Surprising ingredients that may be non vegan

[Wormulonian]

I was reading some vegan recipes on an American site last night and the ingredients kept listing vegan sugar. I thought it was strange as I had assumed that sugar was vegan but was surprised to find that Bone char can be used in its production - to achieve the desired colour.
www.peta.org/living/food/is-sugar-vegan/

Perhaps this is well known and I am really behind the curve - but what else should I know about?

Didn't know that, I know wine is often not vegetarian as it can use fish in the fining process.

www.theflamingvegan.com/view-post/Non-Vegan-Sugar

The Peta link above is for the U.S. In the UK apparently Tate and Lyle and Billingtons sugars are vegan - so all my cake making has been fine. Does make me wonder about the sugar used in commercial biscuits though.

YY. I'm pretty sure uk sugar is vegan.

All sugar in the UK is vegan. Also Australia and Canada. I think it's literally only the US it's an issue.

It's also not something I'd worry about anyway, bone char is a byproduct of a byproduct, avoiding it prevents no animal deaths.

I was surprised to learn that the original bisto is vegan, or maybe veggie but definitely one of them.

Wine is the annoying one, even vegetarian wines are often fined using egg. Co-op is good for accurately labelling their wines.

I'm always annoyed when supermarkets manage to make things that should be vegan, non vegan. Like hummus, guacamole, falafel. Stop putting milk in everything! It doesn't need to be there!

PhoenixJasmine I agree - it is in so many things.
My eldest DD who is at Uni only uses coconut milk now and again and it is expensive on a student budget so she bought some Maggi coconut milk powder that her Malaysian friend always uses in her curries as it can be stored in the cupboard for yonks and used piecemeal. It contained milk powder

How often do you check the products you buy regularly? I hate the way they happily change products without a mention anywhere except the ingredients list

When you buy your bread look for this ingredient: L-cysteine , it is made from bones and hair (animal and some even say human) . Only kosher and halal bread might be safe and free of animal and human product.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysteine

I'm fairly sure that bone char to refine sugar is banned by the EU. Likewise human hair to produce L-cysteine is prohibited (p83 here) eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:083:0001:0295:EN:PDF

Good job we're Brexiting eh

The main ones I look out for are carmines (E120) and beeswax.

For anyone not sure about their wine (or any booze) you can usually check it on barnivore.com

I discovered the other day that figs are (perhaps) not vegan, no something that I would have thought of. I say (perhaps) because I am have not finished read about this yet. link to a page that explains it better than I can. If anyone knows more then please let me know...

Figs are vegan, fgs, they're a plant! If we want to not eat anything that relies on insects for pollination then we'd be left with....mushrooms perhaps?

I know that they are a plant thank you.

It is the fact that the wasp remains inside the fig after pollination, the wasp cannot make it's way back out and stays inside the fig, it breaks down and becomes part of the fruit...I'm not sure, but I don't think it works the same way with, say, green beans!

I did attached a nice little link that, as I said, explains it a little better than I have time to do.

Calm down dear was taking the piss out of the link implying that they weren't vegan, not judging your understanding of the issue.

The wasp becomes part of the plant in the same way that my dog buried in the garden becomes part of the rose planted above him.... it isn't humans exploiting wasps for food. Not eating figs isn't going to save or improve any wasps' lives.

My exasperated tone was at the link not you

There's a beautiful episode of Natural World that focuses on the symbiotic relationship between the fig tree and the fig wasp, it's honestly such a wonderful example of the natural world helping the natural world to develop and survive and evolve. I might have cried I found it so moving - though anything narrated by Ian Holm is likely to have that effect on me

I eat figs

But back to main topic, I use barnivore but most of the time the wine isn't listed. My local supermarket has given me a printed list of the vegan wines they stock but it would make my life so much easier aside if there here could just be a V somewhere on the label!

Sorry to cause the thread to digress! I shall indeed calm down and eat some figs

...thank you for the clarification!

Keep calm and eat figs

I have a mahoosive fig tree on my allotment; just missed the harvest when I took it on last year, can't wait for this year. There were only about 3 fruits left when I first got there - we sat under the tree and ate them there - a-may-zing. I have been collecting fig recipes - looking forward to fig & lavender jam.

YY, a new vegan slogan!

If I had a fig tree I don't think any figs would make it to the kitchen. Sitting under a fig tree eating fresh figs is on my bucket list of things to do again, sounds like you have the best allotment in the plot!

Without wanting to derail the thread but wanting to take advantage of fig lovers being here...

How do you eat a fig?

Do you eat the outside? I'd like to try but I'm a bit scared of doing it wrong.

To keep to the thread- shellac on unnecessary things, like dark chocs that would otherwise be fine but have to be made shinier . There was once a big row on a vegan page where someone was saying that vegans shouldn't drink Tropicana juice because of shellac (or similar) on the orange skins. I can't remember what the outcome was in the end though.

(I asked a greengrocer if I can eat the skin on figs. He seemed to think you could. I did.)

So just eat it, skin and all. Yummy.

As you were.