Becoming vegetarian, vegan or simply just cutting down on your meat intake can be a little tricky.
There’s navigating the supermarket aisles, choosing restaurants that cater to your diet and assuring people once again that, no, you don’t eat fish.
But did you know there are even some foods that contain animal products that are far from obvious? From cheese to sugar (!), have you been tricked by these surprising foods that aren’t vegetarian?
Cheese.
Many varieties of cheese contain rennet, a complex group of enzymes that are extracted from calf stomachs in veal production. These enzymes curdle and coagulate milk to make cheese.
Look out for “rennet” or “enzymes” on cheese packaging, including your goat and sheep varieties. Choose brands containing non-animal rennet, and soft cheeses like cream cheese and paneer, which use citric acid or vinegar instead.
Beer and wine.
Wine and cask ale are sometimes finished with “finings”, substances which clarify the drink. They can be made from gelatin (see below), fish bladders (isinglass) or, in some European countries, blood.
Luckily, there are plenty of meat-free manufacturers to choose from – check out this database of vegan wine and beer.
Ice cream, jelly, lollies, low-fat yoghurt.
What do all these foods have in common (aside from massive amounts of the sweet stuff)? They’re often set with gelatin, the boiled-down collagen from bones, hides and connective tissues. While gelatin itself has plenty of gut health benefits, it’s not ideal if you’re vego.
Vegetarian alternatives to gelatin include agar agar and pectin, but that’s not an excuse to find all the gelatin-free lollies and ice cream you can get your hands on!
Red food colouring.
Check packets for carmine, cochineal, crimson lake, carminic acid, natural red 4 or E120. Why? These food dyes are all made from cochineal bugs, which are powdered and boiled to produce a vibrant red hue.
Vegetarian red food colourings include lycopene from tomatoes and beetroot powder. But let’s just steer away from dyed foods altogether, shall we?
Worcestershire sauce.
Yep, Worcestershire sauce contains anchovies (and quite a bit of sugar). Check Caesar salad dressings, olive tapenade and puttanesca sauce for more hidden little fish.
For a veggie alternative to Worcestershire, try your local health shop or combine apple cider vinegar and tamari for an equally zingy condiment.
Figs.
If you’re a super duper strict vegetarian, you may want to avoid figs. Fig flowers are known to trap pollinating wasps, digesting the insect. Still, it seems like a pretty unavoidable part of nature to us!
Sugar.
Technically, animal products are used to refine sugar. Bone char (or natural carbon) is made from burnt cattle bones and filters colours and impurities from white sugar.
Sure, there are some vegan sugar companies out there… but we’re not going out of our way to find them!
Being vegetarian doesn’t have to be limited.
Especially when you’re eating real food! Try one of our top vegetarian recipes (it has half a kilo of zucchini in there).
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