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Ignorance is Bliss!
June 17th, 2009 Madhuram Posted in Veganism, Vegetarianism | 
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A question to all vegetarians. What will be your reaction when you find out that some of the common stuff you have been eating all along have unfamiliar animal (derived) ingredients? I was shocked to the core. That’s the least I can explain how I felt.
I won’t call myself (our family too) a staunch vegetarian because we have eaten eggs in one form or the other. We don’t bring it home, but enjoy store bought baked goods (some of which may contain lard also, who knows?), ice cream etc. But that too has reduced a lot since I started baking. I really can’t remember the last time I bought a cake or a muffin. Sometimes I get cookies/bars for my son, but keep checking the ingredients list for eggs and/or any other animal fat like lard, tallow or gelatin. I also check the nutrition table for the fat content, sugar, fiber, protein etc for cereals and other processed goods.
I’m sure many of us do all these things. But how many of you have seen the ingredients list in yogurt, cheese, chips? At least I have not even thought about it until Monday (day before yesterday) night. How in God’s name do I know that they are adding animal derived ingredients in yogurt and cheese? May be some of you might already know it but I have been ignorant about it until recently. So those of you who don’t know it already, here’s the bitter truth; some of the brands of yogurt (especially low fat) contain gelatin and cheese contain rennet/rennin. I found it in the Veggie Boards forum.
I know that gelatin is derived from animal bones and it’s an ingredient in marshmallows, Jello, so I don’t buy those stuff. I also check for it in other processed goods. I also know that agar is the vegetarian substitute for gelatin. But not in my wildest dreams I would have guessed that gelatin was included in low fat yogurt as well. We regularly buy non fat/low fat yogurt and I don’t know what I have been eating all these years. It doesn’t stop with yogurt. Pork derived gelatin is added in some brands of BBQ flavored potato chips, in Altoids, Tic Tac and other mints too. Didn’t I tell you that ignorance is bliss?
Another innocent product masquerading as vegetarian is cheese. We are not big cheese lovers. Actually I try to make pizzas and pastas without cheese. But we do enjoy a slice of cheese pizza occasionally and I have been getting cheese sticks and slices for my son for his snack. It has never occurred to me to check the ingredients list. Why would I, because I know that it’s made with cow’s milk and all vegetarian cookbooks mention the use of cheese. Guess what? some of the brands have rennet (it’s an enzyme). To make it simple, rennet is derived from the stomach of dead calves. The actual process is really gross. If you have the guts to read it check it out here. If reading about rennet freaked you out, don’t even think about finding out what carmine is.
I immediately ran to the kitchen to raid my fridge. Luckily, the yogurt I bought had agar and it was clearly mentioned in bold letters under the name of the yogurt “No Gelatin”. It’s been a month since we moved to Canada and I have been buying this brand of yogurt since then, but never once I have noticed the brightly colored bold letters. For those living in Canada, it’s the Astro brand. I have to check the other brands the next time I go grocery shopping. I also checked the flavored yogurt (Irresistables) I had bought and was relieved to see it had locust bean gum. It’s a vegetable gum extracted from the seeds of carob tree. I read in the same forum that Activia brand yogurt has gelatin but have to check it out for myself. I had also bought shredded part skim 3 cheese (for pizza) after a very long time, so that was the next thing I checked. I guess I was lucky this time because this brand had used microbial enzymes (which is neither animal derived nor vegetable derived but from microbes, which is considered vegetarian though). I also read in the same forum that (Update: some of) the cheese available in Trader’s Joe and Whole Foods is vegetarian.
Apparently there is vegetable derived rennet as well which small producers use to make their specialty cheese. But I’m sure that if a company uses vegetable derived rennet they will be using it as a good marketing strategy to promote their product. So unless and otherwise it is specified clearly we wouldn’t know the origin of the enzyme if simply rennet is printed in the ingredients list. For example the brand of cheese I bought this time was Kraft (3 cheese Pizza). They have microbial enzymes listed and I checked with other ingredients too and don’t find anything animal derived, so I’m assuming it’s vegetarian. (Update: The Kraft brand cheese I have mentioned also lists lipase in the ingredients. When searching for information about it I see that, like rennet, lipase can also be derived from animals or microbes. So unless we hear from Kraft about the origin of the lipase we cannot assume that it’s vegetarian). Or the best bet is to contact Kraft/or any other company before using their products.
I went through Kraft Canada’s website and found that the cheese powder they use in their Mac and Cheese dinner uses animal derived rennet. The source of rennet in the regular cheese was not mentioned clearly, so I have sent them an email. It’s mentioned that they use pure Rennet, a natural substance for turning milk to curds and whey. Is pure vegetarian? we don’t know that yet. The pack also mentions shredded natural cheese. Does natural mean vegetarian? We don’t know that too. Wish these companies can have some symbol to denote their products are vegetarian, like they have a green circle in India.
In this day and age of processed foods which has a long list of unfamiliar chemical names it’s very difficult (but possible) to identify if a particular ingredient is animal derived or not. Also we cannot go animal-free totally because some of the medication we take contains animal derived ingredients as well. For example, capsules are made with the very same animal derived gelatin. There are some vegetarian gelatin based capsules which clearly mention VegCaps in their pack. The multivitamins/vaccinations we take contains all type of animal/fish products.
So what’s the purpose of this post then? To create little awareness so that some of us (vegetarians) who already don’t check the ingredients while buying processed food will check it out hereafter!
Some links which might be helpful (I have not checked any of the products, so be sure to check it for yourself before buying)
- List of vegetarian cheese
- List of vegan medicines (brand name)
- List of vegan multivitamins
- Vegetarian/Vegan options in Fast Food Restaurants.
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June 19th, 2009 at 1:04 am
Well, a lot of commercially available ice cream usually has either eggs and/or gelatin. Different types of pasta have eggs in them. Some frozen potatoes have beef tallow. Some brands of wheat frosties (breakfast cereal) have gelatin, I think.
PETA has information on which fast food joints have items to avoid. For instance, the bean burrito at Taco Bell has sour cream that has gelatin in it.
Yes I have seen in eggs listed in some ice creams. The Edys Slow churned Vanilla doesn’t have eggs, the list of ingredients is also small, if I remember right. I’ll check the PETA website. Thanks Manvantara. I also came to know recently that the veggie patties in Subway has egg whites.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Yup! I kinda am aware of all the stuff you’ve mentioned. I try not to be anal but I don’t believe that ignorance is bliss. As far as the yogurts are concerned, I find that a lot of store brand ones are the one with gelatin in it. I found one supposedly organic one with cornflour. It was gross even if the cornflour was organic. Yogurt is supposed to be just plain old milk fermented. I try to make mine at home as much as possible but otherwise buy European style or Australian style yogurt which is usually free of thickeners.
That’s what I too don’t understand, why something else in yogurt? I better start making it at home.strong>
June 18th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
Hi Madhu,
Am a regular follower of ur blog and this post has a significance. We r abroad now on my hubby’s project, and I do check labels regularly (even yogurts), as my daughter is allergic to certain food types, and also to make sure they’re all vegetarian ingredients. As Deepali rightly pointed out, people in the West can hardly make anything without eggs/meat. So much so that we wouldn’t buy anything if the ingredients are vegetarian with a note underneath that says “Manufactured in a plant that processes egg, fish and crustacea”. I even resorted to baking cookies for my 2 year old, since our options were very limited with vegetarian. Nowadays, I occasionally buy biscuits that has veg ingredients and is manufactured in equipment that processes eggs only…Thankfully, the yogurt and cheese that I’ve bought do not have any animal ingredients in their labels as I check for them too (I hope the labels speak the truth). A few days ago, I chanced to see a European pastry pack with rennet as an ingredient in it. Another said vegetarian rennet, so I decided to check out what it was (I didn’t buy both pastries), but kept postponing, and finally did it this morning. I got the same shock as u did, to learn abt rennet in cheese (from the same veggie website). I have come across cheese labels that use egg whites or something like that, but animal fat in what we consider safe and vegetarian?? gave me the shivers. that’s when i saw ur post. In India, the green label is there, but still I feel there should be more transparency in listing the ingredients (I guess products like cheese do not carry detailed ingredients).
Gayatri, thank you very much for taking your time to record your comments here.
June 18th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Hi,
I knew that rennet can be either veggie or not. Here in west people can hardly make things without eggs or animal product. Trick is to look for ‘Suitable for Vegetarians’ sign and check if it has eggs in ‘Allergy Advice’. I never buy if it doesn’t have this sign. I would also like to advice everyone that never buy any product without reading labels even though u have been buying that for years, as they do change ingredients. This is what happened with me- Last year i bought same brand drinking fruit yogurt for my son as usual. Next day while giving him, I casually looked at the pack and I was horrified to see fish oil(omega 3) in the list. Now, I never buy anything without looking. Here in UK even Icing sugar has traces of eggs. Am not sure about Canada.
Deepali, I really feel so dumb for not knowing about rennet all these days, when so many of you have known this for a long time. But I have learnt my lesson now, check before you buy.
June 18th, 2009 at 11:17 am
your post is informative.
I have been a vegetarian all my life and which meant that I do not wear silk or use leather products.some of the indian sweets use Varakh (Silver Foil)and In india they have green red sticker but surprisingly the sweets which use silver foil do not have the red/green indicator. I have been using palm sugar and in the US i have bought the organic sugar.
Thank you for your post!!!
Thanks Sheila. I did hear about the process of making Varakh while in India and have steered clear from sweets which use it.
June 18th, 2009 at 8:30 am
We are pretty much like you, we do not eat eggs at home but we do eat bakery products from the outside. Glad that I learnt about carmine and rennet. I will keep an eye on them.
I think avoiding carmine is difficult than avoiding rennet.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:43 am
Madhuram, what is your email address? I have some more to write to you but there is a 100 character limit (maybe there is a reason for that!
). Mine is anuchellappa at yahoo dot com.
I will send an email or you can use the contact form to send me an email. I will also increase the character limit here. I would appreciate if you would record your comments here because others too can benefit from it.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:04 am
I agree with Aparna as well.I got lucky in that case.the green vegetarian label is a good indicator
June 18th, 2009 at 5:03 am
I agree with DK.Better go for whole fat ygrt/milk.
I used to go for whole fat(no gelatin added) normally thgh I tried the low fat versions as well.The RENNET thing is shocking.I have heard abt rennet but never ever tried to find out what it was
Lesson Learnt: Check for ingredients and make sure there are no animal content.
Actually I was as shocked when I came to know about marshmallow.
Never knew about it.Thanks for the info on rennet and generally cheese.
I dare not check carmine.
Thanks Sweatha. I think we (at least in US) are exposed to carmine more than rennet. I may be wrong, I’m not sure.
June 18th, 2009 at 5:02 am
Hi Madhu,
Glad you stumbled across this – that packaged yogurt sometimes has gelatin and that cheese usually has gelatin. Not all the cheese available at Trader Joe’s is rennet free, btw. I have found some cheese at Costco that does not have rennet.
A lot of pasta usually has eggs and there are some times of buns/breads that have eggs (when I looked for “hotdog buns” to go with pau bhaji that is what I discovered, those have egg yolks.
The good thing about the US or Canada is that food items are labeled (hopefully truthfully!).So we have a good idea about what we are eating.
Somewhere I read that Horlicks used to have fish scales! And that Ovaltine has egg whites. I have not bothered to check the labels, though.
And what about white sugar? It is processed with bone char….
So where does it stop??
What I have learnt is that the minute a food is “processed” or “refined” or cooked, there are ingredients that are either not vegetarian or not healthy for us.
You might be interested in a book called “Twinkie, deconstructed”, which gives a fairly good idea about the ingredients that food manufacturers add to their products to increase shelf life, to make it more palatable” (who cares about health?!), etc.
I have been following your blog for some months now, ever since my mom stumbled on it. I have a recipe in mind for your baking event which I am sure will win it, so your giveaway better be good, ha!
Welcome to my blog Manvantara. I ran to check the Ovaltine and did see that the chocolate flavor has dried egg yolks, but the malt flavor doesn’t have anything, at least apparently. I buy it for my son. Actually the brand I used in US did not have any egg yolks, I’m sure I checked it, so I did not care to look it here as well. I came to know about the refining process of sugar after reading some book. But am I ready to give up sugar? Not yet! Sounds like hypocrisy! I’ll check out the book you have mentioned.
Please do send your entry for the event. At this moment I’m thinking using random.org to select the prize winning entry.