All kinds of weird shit you’d think would be vegan aren’t… like some brands of white sugar (bone char) and some beers (isinglass [fish swim bladders]). And there’s always our good friend with a million names, cochineal/carmine/crimson lake/natural red 4/E120, aka bugs that make your food red.
They sneak gelatin into so many things too. One that got me for a year or two after I went vegetarian was Altoids. I liked to keep em in my car to have something to munch/occupy myself while driving, and never even thought to check the ingredients. How could mints have animal in em? Turns out they have gelatin! I honestly never miss meat or anything, but I do miss gelatin to a degree. Not because I want gelatin in particular, but it’s in so many tasty things, and vegetarian gummies and the like are always so expensive ;_;
Not to say your wrong, but I personally don’t understand this strict adherence to pretty arbitrary rules. I agree with the idea of vegan/vegetarian, as a way to protest animal mistreatment and the increased resources animals consume. However, that amount of gelatin is not playing a factor in that. It’s also not hurting you at all. I’m curious what makes you be so strict?
I found gelatin kind of disgusting even before going vegetarian, and many vegetarians, including past me, grow more disgusted after they become vegetarian. You typically also inform yourself more and learn of various foods with gelatin, where you might’ve found the thought disgusting even beforehand.
I can empathize with your point that these mints contain so little gelatin that it hardly matters, since they really do contain very little gelatin. But vegetarianism often follows shortly after you decide that “my impact doesn’t matter” isn’t a valid argument for not doing your best anyways, as that’s also typically the excuse for still eating meat for as long as you did, when you had already decided that it’s immoral.
It’s often easier to not eat something at all than to make exceptions, because you have to inform yourself on the impact for the latter. This may be an impossible task, because you will find hardly any information for the concrete supply chain of the product you’re looking at.
For example, I would be morally a-ok with eating gelatin, if it came from the bones of cows that died of natural causes. Cows dying of natural causes is practically not a thing, but leaving that aside, I’d need to know the gelatin suppliers and their bone suppliers and would need independent audits of them to have even a chance of knowing the impact. Compare that to just looking for a green V on the packaging or quickly scanning the ingredient list. I may be a moral Goody Two-Shoes, but I’m also lazy.
i was about to recommend katyes, because they are great and cost like 1€ a bag in local stores, but apparently, thats 5€ on amazon (fuck amazon), so unless u can get them locally, thats not exactly a good option :<
For more than a decade I was discouraged to ever begin thinking about going vegan, because all the vocal internet vegans convinced me that unless everything I eat, wear, own, come in contact with or thing about, never ever touched something that touched something that touched an animal, I am basically a Hitler, and just as bad as those all meat weirdos. You either holier than everyone, or you’re the worst mosnter possible. Vegetarians are worse than meateaters because they want the vegan superpower but don’t do the whole penance. And they all equally monsters, and if I just stop eating meat I might as well eat people alive.
Bullshit like that hypnotised me for way longer than I am happy to admit.
Beer is safe here in Germany! :D
We’ve got a thing called “Deutsches Reinheitsgebot”/“The German Law of Purity”, that prohibits the use of anything but water, barley, hops and yeast in making beer. So the beer itself is always vegan, you just have to watch out for little dumb stuff like the brand Bitburger using Milk-based glue for the labels on their glass beer bottles.
Filtrate medium is not considered to be an ingredient, nor are additives that are removed by filtration except for technically impossible residue. This most notably includes PVPP as a coagulation agents to remove polyphenols which otherwise could help in the formation of haze when the beer is stored improperly or over longer times.
I know. It is just that there is articles every now and then that complain about “plastic in beer” and reference the fact that this is not a violation of the German purity law.
Does PVPP come from animal products? Everything I could find about it suggests petrochemicals. Which is technically vegan. *ahem* “Vegan leather” *ahem*.
It is not an animal product. It came to my mind as an example because every other year or so i see articles complaining about “plastic in beer” being allowed in Germany.
Using isinglass, which comes from fish, for filtration is not common in industrial breweries in Germany, but it also isn’t prohibited. Industrial breweries mostly use diatomaceous earth filters. So in a first step they mix the beer with the PVPP so that coagulation can occur. Water is mixed with diatomaceous earth and run through a filter sieve, where the diatomaceous earth is retained and forms a filter cake and then the beer is run through that filter, removing almost all of the PVPP.
A similar process can be done using the isinglass instead of the PVPP and using isinglass is more common for filtration of wine.
So most beer probably is vegan (aside from the traces of insects and rodents that made it into the grain-silo), but there is no legal guarantee that every product made according to the German purity law is vegan.
All kinds of weird shit you’d think would be vegan aren’t… like some brands of white sugar (bone char) and some beers (isinglass [fish swim bladders]). And there’s always our good friend with a million names, cochineal/carmine/crimson lake/natural red 4/E120, aka bugs that make your food red.
They sneak gelatin into so many things too. One that got me for a year or two after I went vegetarian was Altoids. I liked to keep em in my car to have something to munch/occupy myself while driving, and never even thought to check the ingredients. How could mints have animal in em? Turns out they have gelatin! I honestly never miss meat or anything, but I do miss gelatin to a degree. Not because I want gelatin in particular, but it’s in so many tasty things, and vegetarian gummies and the like are always so expensive ;_;
Not to say your wrong, but I personally don’t understand this strict adherence to pretty arbitrary rules. I agree with the idea of vegan/vegetarian, as a way to protest animal mistreatment and the increased resources animals consume. However, that amount of gelatin is not playing a factor in that. It’s also not hurting you at all. I’m curious what makes you be so strict?
I can’t speak for them, but:
I found gelatin kind of disgusting even before going vegetarian, and many vegetarians, including past me, grow more disgusted after they become vegetarian. You typically also inform yourself more and learn of various foods with gelatin, where you might’ve found the thought disgusting even beforehand.
I can empathize with your point that these mints contain so little gelatin that it hardly matters, since they really do contain very little gelatin. But vegetarianism often follows shortly after you decide that “my impact doesn’t matter” isn’t a valid argument for not doing your best anyways, as that’s also typically the excuse for still eating meat for as long as you did, when you had already decided that it’s immoral.
It’s often easier to not eat something at all than to make exceptions, because you have to inform yourself on the impact for the latter. This may be an impossible task, because you will find hardly any information for the concrete supply chain of the product you’re looking at.
For example, I would be morally a-ok with eating gelatin, if it came from the bones of cows that died of natural causes. Cows dying of natural causes is practically not a thing, but leaving that aside, I’d need to know the gelatin suppliers and their bone suppliers and would need independent audits of them to have even a chance of knowing the impact. Compare that to just looking for a green
Von the packaging or quickly scanning the ingredient list. I may be a moral Goody Two-Shoes, but I’m also lazy.Also milk powder and whey - there’s so many god damn chips where you go “why the fuck does that need milk powder?”
The real answer to that question is the dairy industry. Same reason there’s high fructose corn syrup in so many random things - corn industry.
Dammit I shouldn’t be subscribed to Belle Delphine then I guess.
Yup it costs food processors next to nothing due to the subsidized overproduction.
At least it has the juice, I suppose
And tbf, I can’t imagine a more beautiful thing
i was about to recommend katyes, because they are great and cost like 1€ a bag in local stores, but apparently, thats 5€ on amazon (fuck amazon), so unless u can get them locally, thats not exactly a good option :<
I’ll just stick to limiting my meat intake.
For more than a decade I was discouraged to ever begin thinking about going vegan, because all the vocal internet vegans convinced me that unless everything I eat, wear, own, come in contact with or thing about, never ever touched something that touched something that touched an animal, I am basically a Hitler, and just as bad as those all meat weirdos. You either holier than everyone, or you’re the worst mosnter possible. Vegetarians are worse than meateaters because they want the vegan superpower but don’t do the whole penance. And they all equally monsters, and if I just stop eating meat I might as well eat people alive.
Bullshit like that hypnotised me for way longer than I am happy to admit.
Beer is safe here in Germany! :D We’ve got a thing called “Deutsches Reinheitsgebot”/“The German Law of Purity”, that prohibits the use of anything but water, barley, hops and yeast in making beer. So the beer itself is always vegan, you just have to watch out for little dumb stuff like the brand Bitburger using Milk-based glue for the labels on their glass beer bottles.
That is not true.
Filtrate medium is not considered to be an ingredient, nor are additives that are removed by filtration except for technically impossible residue. This most notably includes PVPP as a coagulation agents to remove polyphenols which otherwise could help in the formation of haze when the beer is stored improperly or over longer times.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinylpolypyrrolidone
So no, beer in Germany does not have to be vegan by default.
PVPP is vegan though, but isinglass isn’t
I know. It is just that there is articles every now and then that complain about “plastic in beer” and reference the fact that this is not a violation of the German purity law.
Does PVPP come from animal products? Everything I could find about it suggests petrochemicals. Which is technically vegan. *ahem* “Vegan leather” *ahem*.
It is not an animal product. It came to my mind as an example because every other year or so i see articles complaining about “plastic in beer” being allowed in Germany.
Using isinglass, which comes from fish, for filtration is not common in industrial breweries in Germany, but it also isn’t prohibited. Industrial breweries mostly use diatomaceous earth filters. So in a first step they mix the beer with the PVPP so that coagulation can occur. Water is mixed with diatomaceous earth and run through a filter sieve, where the diatomaceous earth is retained and forms a filter cake and then the beer is run through that filter, removing almost all of the PVPP.
A similar process can be done using the isinglass instead of the PVPP and using isinglass is more common for filtration of wine.
So most beer probably is vegan (aside from the traces of insects and rodents that made it into the grain-silo), but there is no legal guarantee that every product made according to the German purity law is vegan.
Damn, I didn’t know about the sugar and beer. Guess i gotta look up what I’m drinking
This will help
https://www.barnivore.com/
But yeah beer is weird. Some places use some weird shit as filtering agents
Thanks :)