Photo by Blair Wright, http://blairwrightstudios.com
NoMeat.org’s guest contributor this week has written a helpful article about selecting and purchasing vegetarian food products.
Neil Levin is a published author, professional speaker, and well-known health enthusiast.
He has received numerous awards and recognition from prominent industry organizations, and he somehow made time to publish this article for us.
He’s also my dad, and the reason I am a vegetarian.
Check out his blog at Honest Nutrition
How to Shop for Vegetarian Foods
Whether you’re a vegetarian or someone who shops for something to feed to them, there are some tricks to ensuring that you aren’t accidentally eating or feeding them meat or meat byproducts.
As a vegetarian since 1972 and a former purchasing manager for national-award-winning health food stores – first at Chicago’s busiest health food store and then for a prominent chain of stores – I have been scrutinizing food labels for nearly 40 years.
Now a nutrition educator, I’ve learned quite a bit about how to avoid eating animal products. Whatever your particular avoidances – red meat, chicken, fish, eggs, dairy, animal byproducts, or all of the above (a vegan diet) – this is written to try to help you shop for vegetarian foods.
You may see terms such as ovo (egg), lacto (milk), pesco (fish), pollo (chicken) combined with “vegetarian” to make compound words describing particular diets: I am an ovo-lacto-vegetarian, for example, eating only dairy and eggs. I do not avoid honey, an insect (honeybee) byproduct, though neither do I grab it at the table to sweeten foods or beverages. A vegan would avoid honey.
Here are some areas that it may be helpful for you to be familiar with if avoiding animal products for any reason:
Federal labeling laws: Under federal regulations, food manufacturers must list the presence of any significant protein sources from the Big Eight food allergens that reportedly account for 90% of food allergies: milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, and soybeans. The first four allergens are of concern to vegans; only fish and shellfish to vegetarians. If there is no real allergen exposure potential but the food uses a derivative of one of these allergenic foods, no label disclosure is required; though you may see some brands claim to have “milk derivatives” or disclose other compounds isolated from these foods. There are no specific laws defining “vegetarian” or “vegan”, though truthful label claims are always required. Look for the required label statements such as “contains milk, eggs.” Sometimes the allergen disclosure will follow an ingredient name, often in parentheses, instead of in in addition to a separate allergen statement: “lecithin (egg).”
Gelatin: You’re probably familiar with gelatin from the material used to make capsules and Jell-O® gelatin. Gelatin is typically made from pork or cow hides and other parts: pigs and cows. Kosher gelatin is often made from pork (I know, this sounds crazy…some modern wackadoo notion that since they made it by processing formerly inedible parts of the pig, it was technically a new food no longer tainted by the biblical prohibition), though some 20 years ago it was made from the seaweed agar agar and safe for vegetarians to eat. By the way, Agar is still available at many health food stores and makes a substitute gelatin dessert. Look for gelatin used as a thickener in Jell-O® gelatin (many people and hospitals will want to feed this to you), some (inferior by my reckoning, since they shouldn’t need this) yogurts, puddings, fillings in pies or snack cakes, even in some tablets like Altoids®. Other alternatives include cornstarch, arrowroot powder, and Kudzu (kuzu) root powder; the last two available at many health food stores.
Kosher: Look for a kosher symbol on a food package. This used to be a better indicator for vegetarians than it is today. Since about the early 1990s, the use of kosher gelatin from beef and pork has made it less so. Still the symbols next to the Kosher symbol can help somewhat in relation to meat and dairy content. The word pareve means “neutral”; that is, containing neither milk nor meat, which shouldn’t be used together according to biblical laws. Foods that are in compliance with these laws are called kosher, or in Hebrew, kashrut. Of course, you still have to watch out for gelatin. Another useful symbol is the letter “D” that sometimes accompanies the main kosher symbol (there are many such symbols, each representing a different certifying agent; see http://www.kashrut.com/agencies for examples), indicating the stated presence of dairy (milk) products.
Lanolin: Vitamin D3 (cholecalciferol) is synthesized from sheep wool lanolin, whereas D2 (ergocalciferol) is from plant sources. Many vegetarians will accept D3, though true vegans will not.
Meat: Not an allergen, so no specific label disclosures are required. You need to know terms for meat and meat byproducts that you may find among the ingredients. These include sausage, bacon, lard, tallow, chorizo, prosciutto, and many others.
Milk/Dairy/Eggs: The protein sources need to be disclosed on product labels, but not derivatives such as lactose. These tend to be used in many baked goods. Some pastas contain eggs.
Natural flavors: Normally vegetarian, though some will have milk derivatives, such as Creamy Vanilla. This is a tricky area, since the ingredients of the flavor compounds used in a product are rarely disclosed on the label.
Rennet: This is a thickener for cheeses and puddings made from the stomachs of young cows, sometimes sheep or goats. Nowadays, there are microbial sources that are considered vegetarian/vegan, though they can be from genetically modified (biotech) organisms. Manufacturers are not required to list the source, though kosher cheese tends to use the vegan one. Some labels, especially in the natural food brands, list that they use a “vegetarian source” for their rennet.
Soups: Many soups use chicken stock, beef fat, or other animal product ingredients.
Sauces: There are many meat sauces. Sometimes Alfredo cream sauces add chicken stock, many times they don’t. Same with marinara sauce, which is normally vegetarian. Dairy may be used in some, or even eggs. Read the labels!
By Neil E. Levin, CCN, DANLA
May, 2010
- http://honestnutrition.blogspot.com/
(p.s. at the time of this writing, his blog has almost a million hits! Let’s help reach that milestone!)
April has been a vegetarian her entire life and is an avid home cook. She resides in Maryland with her omnivore husband, four happy dogs, and an african grey parrot. She enjoys spending her non-cooking free time as photographer and business manager for Baltimore Maryland’s Premier Wedding and Portrait Photographers at Blair Wright Studios Photography
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