By Casey Smith, Naturalist
People have different reasons for becoming vegetarian or vegan. Once, during a visit to a vegetarian friend’s house, she bet me I couldn’t refrain from eating meat for the weekend. I gave up eating meat for two years. I totally showed her. I also didn’t do any research and ended up eating a lot of veggie chicken nuggets.
Whether they do it for ethical or religious reasons, or just to be a little competitive, it seems like everyone has at least dipped a toe in the vegetarian pool. But did you know there are a lot of products made from animals that have a sneaky way of getting into your food and drinks? These products might be in the ingredients list under an unfamiliar name. Most of us are aware by now that gelatin is made from animals. Gelatin is in Jello, gummy candies, marshmallows, and even peanuts (it helps the salt stick to the peanuts). But you might not know about some others.
Some red dye is made from the dried bodies of a bug called Cochineal. It is listed in ingredients as carmine, carminic acid, or natural red 4. Any red yogurts or ice creams, maraschino cherries, frozen meat and fish, ketchup, fruit drinks, and lots of cosmetics contain this little bug.
Caesar dressing and Worcestershire sauce are both made with anchovies. Non-dairy creamer may contain casein which is a protein made from milk. While there are many reasons to avoid refined sugar, one is that it may contain bones. Sugar isn’t naturally white and is made so through a process called bone char, which uses cattle bones. Vanilla flavoring might be the worst of all. Often just listed as “natural flavoring,” castoreum is a vanilla substitute that comes from the anal glands of beavers.
Some other animal derived ingredients are isinglass, lactic acid, lecithin, oleic acid, pepsin, and stearic acid. Though I’m no longer a vegetarian, I still take time to educate myself on what’s in my food, and where it’s coming from. I guess that’s the advice I would give to anyone trying to eat in a healthy way: read the labels and be sure you know what you are eating!
