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What's something that is, surprisingly, made with animal products?
There are some products which are quite obviously animal-derived (e.g. leather), but there are a lot of others where it's much less obvious (e.g. tallow-based soap).
What are some of the less obvious places people might find animal-derived ingredients/products? Also, if you know of any good substitutes or alternatives to those, give your recommendations as well!
Meta note: wasn't sure where this would best fit in on the site, but I figured ~enviro is a good fit. If it needs to be moved to a better home, feel free!
Gelatin is made from animal collagen, and that is pretty impactful because a whole bunch of sweets use gelatin, some of which you may not expect. Marshmallows use gelatin, for instance, which also means that, say, marshmallow hot cocoa is not vegetarian.
For example, Altoids are, surprisingly, not vegetarian.
Similarly, "confectioners glaze" is made from the excretions of the lac bug. And a lot of sugar is filtered with bone char.
I was so surprised when a muslim at the school I went to said that they couldn't eat gummy bears because of gelatin. Had no idea it came from pigs
A lot of of the fining agents used for wine production aren't vegan -- anything from Albumen (from egg whites) to isinglass (fish bones) to charcoal made from animal bone. You can get a lot of vegan wine these days, however. When a wine is vegan, they typically brag about it on the label.
There's quite a few that I'm aware of. Many cheeses are made with the help of a material called Rennet, which is an enzyme mostly harvested from cow stomachs.
The reason why royalty is so often associated with the color purple is because the earliest purple dye, tyrian purple, was made from sea snails called Murex. Being hard to harvest, it was very rare and expensive.
Shellac, which most people remember being used to make early phonographic records out of, is the a secretion of the Lac bug.
There are many, many historical uses for the excrement of all sorts of animals - including humans. The most common use is as soil fertilizer, where it is frequently still used today. For a fun historical joy ride, you should learn about the intersection of American imperialism and bat guano!
Speaking of that, carmine, a very common red food dye, is made from crushed up bugs. It's not the only red food dye, but you've probably consumed a fair amount of it from red looking processed foods.
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-43786055
Ha, as I was writing this list I was thinking "there's another bug foodstuff that I'm forgetting". Thanks for the addition.
Haha, I just posted about rennet before seeing this! That was one of those facts that blew my mind.
Guinness. It's production in one or more country is being shifted to a new process, but it uses an extract from the fall bladder of a specific dish as a clarifying agent.
It actually surprised the hell out of me to hear about this, but the company was rapidly working on developing either a synthesized chemical or an alternate process.
Guinness has officially been all vegan since 2018. Tons of other beers (especiall macro beers) use isinglass finings though; it's extremely common. Barnivore is a great resource for looking up specific beers.
Oh. I think I read about it a few years before the switch and keep forgetting they actually made it happen.
Gelatin and rennet are probably the biggest sneaky-meat offenders, but here are a few more:
Some french fries are not vegetarian. Obviously a "duck fat fry", for example, won't be vegetarian, but neither are the french fries at some fast food restaurants -- McDonald's and Bojangles being the biggest offenders that I know of -- since the seasoning for these fries are derived from beef. (Oddly, for McDonald's in particular, this seems to be a U.S.-specific issue as their french fries tend to be vegetarian abroad).
Worcestershire sauce is typically not vegetarian since it's usually made from anchovies. As Worcestershire sauce is an ingredient in many other sauces, BBQ sauces are often not vegetarian. For that matter, all dipping sauces are suspect -- I've seen something as simple as honey mustard (at its most basic, mayo + mustard + honey) labeled not-vegetarian, presumably because Worcestershire sauce was an added ingredient.
Chicken/beef stock are not vegetarian obviously, but you might be surprised to discover how ubiquitous they are. Pretty much all soups are made with stock, and unless you ask (or someone tells you), you won't know whether that stock is vegetarian or not. For example, traditional French onion soup is made with beef stock, as is the occasional vegetable soup. A green bean casserole my grandmother had served at Thanksgiving for years, which I had assumed was veggie-friendly, was in fact not so, as it had always been made with chicken stock. Simiarlly, Mexican rice is ordinarily made with chicken stock.
Refried beans are usually made with lard and therefore not vegetarian.
Fish sauce and shrimp paste are plainly not vegetarian but are common in Asian cuisine, though the primary offenders tend to be Thai curries (fish sauce/shrimp paste) and Japanese noodle dishes (fish sauce). Luckily fish sauce is an ingredient that can usually be omitted, and there are curry pastes without shrimp paste.
Marshmallows.
I love marshmallows and you/I often don't think about the gelatin in them being an animal product. Funnily enough, the absolute best commercially available marshmallows I have found are vegan! These have flavor and texture that pretty much every other commercial marshmallow can only dream of. They are also seasonal, usually arriving just before July 4th. Had a friend of mine get me 6 bags when they popped back up, I don't live near a Trader Joe's, so I have a stash now.
I don't often get a sweet tooth, but two of these if I'm not in the mood for honey get the job done deliciously.
Oooh! Ann Reardon did some experiments trying to reproduce early marshmallows with actual marshmallow instead of gelatin! It's fascinating.
Speaking of; Any product containing glycerol/glycerin or its precursors/derivatives (ethylhexylglycerin, glyceryl, monoglyceride, diglyceride, triglyceride, polyglycerol), very likely contains an animal derived ingredient as well. The majority of those also are made using animal tallow, since vegetable derived ones costs a lot more to produce and purify. So unless it specifically says "vegetable" directly before it in the ingredients list (e.g. "vegetable glycerin"), it's probably animal tallow based.
They are all used in a surprising amount of products too; Many processed foods, sodas, liqueurs, chewing gum, soaps/shampoos, cosmetics, medicines, and even vape e-juice often use them, as it's considered food, pharmaceutical, and cosmetic safe, and it is used as a moistening, thickening, sweetening, and preservative agent. And a lot of "low fat" food items contain it as well, since it's also commonly used as a filler.
p.s. I generally loathe PETA as an organization... but their site actually has a pretty good list of animal derived ingredients to keep an eye out for if you truly want to avoid them:
https://www.peta.org/living/food/animal-ingredients-list/
Vitamin D3 is derived from lanolin, which is extracted from wool. It's a pretty common ingredient in multivitamins.
Another one that's really surprising to hear, but is really uncommon is some artificial vanilla extracts are made from castoreum, which is extracted from anal glands of beavers.
Some white sugars are refined from raw sugar using bone char.
Some commercial orange juice has omega fortification, often sourced from animals.
Some commercial bread products use L-cysteine, often sourced from animals
Car tires (tyres) are made using stearic acid, which is derived from tallow.
Cheese is obviously made with animal products, but I was surprised to learn that many cheeses aren't even vegetarian. In order to start the curdling process, historically a mix of enzymes called rennet has been used, which comes from animal stomachs. In fact, one of the hypotheses regarding the invention of cheese is essentially that humans used animal stomachs to store leftover milk and, when exposed to periods of heat during migration, the milk would curdle. Anyway, I was surprised to learn that a lot of cheese is still made using rennet from the butchering process, even though alternatives exist.
Interestingly, the vast majority of the global rennet supply today is now produced without extracting it from animal stomachs. To do this, the animal genes that produce rennet were genetically engineered into microorganisms which can then be used to produce rennet via fermentation. This is one of the earliest and most successful instances of GMOs being used for food production, though the GMOs are not part of the final cheese product (and it's much more efficient and environmentally friendly than producing rennet from animals).
This may be controversial, but I can't regret the biological (a/k/a cow-derived) heart valve transplant that's keeping my spouse alive. There are many pharmaceutical and implantable medical products that just won't be vegan until there are significant improvements in tissue engineering.
At what point do we draw the ethical line? We know there are good plant- or bacterial- or fungal-derived substitutes for many of the substances we're depending on (leather, gelatin, rennet, glues, parchment, hormones, medical proteins, etc.), but are we willing to countenance genetic engineering to create more efficient ones?
There are already tissue-cultured computing devices, does the absence of sensation or cognition as we recognize it exempt this from veganism?
Aside from the Gaia hypothesis, can we in all honesty rule out the possibility of plant or fungal qualia?
Veganism is just about reducing harm done to living beings where possible. It does not say that a human life is equal to that of a cow, or that plants do not have a rudimentary form of experience. Of course, I sympathize with how it must seem personal when your spouse's life is thanks to an animal product. That's totally justified, and please rest assured that nobody reasonable wants to prevent the use of animal tissue if it is the only way to save human lives.
However, we use animal products very gratuitously in our society, and veganism concerns itself with reducing the harm that does. If we can make insulin with yeast in a lab, we shouldn't take animal pancreases for it. If we can live happy, healthy lives eating only plants, we should not eat meat. Some of these things are inconvenient, but if inconvenience can erase suffering, shouldn't we be inconvenienced?
Also - I see the argument about plant qualia a fair bit, and understandably so. It would be hypocritical to eat plants if they experience things the same way animals do. If plants do experience pain, though, we should kill as few of them as possible. Considering that 77% of our crops* are fed to animals, and animals only provide 18% of our calories, the best way to reduce overall plant and animal harm is to eat plants directly, without wasting their calories on animal metabolisms.
I hope I haven't come off as rude - I once had the same objections you do, but was eventually convinced. I feel like I ought to do my part and share my viewpoints on the issue when I can. :)
*77% of our agricultural land - of course land area and number of crops on that land are not mandatorily related, but I assume that we grow crops with similar land efficiency for human food and animal food.
I would add that veganism with a lower case V, as just a dietary restriction is a thing as well. There are many reasons people have dietary restrictions - some are about ethical concerns, like what you put out. But I know many people from south asia, and it's actually more common that their vegetarianism, veganism, or somewhere in-between is religious.
That does change things - if it's ethical, then it's not like accidentally eating some meat products is going to make that big of a difference, and in general it's easier to make carveouts when necessary. Not necessary the case when it's religiously sourced, though, and even accidental consumption can be quite devastating.
Yup, good point! A lot of people also go vegan for the environment, too.
Aside from the rhetorical questions, I agree with you and generally try to get as many of my daily calories from plant-based sources as possible. It was actually a bit ethically displeasing to learn that human cadaver heart valves or tissue-engineered ones aren't really available.
The evidence for insect/plant/fungal qualia isn't strong enough to make categorical ethical statements by any means. There's chemical communication and nutrient exchange at the scale of ecosystems, but if there's some kind of awareness, we're not capable of observing those phenomena or looking on the right time scales.
I was chatting with friends about insects (mosquitoes) predating on humans, and our various expressions of displeasure with their behavior (poisons, traps, genetic manipulation, drainage, etc.). At some point, ecology bites back.
Personally, I err on the side of assuming that qualia arise from any information processing, be it in a brain, a forest, or government, or a marble machine, somehow in proportion to complexity. I don't think that qualia alone provide moral standing, though. I think that moral standing is instead related to suffering capacity. Humans have an immense potential for involuntary suffering, while an ant (or maybe a more appropriate unit is the whole colony?) likely has neutransmitters for distress, but I don't think there's any capacity for depression or worry or trauma.
Not completely sure that that forms a cohesive basis for ethics, but it's a fun lens to look through at least, and it resolves some mysteries about how our brains give rise to a first-person experience with moral worth, while matching our intuition that a mouse has less worth.
Another fun lens is uniqueness or entropy. There are countless arrangements of gas molecules in a box that have an identical macroscopic effect, with many many fewer arrangements into a crystal, so the gas has higher entropy. In addition to the rarity of life in the universe (just look at Earth's mass compared to its biomass), and the obvious ethical implications of preserving something unique, you could also consider emotions in a similar way. I think there might be way more ways to feel pain and suffering than ways to feel happiness and fulfillment, so maybe it follows that these are ethically better to pursue. If entropy drives morality though, it's morally wrong to boil water, albeit probably only by a little. Maybe when all the other stars have winked out and it's just one colony left in a universe close to heat death, then such frivolous increase in entropy would be more palpably bad since it speeds up the clock running out.
I genuinely don't understand the argument about plants. What difference does it make if they feel pain in a way that we can relate to? They respond to tissue damage, they try to avoid it, they warn other plants. Their goal, inasmuch as a plant has goals, is the same as every other living thing. They want to keep living.
Who are we to make arbitrary decisions about which non-human life forms are more worthy of existence?
Note that I'm not against veganism, I just don't understand the ethical arguments. Taken to their logical conclusion, it's not ethical to keep living if you can't do it without harming something. Which is of course impossible.
However much it might clash with modern ethos, animals have to kill to live.
Maybe someday we'll come up with a way around that. Until then, it's just how nature functions.
shx responded to this (plants having moral standing) above, so I'll try to address other stuff:
Veganism is about reducing harm, not eliminating it. You're right: it's not possible to live without causing harm. Taking an evening stroll will result in stepping on countless bugs. Just be aware of these tradeoffs and decide if your convenience or pleasure is actually worth its cost.
Part of that decision is knowing the suffering that went into it. Since we don't know what it's like to be a cow, this is a kind of guesswork. I'd rather "play it safe" and assume more moral value than less.
We have an insane amount of power to control our environment and other beings. We also have the most capable brains on Earth for making such executive decisions. This is a lot of responsibility and not something to take lightly.
Morality isn't binary. Regardless of your choices, you can't ever be 100% "in the clear". This is not a reason to throw up your hands and declare morality isn't worth considering. I think you're right about taking veganism to its logical conclusion IF you have a binary view of morality.
And animals eat their young and rape each other and all sorts of things that cause untold pain and suffering. That's how it is, not how it ought to be. Evolution runs on trauma and bloodshed, so Mother Nature is cruel and heartless. Don't point to predators as some sort of free pass for causing pain and death. How many millenia have humans lead suffering-focused lives of struggle and loss? Isn't that what nature intended? We should do what we can to minimize all that, in ourselves and others.
Also a carnivore chasing down their prey is really quite different than a human browsing factory-farmed meats at the grocery store. If your life depends on hunting, go for it. Your life (probably) does not depend on eating commercially-produced meat, though.
I'm a little lost with some of your points, it sounds like you're continuing a larger conversation with parties unknown, rather than replying to my post specifically. I guess that makes sense in a way, as no doubt for many this is a standing debate.
But I don't have a stake in it :)
There is one thing I want to reply to though...
I don't believe we're in a position, ethically or practically, to decide how nature ought to be.
If you believe that nature was intelligently created: We are stewards, and good stewards don't factory farm. If the "natural order" of things is good, then we need to live our lives very differently. I'm not sure how to argue for addressing wild animal suffering, though. Maybe we're supposed to try our best to reduce wild animal suffering, too, in much the same way as the poor among us seem like a "natural" part of life, but they're actually a call to action and an opportunity to practice your ethical behavior.
If you believe that nature came only from the emergent process of evolution: There's no reason to see it as inherently good. Cancer is natural. We are in an ethical and practical position to fight the very natural thing of cancer. If an elephant is slowly dying of a kidney infection, are you saying we're wrong to interfere by euthanizing or providing antibiotics? How about a thirsty doe on your lawn on a hot day. Is that natural and something to let be, or should you give her a bowl of water? I don't think we're practically able to address many kinds of wild animal suffering, but that doesn't mean it should be ethically ignored.
I'm curious what you're lost on. I'm always trying to improve my communication and argument skills, and sometimes I just miss the mark! I also hope you're reading this as a good-faith discourse and not an attack. I'm very curious about your thoughts and justifications.
Yeah, I think I slipped a bit into providing reading material for everyone in the thread instead of just you. I do think everything I said was in some way applicable to your comment, and I do believe you have a stake in it, since pretty much every decision you make will impact others.
I appreciate your attempt to engage. Some things to consider...
You're assigning me viewpoints I haven't stated and for which you have no evidence. Factory farming, for instance, has not been brought up, yet you keep mentioning it and seem to be implying that I'm arguing for it.
You also make generalizations that are difficult to reply to. They aren't reasonable, but pointing that out is too likely to feel like an attack. For me when someone starts doing that it signals the end of the conversation.
For example:
Sure, but the rate of cancer humanity experiences absolutely isn't. There is vast evidence that it's the result of things we've introduced to our environments that weren't present during the bulk of our evolution.
With respect, you must be aware of this? Why then, do so many of your points use this sort of reduction? In my experience that happens most often when the line between rational and contentious has been crossed.
I think you're looking for a conversation with someone that's anti-vegan, pro-factory farming, and a lot else besides. I'm not your huckleberry ;)
Yeah, that's fair. My apologies.
I use reductions in my own personal reasoning quite a bit, but using it when talking to others is fraught. I suppose in a normal conversation, you could have stopped me right away and clarified, but in this asynchronous form, I go on for a while in the wrong direction without waiting for feedback. Ah well. I'll try to keep your criticisms in mind for next time.
How often does a response like this happen on the internet? Cheers!
You pose a lot of interesting questions there, and I've spent a fair bit of time thinking about them in the past. I want to start off by saying that I have no hard feelings towards you or your post - I know that this is a sensitive topic, and feels very personal. I trust that you have good intentions, and don't mean to be hostile!
These are the points I took away from your comment:
And here are my replies.
1 - Why do vegans treat plant / animal suffering as superior to the damage responses of plants?
I've heard this argument a lot of times before, and used to make it myself. Generally, I think that this question is a bit self defeating - would you rather watch someone cut down a tree, or drive a chainsaw into a puppy? We find it innately obvious that plant life is conscious at a far lower level than animal life, if it is conscious at all. Ultimately, this is a matter of evolutionary biology. Animals evolved pain responses and minds because we are mobile. If something hurts me, I feel pain because my body is convincing me that I need to get away from whatever is damaging me. Plants, however, are almost entirely stuck in place. There is no evolutionary benefit for a plant to be able to make plans, or to feel pain. A mind is energetically costly, and useless if nothing in your genetic line has ever been ambulatory.
As a result, I personally find it silly to worry about the suffering that plants experience - their pain responses only need be robotic, and a mind isn't needed to ooze poison sap from a cut. However, some people surely disagree with me, there. Perhaps the Venus Flytrap has a mind of some sort. Luckily for veganism, a vegan diet actually kills far fewer plants than an animal based diet. When you feed an animal, almost all of the food energy they receive goes into sustaining their body. As a result, eating a cow is energetically much less efficient - one calorie of beef takes about twenty five calories of plant matter to produce. When we eat plants directly, we absorb their energy and nutrients more efficiently, and ultimately have to kill far fewer of them.
2 - Ethical veganism is self contradictory, because the best way to stop suffering is to surrender your life.
In our current world, a person must cause some suffering to stay alive. In your comment, you say that this implies "it's not [consistent with ethical veganism] to keep living if you can't do it without harming something".
In a vacuum without other human beings, there is some sort of mathematical truth to that claim. One cannot cause suffering to other life forms if they aren't alive. However, in the real world, this doesn't hold true. Their loved ones would suffer from the loss, and an ethical movement built around the surrender of human life would cause a tremendous amount of anguish and depression. Of course, you'll have to weigh that hypothetical mental suffering against the physical suffering of whatever it is that you eat.
Ultimately, my main disagreement with this point is one of practicality. Death might be the ultimate way to reduce our impact on suffering, but even if it is - do we seriously expect that people will surrender their lives so ants and lettuce can live? No, of course no sensible person would. A world without any life cannot have any suffering, but such a world is both undesirable and unattainable. What is attainable, though, is to eat a beyond burger, or tofu, or beans. We could easily treat animals far better. That middle ground - causing as little suffering as is practical and agreeable - is veganism, to me.
3 - Predatory animals must kill to live, therefore veganism is unreasonable / unnatural.
I'm basically going to regurgitate what @top said, for this one. Animals do a lot of things that are bad. They eat their young, they maul and torture prey (I had a cat that would catch mice, then smack them against the ground over and over until they died). Why should this impact us? We do not need meat to live. We voluntarily choose to breed, confine, and slaughter 50 billion chickens, 1.5 billion pigs, and 300 million cows every year for food. Some people consider what lions do to gazelles unethical. I think it's bad (the poor gazelles!), but the lions don't exactly have a choice in the matter.
My apologies for how long this post got. I wanted to provide a thorough reply for each of your points, but it got a little lengthy! I hope that what I've said is useful, and my apologies if you feel I misrepresented any of your points.
I had to go back and re-read my post to make sure there was nothing that could be interpreted as making this statement.
There's not. There just really isn't.
My apologies for misunderstanding. The third argument I listed is a very common appeal to nature when people discuss veganism. Your third paragraph (which is critical of ethical veganism) is immediately followed by: "However much it might clash with modern ethos, animals have to kill to live." I interpreted that sentence as you presenting another perceived flaw in vegan argumentation.
Thankfully, that was the least important response I wrote. I hope you can see my point of view about the first two.
Ah right, I guess I see how that could be misread. Plants are alive too, we kill them.
I don't think there's anything wrong with veganism, I think it's a great option that has a positive impact.
I assume this is what /u/shx was responding to. You might want to clarify this point, as I had interpreted it the same way they did.
Wow, this is an excellent summary of Veganism. Saving to share in the future :)
Thank you! c':