Vegan: the animal ingredients that hide on a label
Most animal ingredients on a packet do not read as animal ingredients. Some are numbers, some are chemical names, and a few are ordinary words that could mean either thing.
The problem is not the obvious ones
Anyone shopping on a vegan diet learns to spot milk, egg and honey quickly. They are named plainly, they appear in bold in the allergen statement, and no one is hiding them. The ingredients that actually cause trouble are the ones that were never meant to be read by a shopper at all.
Gelatin is a good example. It appears as gelatine, as bovine or porcine gelatin, and on a European label frequently as E441 with no word attached. It is collagen, boiled out of skin and bone, and nothing about the number says so. Carmine is a red colouring made from cochineal insects and can appear as E120, carminic acid, natural red 4, or Cl 75470. Shellac, the glaze that makes sweets shine, is a resin secreted by the lac insect, and turns up as E904 or simply as glazing agent.
Then there are the ones nobody can settle from the label
A second and larger group is genuinely ambiguous. Mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, E471, are made from fats that may be plant or animal in origin, and the label is not required to say which. The same is true of glycerin, of stearic acid and magnesium stearate, of the polysorbates, and of most of the emulsifier family.
Vitamin D is another. D2 comes from yeast or fungi, D3 is usually from lanolin in sheep's wool, and a fortified product will often print only vitamin D. Enzymes such as amylase, protease and lipase may be microbial or animal-derived. L-cysteine, a dough conditioner in bread, is produced from duck feathers, from human hair, or synthetically, depending on the manufacturer.
For this group there is no answer that a label can give you. The only reliable route is a certification mark on the packet, or asking the manufacturer directly.
The words that settle nothing at all
Some label terms are categories rather than ingredients: flavouring, emulsifier, colouring, thickener, stabiliser, glazing agent, enzymes, dough conditioner. Each one covers dozens of substances of quite different origins, and a manufacturer is entitled to print only the category.
Natural flavouring is the one worth singling out, since the word natural does a lot of misleading work here. It is a regulatory category about how a substance was obtained, not about what it was obtained from, and castoreum, a beaver secretion once used in vanilla-type flavourings, was a natural flavouring in exactly this sense.
Names worth knowing
Ingredients worth recognising on sight, with the other names each one appears under. The obvious animal foods are left out; these are the ones that do not announce themselves.
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
Is E120 vegan?
No. E120 is carmine, a red colouring made from cochineal insects. It also appears as carminic acid, natural red 4 and Cl 75470.
Is lecithin vegan?
Usually, but the label alone cannot confirm it. Lecithin, E322, is most often made from soy or sunflower, both plant sources, but egg yolk is also a permitted source and the number does not say which was used.
Is E471 vegan?
Not necessarily. E471, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, is made from fats that may be either plant or animal in origin. A label carrying only the number cannot tell you, and a vegan certification mark on the packet is the practical answer.
Is shellac vegan?
No. Shellac, E904, is a resin secreted by the lac insect and is used as a glaze on sweets, chocolate and some fruit. It may be listed as a glazing agent rather than by name.
Is white sugar vegan?
It depends on where it was refined, and the label will not say. Some cane sugar is filtered through bone char, which leaves no trace in the finished sugar but is an animal product in the process. Beet sugar is never processed this way.
Other guides
- 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
- Jain: the ingredients a label will not flag for 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