Is It Vegan? How to Know If Your Food Products Are Vegan

So, you’re warming up to a vegan lifestyle or perhaps just curious about how vegans tackle grocery shopping and ordering at restaurants, ensuring what they choose is not animal-derived in any way. Due to an increasing demand for vegan goods, a lot of products are being labelled as such. 

The easiest way to know if a product is vegan is to look for a label that says ‘Suitable For Vegans’ or a ‘Certified Vegan’ logo. Another simple way is to scan the 'Allergen Information'. If the product contains dairy, eggs, or seafood, it would be stated under its allergen ingredients list. To know if it’s vegetarian, look for the Green Dot.

If the first two ways don’t provide assurance, make your way into the 'Ingredients List'. Here, you can scan for ingredients and substances that are non-vegan in nature. But what exactly should you look for? You'd be surprised to learn that animal products and animal derivatives lurk in the most innocuous-seeming products, from cookies to cosmetics. 

Below is a compiled list of the most common ingredients in packaged food products or restaurant recipes in India that let you know whether a food product is vegan or not.

Remember - ignorance isn’t bliss when you’re consuming animal or insect-derived ingredients due to a lack of awareness. Not only do these ingredients cause suffering to the many species that are exploited for mass consumption, but they may be affecting your body negatively on a root level. That said, scanning these non-vegan ingredients at first glance gets easier as you gain more “Vegan XP”. Good luck!