A friend asked me yesterday about a bag of sugar at her local Whole Foods which was labeled as vegan. What could make it non-vegan?
Is Sugar vegan?
Sugar itself comes from a plant source, but the refining process for cane sugar may involve the use of animal bone char as whitening and purification filters.
There are two type of sugar, beet and cane, the former always being vegan and the latter about half of the time. Thus the ever-popular and common US based shelf brand, Domino, is not vegan.
Beet sugar = vegan
Cane sugar = sometimes vegan, sometimes not
This is always a tricky one because so many foods off the shelf contains sugar, and most vegans I know will go out of their way to purchase vegan sugar but realise the futility of double checking the source of all products containing this ingredient. Still, it’s nice to support a company which doesn’t use bone char if you can.
