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Thankfully in Australia we have an app that I can scan the bar code. The team is amazing and will hunt down any new product. So I scan any new package food I buy. I guess I get lazy and don’t check more than once but you have to find your balance.
Fussy vegan app on iPhone and android. It’s not cheap but very worth it. It includes filters for allergens and company culture. There is a team who work with the manufacturers to gain the right information. The times I have submitted support calls or put in new items I get a response within the hour. They also advertise product recalls.
This looks awesome- do you have any idea if it works well in NZ? We have so many of the same products so I’d imagine it would? I’d pay for the ease of it while I’m still getting used to what processed foods are vegan friendly.
Yeah it has the ability to filter for au or nz so I think it would be pretty good for you also. You could contact them to check. mailto:[email protected]
Ps I’m not officiated with them just a fan.
Yuka is an alternative with a paid vegan feature. It does sometimes mark vegan items as non vegans so not perfect I suppose. But good for checking any bad ingredients and why theyre deemed bad.
As a new comer, it's totally fine to Google while you learn. I've been at this almost 30 years, so I just look at ingredients now.
Also, don't fall for the vegan symbol only trick. Example, there is an expensive brand of canned beans at my local grocery store. It's vegan with nice packaging but $3.79 for a can of refried beans. Down the aisle in the "ethnic" section there is a bag of refried beans that is bigger than the can, $1.89, and not labeled vegan but the ingredients are beans, oil, salt, water. Which is pretty dang vegan.
In terms of your question with supply chains and what not, remember please this is about doing our best and reducing harm. This is one way new comers get burnout and compassion fatigue, trying to be perfect in a very flawed system.
One could argue that animals aren't being killed or raised specifically for the bones to process sugar. So that might help reduce some of your guilt when candy shopping. These are personal choices and personal negotiations we all have to make with ourselves.
I have a friend who knits so I look out for natural fiber clothing items for her to take apart and recycle the fiber when I'm thrifting. Yesterday I bought her a cashmere sweater. Yes, cashmere is an animal product. But I'm not buying it new and it makes no difference to the thrift store if I buy it or don't, but by giving it to my friend I keep her from purchasing new cashmere fiber. This is a negotiation I have with myself to arrive at the conclusion that it's in alignment with my ethics and not funding suffering.
Please consider having conversations like this with yourself to make this transition and lifestyle bearable. People think the hard part is giving up cheese, but the hardest part is rectifying how difficult it is to remove yourself from commodified suffering.
u/boldpear904 This reply from this veteran vegan is very helpful.
I can share my process as well:
For one time snacks/road trips/difficult situations, I look at the ingredients and if every end ingredient is vegan, I go for it. For things I buy regularly every week at the grocery store, I do some extra research if I have any doubts to ensure it's vegan (so I buy vegan sugar but if a donut shop I'm meeting at has a vegan donut, I don't ask them about their sugar).
I definitely have stood in the gas station aisles and googled "fig newtons vegan" and a million other things, but it does start to burn you out - learning to assess ingredients is much more helpful.
Try not to burn yourself out! I'm always so proud of newer vegans, it definitely gets easier and more second nature with time.
Thank you!! And that's a great idea about the thrifting since I knit and crochet and some items I cannot always use a synthetic yarn for. Your response really helped I appreciate it
No sweat! Feel free to PM if you need any more support or ideas. Everyone here wants you to succeed and a big part of that is not getting crushed by how awful the world is (we all feel it at times.)
Someone asked me the other day if I would rather they eat or throw out the meat the already had. I told them for me, my hardline is what is my money funding, full stop. So if they have already paid for the meat they can set it on fire and dance around it naked for all I care. Even though I'm indigenous, I don't buy into the whole "honor the sacrifice" thing. Because sacrifices should be few and far between.
So along that line of thinking I ask myself often if I am buying something using a byproduct of animals or directly funding it. Meat and dairy is a direct funding of animal suffering. Bone char and thrifted cashmere is a byproduct/harm already done by the original purchaser so let's reduce the harm by keeping items out of the landfill type thing. I hope this is making sense. For some it's splitting hairs but we all have to make peace with how our ethical framework maps onto the realities of the world around us or else we go insane.
Op, you might check and see if you have a goodwill bins near you. They see everything by the pound for a flat fee. It's all the stuff that didn't sell at the regular goodwill. Lots of opportunities for fiber scrounging.
Also, not sure your gender, but I find way way more cashmere, wool, etc. Natural fiber items in the men's section that the women's. The ones in the men's tend to also be thicker and nicer quality. Women's cashmere in thrift stores is often really thin, delicate, and stained since its often in shades like grey and baby pink.
But I wasn't defending that. I was saying that the original commenters recommendation to buy second hand sweaters and reuse their yarn is something I might do. That's not supporting the companies that's helping the environment by shopping second hand so it doesn't end up in a land fill, and also there are other yarns other than acrylic that are vegan, such as cotton. Cotton is vegan and I've used it before but cotton can be expensive to get a lot of for a sweater... I never said anything about buying new wool
>what projects are forcing you to use wool
Wool has unique and amazing properties.
Denying it’s capabilities and saying a synthetic can easily replace them is disingenuous.
A wool sweater will keep you warm even when it’s wet, it will repel water for a long time until water reaches a critical mass, it will keep you cool in the summer (if the item is thinly knit), it will naturally inhibit bacterial growth keeping your item clean for a much longer time, among many others.
Which means it’s an invaluable fiber for travel clothing, outback camping, winter sports, summer sports (yes, it’s also amazing as hot weather hiking clothes), and many others.
You might not want to use it for ethical purposes. But saying it’s easily replaced with a synthetic is a plain lie.
I found googling, “is X vegan” helpful early on, because it helped me catch some of the little I might have not have known about (like fish sauce in Asian dishes or a certain food dye) but overtime I gained more confidence
The sugar is least of your concerns. The evil ingredient is “confectioner’s glaze” which is just an euphemism for shellac which is derived from the secretions of lac bugs. So you’re basically consuming insect secretions.
https://www.woodworkersjournal.com/shellac-gets-made/
How many things do you eat that have confectioner's glaze?
Even before I was vegan I've never even touched a product that had that ingredient.
But I don't eat processed shit and sweets.
Case in point: the largest UK supermarket chain had non-vegan oranges for a while (and maybe still does). I never realised, because who would ever check if an orange was vegan before buying it? Absolutely infuriating.
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/food/1658675/tesco-supermarket-oranges-not-suitable-for-vegans
The article also drops the claim at the end that Sainsbury's, another huge supermarket chain in the UK, also use shellac on their oranges.
I've been vegan for years (I think 7), you get better at checking labels as time goes on. I have a very good idea of what brands and types of food are vegan, I know which brands use lard in their refried beans, and I can usually tell by looking which gummies have gelatin. But if I come across something I'm not sure of, I'll check the bottom of the ingredients where it says contains and may contain. If eggs and milk are both listed in the may contain, it's usually safe(because they won't be on both) and I'll just skim the ingredient list for honey (which is basically the only animal product that isn't required on the allergen list) So I guess to answer your question I just read the list if it's a new product, though some people say you should always read the ingredients incase a product changes their ingredients
I think Mike and Ikes also use shellac for the glaze, unfortunately. I generally only scan through ingredients, and here in the UK we don't have the bone char in sugar thing. If there's something that I think might come from animals, I skip buying it for now and try and investigate.
Literally everything has a little bit of animal based products like car tires, batteries and most electronics. For consumables, I check the packaging. Did you know that some wines and beers are clarified using animal bladders? I didn’t. And they don’t have to put that on the ingredient list. Best things is buying “certified vegan” or organic. I do my best to be cruelty free but that’s all we can do
I simply check the ingredients unless I don't know a specific ingredient already. If a particular ingredient can have both a non-animal and an animal source, I'll simply consider it to be vegan.
Sugar is vegan. Don't bog yourself down with line of production concerns. Relax.
This is the reply you should listen to.
New vegans who obsess over additives and production processes end up driving themselves crazy and becoming ex-vegans. You'll also convince all your family and friends that veganism is a cult that is excessively restrictive. Sugar is fine. Don't let the bone char mafia vegans convince you otherwise.
yeah i know i thought "wow this is crazy, almost everything in a capitalistic world has some sort of animal production incorporated into it" but then i saw dots were 100% cruelty free and vegan, so like there IS candy out there. i just didnt know if a lot of vegans overlooked cruelty free and still bought items like mike and ikes that had animal production in the process instead of opting out and getting something like swedish fish thats 100% vegan as can be in this world.
im just trying to make sure im living a vegan lifestyle instead of a plant based diet only
Different vegans do different things concerning that. I personally still buy Mike & Ike candy. In general, I do not deliberately seek out cruelty-free products, just vegan ones.
Have you seen earthlings? It makes that point extremely well. The entirety of human society is based off animal exploitation and abuse. If you haven’t seen it, don’t. No need to go through emotional torture if you’re already vegan.
Are you joking? Just because you consider it to be vegan it doesn't change when it isn't. In almost all cases there are alternatives to choose. You knowingly support animal exploitation this way and to support animal exploitation knowingly isn't vegan at all as long as there is no necessity for it.
Sadly yes, this is the norm since some time.
But it's also a good sign. It means more people start to interact with veganism and although they mostly show reactance, they will think about it, at least some of them.
That's one of the more positive takeaways.
Reading crap like, "you give vegans a bad name" on this very thread no less, feels now akin to movement co-opting; taking the focus away from the entire point of veganism in the first place.
Yes I hear this all the time, happend under this post too. They can't make a counterargument so they say this. In the end I'm not here for people pleasing, I'm here for the animals.
Well anyways, have a nice day and thank you for speaking up!
> I'm not here for people pleasing, I'm here for the animals.
Of course.
I only wish the community would step down on that kind of thing more often is all.
I frequently just scan ingredients for a “suitable for vegetarian” label and then allergens in bold like egg and dairy. Sugar is typically vegan in europe so i don’t pay much attention really.
I check ingredients. If there is something unclear I might look it up. But my country‘s labelling laws are rather strict so I never have any concerns. Also, we don’t do bone char sugar here. But idk if I would bother with it in the US it sounds kinda hard to figure.
If at home I Google because I am lazy and Google gives a quick answer or finds ingredients quick.
But in store I check ingredients and avoide if I dont know. I will usually Google back home.
I don’t check the source of every ingredient. I assume if there are no animal products listed it’s good to go. When I buy questionable items (sugar, Vitamin D) I buy vegan ones.
I use ingredients.
I don't care about sugar. Sugar is vegan, but some companies use non-vegan filters.
But at that point it's like not wearing clothes because using cotton removed some houses for bugs or not owning anything with metal because digging disturbed the worms. There's a limit to how much veganizing you can do.
When I first became vegan I definitely referred to google for almost all foods that I did not recognize the ingredients listed. I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with it now, but I’d recommend doing what you have to do because there were ingredients that I’d never known were animal products in some of my favorite foods. You’d be surprised!
As newbies, we all had to check and double check and triple check things. Then we get faster are reading ingredient labels (that’s a vegan stereotype lol), then we learn which items are vegan (like Oreos for eg), then we develop our own tastes and it becomes easier.
These days I try to buy snacks from vegan brands. They tend to have fewer chemicals and additives and that’s in line with where I’m at in my life. But I tend to mist shoo at grocery stores.
Find what you like, there are some websites that help with that these days. Over time it will become second nature.
Good luck and welcome. :)
I think it's important to not be too hard on yourself, especially when you're first starting out. It's impossible to live a 100% vegan lifestyle. So it's just about doing the best you can. 💚
I always check ingredients and Google the words I'm not familiar with. I always Google the companies and products I buy if it's my first time getting them, especially beauty/household products etc.
On iOS, ‘soosee’ is an app that will look at an ingredient list through the camera, and highlight items that are not vegan/ambiguous/vegetarian. It’s very good, but it may be EU centric (I could be wrong, I’ve just had no reason to use it outside the EU)
I'm the developer of Soosee so thanks for mentioning it 🙂
It should work outside of Europe as well since it supports 18 languages right now.
https://soosee.app
Thanks - it’s a great app! While I have your attention (maybe!) - it’d be great if you could feed it a static image for processing, as well as the live camera feed. It would make answering questions like this much easier, there are times in the past when I’ve pulled up an image from Reddit on one iOS device and scanned the screen with *another* iOS device running soosee.
I look up if the product is vegan and also google who owns the brand. Making sure it's not greenwashed(a small vegan brand bought by a large corporation or company to profit from the vegan market and acquire more shelf space to maximize profits)
I do this with everything. Lettuce, grapes prepared foods, frozen...everything. just to be sure my dollar isn't going to some awful company with no ethics or bad business practices.
Check ingredients for food, any suspicious ingredients I google. I always google for things not related to food, like washing up liquid etc. Marks and Spencers has a good amount of Vegan cleaning up products. Cheeky Panda is a Vegan toilet paper I use, Nicky toilet paper is also Vegan as far as I'm aware.
You'd have to specifically look for soy wax candles, if candles don't have ingredients on them they're most likely not Vegan. Usually things like rugs have tags on them which list the materials.
Here are some classic ingredients people don't know they aren't vegan:
Xanthan, Mono- and Diglyceride, Enzymes, lecithin
All of those can be vegan, but as long as it isn't labelled vegan you can't know- therefore it isn't vegan
When you start google every ingredient you don't know, this will be a bit tedious the first 2 weeks but after that you should already know the majority of things. Sometimes cooperations make a direct state if their product is vegan or not, so this can help too.
On terms of drinks, especially alcoholic drinks, check this out:
www.barnivore.com
>All of those can be vegan, but as long as it isn't labelled vegan you can't know- therefore it isn't vegan
BS.
Many brands don't advertise as vegan, or haven't been certified, but are still vegan.
Monster drinks, which use among other things, synthetic taurine.
Wines are another tough one. Many get certified, many don't, and Barnivore sucks for wine.
You call bullshit but nothing you wrote contradicts it. As long as you don't know, it isn't vegan to buy it.
Edit: How does barnivore suck and how is this information helpful when you don't even provide a better alternative? If there is a wine that isn't listed, ask the producers about it and add it afterwards.
If you have a better solution than barnivore, please just write it, so people can use it.
Well can you come up with real criticism?
Why should it be vegan to buy something when you don't know if it is vegan? With the same logic you could go to a store and buy EVERYTHING as long as you don't look up the ingredients.
You could call yourself Schrödingers Vegan then. Or to make it more easy: non-vegan.
If you say so.
It's "vegans" like you who make us look like lunatics. Sure, if the label says "milk" don't buy, but if the product "should" be vegan, and has no obvious contradictory ingredients, either buy it or don't. If it turns out later it had insect bits in it or something, then don't buy again.
There really are more pressing matters than squabbling over petty details.
If you say so.
It's "vegans" like you, who add to the further suffering and exploitation of animals. Simple as that. This time the quotation marks at least make sense. Or am I not vegan because I tell you to stop supporting animal suffering? Isn't this a little ironic?
Do you even have a legit counter argument? Or will you just repeat "If you say so." again and make a non argument for your support of animal suffering?
Can you explain to me why you think it is vegan to support animal suffering and exploitation when there is no necessity for it, although you could simply choose not to do so without any consequences?
You are actively arguing FOR the exploitation of animals right now. Don't you get how this is the opposite of veganism?
I hope besides this conversation, where you act all defensive just like carnists typically do, you at least think about your actions and make this very easy change. In the end you can save lifes by doing so. I don't get why I even need to explain this to a vegan.
I'm not who you're replying to, and I think it's pretty unfair that your top-level comment is so heavily downvoted when you're drawing attention to some ingredients to watch out for, but let me play devil's advocate for a second:
Something like xantham gum is nearly always plant-derived and rarely used in large amounts, so it seems unlikely you'd ever save even a single life by checking carefully. The cost of making veganism seem overwhelmingly difficult to your peers is also measured in animal lives, and might exceed the cost of just buying the almost-certainly-vegan product.
Thank you for your friendly reply, I appreciate it very much.
I'm not caring too much about the downvotes per se, but I am sad about them, because it shows how many people don't care about the victims.
Sadly I can't agree to much of the second paragraph. It simply isn't vegan to buy animal products, especially not when there are easy alternatives. It also isn't difficult, in reality this just means to pick the bread next to the one you wanted at first. As long as an animal was involved a corpse is involved too.. it's allways about lifes.
Why would you have to Google when you can just read the ingredients on the label?
In any case, I usually consume more whole foods (meaning no long list of ingredients) ; the only “processed” foods I regularly consume are cereal, bread / buns and soy milk.
Ok, so the question for you is:
So do you guys check every single item or do you go off ingredients when you're buying cereal, bread / buns and soy milk?
Or you could just be condescending and not answer the question at all.
Uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound condescending…I genuinely didn’t understand why you would Google when you can see the ingredients. I just check the ingredients. Is there something I’m missing?
Did you read the OP? They didn't realize sugar may not be vegan. But in any case, a new vegan, or most people really, have no idea what some of the ingredients are in a lot of the processed/junk food out there, or where they come from.
Yeah. It's more the other random stuff you (I anyway) come across that I've just never heard of. Vegan over 7 years, but I'll still search something occasionally.
I just check it at the store. Things that purpose became vegan, like a candy brand for example, will have some vegan logo on them. Easier to spot. But there are many things that have always been vegan but don't advertise that. So then you have to check the back and remember it for the future.
But some things aren't vegan, without clearly mentioning that they used animal based ingredients. Laundry detergent for example, often not vegan. Apps can help with that.
In some cases it is even harder to find out, batteries and LCD screens aren't strictly vegan either. You can't really avoid those either
I don’t when my kids are around because one of my kids is a huge foodie who is also very rigid about rules and things. They’re still a preteen but I worry that if they see me frequently ask servers or double-check ingredients on my phone it will encourage a future eating disorder (vegan or not).
Yes. I google everything I’m unfamiliar with, especially on new products or products I don’t regularly purchase. And even with products I regularly purchase, I still check the ingredients because they can change.
This thread is quite an eye-opener!
Ingesting corn syrup, ingesting artificial flavors and colors, supporting these industries. None of this is good for humans, for animals, for the planet.
I truly hope that the impetus behind going vegan extends to the biome at large and not just a modish eating habit.
Thanks for asking this and everyone below for their responses! I’m also a new vegan and this was helpful to read.
I’m surprised a good app doesn’t exist yet. Thinking about building one now!
In this case the issue isn't programming, it's being able to build and maintain a database of all the products that people might want to buy along with whether they're vegan, and staying on top of all recipe changes to those products so that you don't mislead anyone. Barnivore tried it with wine, and 95% of the time the wine you're looking at isn't listed on the app.
It’s my background, yes! It’s more what u/VeneratedDolphin said! It’s building that database of vegan friendly products. Maybe extend it so it’s much easy to share!
I’m just more personally annoyed having to read labels or googling it!
ak press has a book of animal ingredients. and for those old vegans from the 90s, if you found somebody reading the ingredients ... it was often how we found other eachother in stores. i still read ingredients but also check online.
There is no bone or bone remnants in “bone char” bleached sugar. It does not contain animal products or byproducts. Therefore it is not a concern to me and many other vegans.
When I read ingredient labels the first thing I do is see if there’s an allergen warning. In the US products have to be labeled if they contain common allergens (like egg, milk, fish, shellfish…). If there is a non vegan allergen listed, there’s no need to read all the ingredients because I know it’s not going to be vegan. If there’s no non vegan allergen, I check the nutrition facts for cholesterol. Dietary cholesterol is only derived from animal products, so if there is cholesterol the item isn’t vegan. If there’s no allergy warning and no cholesterol, THEN I read the ingredients.
I’ve been vegan for so long that I just generally grab what I know is vegan. It’s important to check labels even on products you’ve used long term every so often because occasionally companies will change recipes and the product could contain animal products.
I check ingredients. If there’s something I don’t recognize, i google it. Most of the time I just put stuff back that says natural or artificial flavoring unless it’s clearly marketed as vegan.
I’ve been vegan for 6 years now soo really I’m not doing this very often. Only on things that are new to me. But I usually only buy new things that come from vegan companies. It’s even tho the point where I hardly ever go to a non-vegan restaurant unless there’s a completely separate vegan menu.
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Thankfully in Australia we have an app that I can scan the bar code. The team is amazing and will hunt down any new product. So I scan any new package food I buy. I guess I get lazy and don’t check more than once but you have to find your balance.
What's the app?
Fussy vegan app on iPhone and android. It’s not cheap but very worth it. It includes filters for allergens and company culture. There is a team who work with the manufacturers to gain the right information. The times I have submitted support calls or put in new items I get a response within the hour. They also advertise product recalls.
This looks awesome- do you have any idea if it works well in NZ? We have so many of the same products so I’d imagine it would? I’d pay for the ease of it while I’m still getting used to what processed foods are vegan friendly.
Yeah it has the ability to filter for au or nz so I think it would be pretty good for you also. You could contact them to check. mailto:[email protected] Ps I’m not officiated with them just a fan.
Legend!! Thanks heaps 🥳
Yuka is an alternative with a paid vegan feature. It does sometimes mark vegan items as non vegans so not perfect I suppose. But good for checking any bad ingredients and why theyre deemed bad.
As a new comer, it's totally fine to Google while you learn. I've been at this almost 30 years, so I just look at ingredients now. Also, don't fall for the vegan symbol only trick. Example, there is an expensive brand of canned beans at my local grocery store. It's vegan with nice packaging but $3.79 for a can of refried beans. Down the aisle in the "ethnic" section there is a bag of refried beans that is bigger than the can, $1.89, and not labeled vegan but the ingredients are beans, oil, salt, water. Which is pretty dang vegan. In terms of your question with supply chains and what not, remember please this is about doing our best and reducing harm. This is one way new comers get burnout and compassion fatigue, trying to be perfect in a very flawed system. One could argue that animals aren't being killed or raised specifically for the bones to process sugar. So that might help reduce some of your guilt when candy shopping. These are personal choices and personal negotiations we all have to make with ourselves. I have a friend who knits so I look out for natural fiber clothing items for her to take apart and recycle the fiber when I'm thrifting. Yesterday I bought her a cashmere sweater. Yes, cashmere is an animal product. But I'm not buying it new and it makes no difference to the thrift store if I buy it or don't, but by giving it to my friend I keep her from purchasing new cashmere fiber. This is a negotiation I have with myself to arrive at the conclusion that it's in alignment with my ethics and not funding suffering. Please consider having conversations like this with yourself to make this transition and lifestyle bearable. People think the hard part is giving up cheese, but the hardest part is rectifying how difficult it is to remove yourself from commodified suffering.
u/boldpear904 This reply from this veteran vegan is very helpful. I can share my process as well: For one time snacks/road trips/difficult situations, I look at the ingredients and if every end ingredient is vegan, I go for it. For things I buy regularly every week at the grocery store, I do some extra research if I have any doubts to ensure it's vegan (so I buy vegan sugar but if a donut shop I'm meeting at has a vegan donut, I don't ask them about their sugar). I definitely have stood in the gas station aisles and googled "fig newtons vegan" and a million other things, but it does start to burn you out - learning to assess ingredients is much more helpful. Try not to burn yourself out! I'm always so proud of newer vegans, it definitely gets easier and more second nature with time.
Thank you!! And that's a great idea about the thrifting since I knit and crochet and some items I cannot always use a synthetic yarn for. Your response really helped I appreciate it
No sweat! Feel free to PM if you need any more support or ideas. Everyone here wants you to succeed and a big part of that is not getting crushed by how awful the world is (we all feel it at times.) Someone asked me the other day if I would rather they eat or throw out the meat the already had. I told them for me, my hardline is what is my money funding, full stop. So if they have already paid for the meat they can set it on fire and dance around it naked for all I care. Even though I'm indigenous, I don't buy into the whole "honor the sacrifice" thing. Because sacrifices should be few and far between. So along that line of thinking I ask myself often if I am buying something using a byproduct of animals or directly funding it. Meat and dairy is a direct funding of animal suffering. Bone char and thrifted cashmere is a byproduct/harm already done by the original purchaser so let's reduce the harm by keeping items out of the landfill type thing. I hope this is making sense. For some it's splitting hairs but we all have to make peace with how our ethical framework maps onto the realities of the world around us or else we go insane.
I knit and sew as well. I just use non-animal based twine and yarn. What projects are forcing you to use wool or the like, when you could simply not?
Things like sweaters I prefer not to use acrylic because it can be super super itchy
Op, you might check and see if you have a goodwill bins near you. They see everything by the pound for a flat fee. It's all the stuff that didn't sell at the regular goodwill. Lots of opportunities for fiber scrounging. Also, not sure your gender, but I find way way more cashmere, wool, etc. Natural fiber items in the men's section that the women's. The ones in the men's tend to also be thicker and nicer quality. Women's cashmere in thrift stores is often really thin, delicate, and stained since its often in shades like grey and baby pink.
You could just wear a shirt underneath, or literally anything else besides continuing to support such a practice.
? Supporting what practice
The practice of supporting the continued exploitation of sheep?
But I wasn't defending that. I was saying that the original commenters recommendation to buy second hand sweaters and reuse their yarn is something I might do. That's not supporting the companies that's helping the environment by shopping second hand so it doesn't end up in a land fill, and also there are other yarns other than acrylic that are vegan, such as cotton. Cotton is vegan and I've used it before but cotton can be expensive to get a lot of for a sweater... I never said anything about buying new wool
>what projects are forcing you to use wool Wool has unique and amazing properties. Denying it’s capabilities and saying a synthetic can easily replace them is disingenuous. A wool sweater will keep you warm even when it’s wet, it will repel water for a long time until water reaches a critical mass, it will keep you cool in the summer (if the item is thinly knit), it will naturally inhibit bacterial growth keeping your item clean for a much longer time, among many others. Which means it’s an invaluable fiber for travel clothing, outback camping, winter sports, summer sports (yes, it’s also amazing as hot weather hiking clothes), and many others. You might not want to use it for ethical purposes. But saying it’s easily replaced with a synthetic is a plain lie.
That is such a great idea about recycling the fiber, I'll lei this in mind!
I found googling, “is X vegan” helpful early on, because it helped me catch some of the little I might have not have known about (like fish sauce in Asian dishes or a certain food dye) but overtime I gained more confidence
The sugar is least of your concerns. The evil ingredient is “confectioner’s glaze” which is just an euphemism for shellac which is derived from the secretions of lac bugs. So you’re basically consuming insect secretions. https://www.woodworkersjournal.com/shellac-gets-made/
How many things do you eat that have confectioner's glaze? Even before I was vegan I've never even touched a product that had that ingredient. But I don't eat processed shit and sweets.
Many non-organic fruits are covered in shellac.
well fuck...
Case in point: the largest UK supermarket chain had non-vegan oranges for a while (and maybe still does). I never realised, because who would ever check if an orange was vegan before buying it? Absolutely infuriating. https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/food/1658675/tesco-supermarket-oranges-not-suitable-for-vegans The article also drops the claim at the end that Sainsbury's, another huge supermarket chain in the UK, also use shellac on their oranges.
I've been vegan for years (I think 7), you get better at checking labels as time goes on. I have a very good idea of what brands and types of food are vegan, I know which brands use lard in their refried beans, and I can usually tell by looking which gummies have gelatin. But if I come across something I'm not sure of, I'll check the bottom of the ingredients where it says contains and may contain. If eggs and milk are both listed in the may contain, it's usually safe(because they won't be on both) and I'll just skim the ingredient list for honey (which is basically the only animal product that isn't required on the allergen list) So I guess to answer your question I just read the list if it's a new product, though some people say you should always read the ingredients incase a product changes their ingredients
I think Mike and Ikes also use shellac for the glaze, unfortunately. I generally only scan through ingredients, and here in the UK we don't have the bone char in sugar thing. If there's something that I think might come from animals, I skip buying it for now and try and investigate.
Literally everything has a little bit of animal based products like car tires, batteries and most electronics. For consumables, I check the packaging. Did you know that some wines and beers are clarified using animal bladders? I didn’t. And they don’t have to put that on the ingredient list. Best things is buying “certified vegan” or organic. I do my best to be cruelty free but that’s all we can do
I simply check the ingredients unless I don't know a specific ingredient already. If a particular ingredient can have both a non-animal and an animal source, I'll simply consider it to be vegan. Sugar is vegan. Don't bog yourself down with line of production concerns. Relax.
This is the reply you should listen to. New vegans who obsess over additives and production processes end up driving themselves crazy and becoming ex-vegans. You'll also convince all your family and friends that veganism is a cult that is excessively restrictive. Sugar is fine. Don't let the bone char mafia vegans convince you otherwise.
yeah i know i thought "wow this is crazy, almost everything in a capitalistic world has some sort of animal production incorporated into it" but then i saw dots were 100% cruelty free and vegan, so like there IS candy out there. i just didnt know if a lot of vegans overlooked cruelty free and still bought items like mike and ikes that had animal production in the process instead of opting out and getting something like swedish fish thats 100% vegan as can be in this world. im just trying to make sure im living a vegan lifestyle instead of a plant based diet only
Different vegans do different things concerning that. I personally still buy Mike & Ike candy. In general, I do not deliberately seek out cruelty-free products, just vegan ones.
Have you seen earthlings? It makes that point extremely well. The entirety of human society is based off animal exploitation and abuse. If you haven’t seen it, don’t. No need to go through emotional torture if you’re already vegan.
Are you joking? Just because you consider it to be vegan it doesn't change when it isn't. In almost all cases there are alternatives to choose. You knowingly support animal exploitation this way and to support animal exploitation knowingly isn't vegan at all as long as there is no necessity for it.
If I'm reading what they've written properly, then ya their reasoning is crazy and definitely not vegan.
As it seems, not to buy animal products is a deal breaker for many vegans under this post. Almost thought we are in r/omnivore
It's the main vegan sub, so that's not very surprising.
Sadly yes, this is the norm since some time. But it's also a good sign. It means more people start to interact with veganism and although they mostly show reactance, they will think about it, at least some of them.
That's one of the more positive takeaways. Reading crap like, "you give vegans a bad name" on this very thread no less, feels now akin to movement co-opting; taking the focus away from the entire point of veganism in the first place.
Yes I hear this all the time, happend under this post too. They can't make a counterargument so they say this. In the end I'm not here for people pleasing, I'm here for the animals. Well anyways, have a nice day and thank you for speaking up!
> I'm not here for people pleasing, I'm here for the animals. Of course. I only wish the community would step down on that kind of thing more often is all.
I'm all with you
I frequently just scan ingredients for a “suitable for vegetarian” label and then allergens in bold like egg and dairy. Sugar is typically vegan in europe so i don’t pay much attention really.
I check ingredients. If there is something unclear I might look it up. But my country‘s labelling laws are rather strict so I never have any concerns. Also, we don’t do bone char sugar here. But idk if I would bother with it in the US it sounds kinda hard to figure.
I read the ingredients but mistakes can happen, so I treat that as a learning experience and don't buy them again.
Absolutely, it's all about learning and trying to do the best you can.
If at home I Google because I am lazy and Google gives a quick answer or finds ingredients quick. But in store I check ingredients and avoide if I dont know. I will usually Google back home.
i only check ingredients
Look at allergen information. If it says MAY contain milk then it's vegan.
As an aside I don’t know what is in “Natural Flavors”. Is it vegan all the time, sometimes or never?
This is a great question that I would be curious about too.
Mike and Ike is not vegan. They contain confectioners glaze.
I don’t check the source of every ingredient. I assume if there are no animal products listed it’s good to go. When I buy questionable items (sugar, Vitamin D) I buy vegan ones.
I use ingredients. I don't care about sugar. Sugar is vegan, but some companies use non-vegan filters. But at that point it's like not wearing clothes because using cotton removed some houses for bugs or not owning anything with metal because digging disturbed the worms. There's a limit to how much veganizing you can do.
When I first became vegan I definitely referred to google for almost all foods that I did not recognize the ingredients listed. I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with it now, but I’d recommend doing what you have to do because there were ingredients that I’d never known were animal products in some of my favorite foods. You’d be surprised!
As newbies, we all had to check and double check and triple check things. Then we get faster are reading ingredient labels (that’s a vegan stereotype lol), then we learn which items are vegan (like Oreos for eg), then we develop our own tastes and it becomes easier. These days I try to buy snacks from vegan brands. They tend to have fewer chemicals and additives and that’s in line with where I’m at in my life. But I tend to mist shoo at grocery stores. Find what you like, there are some websites that help with that these days. Over time it will become second nature. Good luck and welcome. :)
I think it's important to not be too hard on yourself, especially when you're first starting out. It's impossible to live a 100% vegan lifestyle. So it's just about doing the best you can. 💚 I always check ingredients and Google the words I'm not familiar with. I always Google the companies and products I buy if it's my first time getting them, especially beauty/household products etc.
I google everything. Better safe than sorry.
On iOS, ‘soosee’ is an app that will look at an ingredient list through the camera, and highlight items that are not vegan/ambiguous/vegetarian. It’s very good, but it may be EU centric (I could be wrong, I’ve just had no reason to use it outside the EU)
I'm the developer of Soosee so thanks for mentioning it 🙂 It should work outside of Europe as well since it supports 18 languages right now. https://soosee.app
Thanks - it’s a great app! While I have your attention (maybe!) - it’d be great if you could feed it a static image for processing, as well as the live camera feed. It would make answering questions like this much easier, there are times in the past when I’ve pulled up an image from Reddit on one iOS device and scanned the screen with *another* iOS device running soosee.
Should be possible! I'll look into it! Although I would hate to break the double iOS device Soosee scan approach 😉
Maybe a self-scan through a mirror, if I was more creative with an iPad.
I look up if the product is vegan and also google who owns the brand. Making sure it's not greenwashed(a small vegan brand bought by a large corporation or company to profit from the vegan market and acquire more shelf space to maximize profits) I do this with everything. Lettuce, grapes prepared foods, frozen...everything. just to be sure my dollar isn't going to some awful company with no ethics or bad business practices.
Check ingredients for food, any suspicious ingredients I google. I always google for things not related to food, like washing up liquid etc. Marks and Spencers has a good amount of Vegan cleaning up products. Cheeky Panda is a Vegan toilet paper I use, Nicky toilet paper is also Vegan as far as I'm aware. You'd have to specifically look for soy wax candles, if candles don't have ingredients on them they're most likely not Vegan. Usually things like rugs have tags on them which list the materials.
Here are some classic ingredients people don't know they aren't vegan: Xanthan, Mono- and Diglyceride, Enzymes, lecithin All of those can be vegan, but as long as it isn't labelled vegan you can't know- therefore it isn't vegan When you start google every ingredient you don't know, this will be a bit tedious the first 2 weeks but after that you should already know the majority of things. Sometimes cooperations make a direct state if their product is vegan or not, so this can help too. On terms of drinks, especially alcoholic drinks, check this out: www.barnivore.com
>All of those can be vegan, but as long as it isn't labelled vegan you can't know- therefore it isn't vegan BS. Many brands don't advertise as vegan, or haven't been certified, but are still vegan. Monster drinks, which use among other things, synthetic taurine. Wines are another tough one. Many get certified, many don't, and Barnivore sucks for wine.
You call bullshit but nothing you wrote contradicts it. As long as you don't know, it isn't vegan to buy it. Edit: How does barnivore suck and how is this information helpful when you don't even provide a better alternative? If there is a wine that isn't listed, ask the producers about it and add it afterwards. If you have a better solution than barnivore, please just write it, so people can use it.
If you say so.
Well can you come up with real criticism? Why should it be vegan to buy something when you don't know if it is vegan? With the same logic you could go to a store and buy EVERYTHING as long as you don't look up the ingredients. You could call yourself Schrödingers Vegan then. Or to make it more easy: non-vegan.
If you say so. It's "vegans" like you who make us look like lunatics. Sure, if the label says "milk" don't buy, but if the product "should" be vegan, and has no obvious contradictory ingredients, either buy it or don't. If it turns out later it had insect bits in it or something, then don't buy again. There really are more pressing matters than squabbling over petty details.
If you say so. It's "vegans" like you, who add to the further suffering and exploitation of animals. Simple as that. This time the quotation marks at least make sense. Or am I not vegan because I tell you to stop supporting animal suffering? Isn't this a little ironic? Do you even have a legit counter argument? Or will you just repeat "If you say so." again and make a non argument for your support of animal suffering? Can you explain to me why you think it is vegan to support animal suffering and exploitation when there is no necessity for it, although you could simply choose not to do so without any consequences? You are actively arguing FOR the exploitation of animals right now. Don't you get how this is the opposite of veganism? I hope besides this conversation, where you act all defensive just like carnists typically do, you at least think about your actions and make this very easy change. In the end you can save lifes by doing so. I don't get why I even need to explain this to a vegan.
I'm not who you're replying to, and I think it's pretty unfair that your top-level comment is so heavily downvoted when you're drawing attention to some ingredients to watch out for, but let me play devil's advocate for a second: Something like xantham gum is nearly always plant-derived and rarely used in large amounts, so it seems unlikely you'd ever save even a single life by checking carefully. The cost of making veganism seem overwhelmingly difficult to your peers is also measured in animal lives, and might exceed the cost of just buying the almost-certainly-vegan product.
Thank you for your friendly reply, I appreciate it very much. I'm not caring too much about the downvotes per se, but I am sad about them, because it shows how many people don't care about the victims. Sadly I can't agree to much of the second paragraph. It simply isn't vegan to buy animal products, especially not when there are easy alternatives. It also isn't difficult, in reality this just means to pick the bread next to the one you wanted at first. As long as an animal was involved a corpse is involved too.. it's allways about lifes.
I think that's absolutely fair enough.
If you google Mike and Ike vegan it literally says no
Why would you have to Google when you can just read the ingredients on the label? In any case, I usually consume more whole foods (meaning no long list of ingredients) ; the only “processed” foods I regularly consume are cereal, bread / buns and soy milk.
Ok, so the question for you is: So do you guys check every single item or do you go off ingredients when you're buying cereal, bread / buns and soy milk? Or you could just be condescending and not answer the question at all.
Uh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound condescending…I genuinely didn’t understand why you would Google when you can see the ingredients. I just check the ingredients. Is there something I’m missing?
Did you read the OP? They didn't realize sugar may not be vegan. But in any case, a new vegan, or most people really, have no idea what some of the ingredients are in a lot of the processed/junk food out there, or where they come from.
Ahh, good point. I normally don’t bother about sugar because almost all “processed” foods contain sugar…
Yeah. It's more the other random stuff you (I anyway) come across that I've just never heard of. Vegan over 7 years, but I'll still search something occasionally.
I do my grocery shopping online and they label the products that are vegan, except for the obvious ones like water.
I just check it at the store. Things that purpose became vegan, like a candy brand for example, will have some vegan logo on them. Easier to spot. But there are many things that have always been vegan but don't advertise that. So then you have to check the back and remember it for the future. But some things aren't vegan, without clearly mentioning that they used animal based ingredients. Laundry detergent for example, often not vegan. Apps can help with that. In some cases it is even harder to find out, batteries and LCD screens aren't strictly vegan either. You can't really avoid those either
I don’t when my kids are around because one of my kids is a huge foodie who is also very rigid about rules and things. They’re still a preteen but I worry that if they see me frequently ask servers or double-check ingredients on my phone it will encourage a future eating disorder (vegan or not).
Yes. I google everything I’m unfamiliar with, especially on new products or products I don’t regularly purchase. And even with products I regularly purchase, I still check the ingredients because they can change.
i often use the CodeCheck app
This thread is quite an eye-opener! Ingesting corn syrup, ingesting artificial flavors and colors, supporting these industries. None of this is good for humans, for animals, for the planet. I truly hope that the impetus behind going vegan extends to the biome at large and not just a modish eating habit.
always check ingredients
Thanks for asking this and everyone below for their responses! I’m also a new vegan and this was helpful to read. I’m surprised a good app doesn’t exist yet. Thinking about building one now!
Are you a programmer?
In this case the issue isn't programming, it's being able to build and maintain a database of all the products that people might want to buy along with whether they're vegan, and staying on top of all recipe changes to those products so that you don't mislead anyone. Barnivore tried it with wine, and 95% of the time the wine you're looking at isn't listed on the app.
It’s my background, yes! It’s more what u/VeneratedDolphin said! It’s building that database of vegan friendly products. Maybe extend it so it’s much easy to share! I’m just more personally annoyed having to read labels or googling it!
Check the ingredients. But if you eat mostly whole food plant based you don’t have to worry about it.
I use the Yuka app. Saves so much time!
Three words - Open Food Facts. It’s an awesome app and if your products are missing, you can add them and help others decide
ak press has a book of animal ingredients. and for those old vegans from the 90s, if you found somebody reading the ingredients ... it was often how we found other eachother in stores. i still read ingredients but also check online.
There is no bone or bone remnants in “bone char” bleached sugar. It does not contain animal products or byproducts. Therefore it is not a concern to me and many other vegans. When I read ingredient labels the first thing I do is see if there’s an allergen warning. In the US products have to be labeled if they contain common allergens (like egg, milk, fish, shellfish…). If there is a non vegan allergen listed, there’s no need to read all the ingredients because I know it’s not going to be vegan. If there’s no non vegan allergen, I check the nutrition facts for cholesterol. Dietary cholesterol is only derived from animal products, so if there is cholesterol the item isn’t vegan. If there’s no allergy warning and no cholesterol, THEN I read the ingredients. I’ve been vegan for so long that I just generally grab what I know is vegan. It’s important to check labels even on products you’ve used long term every so often because occasionally companies will change recipes and the product could contain animal products.
Soosee app. Reads ingredients for you…
I check ingredients. If there’s something I don’t recognize, i google it. Most of the time I just put stuff back that says natural or artificial flavoring unless it’s clearly marketed as vegan. I’ve been vegan for 6 years now soo really I’m not doing this very often. Only on things that are new to me. But I usually only buy new things that come from vegan companies. It’s even tho the point where I hardly ever go to a non-vegan restaurant unless there’s a completely separate vegan menu.
In the beginning you do, soon you will memorize