling law is built around two concerns: allergens, and a small number of additives. Root vegetables are neither. There is no bold type, no declaration requirement and no allergen box that mentions potato or onion, so a Jain reader gets no assistance from the parts of a label designed to assist anybody.
Potato in particular is close to ubiquitous in processed food, as potato starch, modified potato starch, dextrin and as a bulking agent, and those names do not read as vegetable. Onion and garlic powder are standard in almost every savoury seasoning, and are routinely covered by the words seasoning, spices or natural flavouring with no further breakdown.
Asafoetida, and what is usually in the packet
Asafoetida, or hing, is the traditional substitute for onion and garlic in Jain cooking, giving a similar savoury depth from a plant resin rather than a bulb. It is worth knowing that commercial asafoetida is very commonly blended with wheat flour as an anti-caking carrier, which matters both to anyone avoiding gluten and to anyone who assumed the packet held one ingredient.
Names worth knowing
Ingredients worth recognising on sight, with the other names each one appears under. The root vegetables come first, since no labelling rule anywhere is designed to draw attention to them.
A selection, not the full list.
Check a whole label at once
Recognising these by eye is the hard way to do it. Photograph the ingredients panel and NoshWise reads every line against this profile, names what to avoid, and says why.
Scan a labelCommon questions
Why do Jains not eat root vegetables?
Harvesting a root uproots and kills the whole plant rather than taking a part of it, and the soil around it holds many small organisms destroyed in the process. Both conflict with ahimsa, the principle of non-violence that governs Jain practice.
Can Jains eat honey?
No. Honey is excluded on the basis that taking it harms the bee colony, which places it alongside animal products rather than alongside plant sweeteners.
Is potato starch acceptable in a Jain diet?
Potato starch comes from potato, a root vegetable, so it falls under the same exclusion. It is worth watching for because it appears widely in processed food under names that do not read as vegetable, including modified starch and dextrin.
What do Jains use instead of onion and garlic?
Asafoetida, known as hing, is the traditional substitute and gives a comparable savoury depth. Note that commercial asafoetida is usually blended with wheat flour as a carrier.
Does a vegan label mean a product is suitable for Jains?
No. A vegan label rules out animal ingredients and honey, but says nothing about potato, onion, garlic or other root vegetables, which are plant foods and entirely permitted in a vegan diet.
Other guides
- Vegan: the animal ingredients that hide on a label
- Halal: the ingredients a label leaves unresolved
- Celiac and gluten: the ingredients that catch people out
- Vegetarian: the animal ingredients that are easy to miss
- Buddhist vegetarian: what a label does not tell you
- Kosher: why the ingredients list cannot settle it
- Kidney diet: the phosphorus that is not in the nutrition table
- Milk allergy and lactose intolerance are not the same problem
- Peanut and tree nut allergy are two different things
- Soy allergy: the two questions worth separating
- Fish allergy: where fish arrives without the word fish
- Shellfish allergy: two groups, declared separately
- Wheat allergy is not the same as celiac disease