Imperfect Vegan: Eating Foods or Drinks that used Animal By-Products in their Production Process (Sugar, Beer, Wine and Other Beverages)

What naturally happens when most of our food system (especially the most profitable side of it) relies on animals

When you have a food industry that relies on animals in such a big way, meaning but not limited to, the fact that even huge amounts of the crops we grow are used to feed the animals we kill for food, animal products and by-products start appearing everywhere. When animal agriculture is so incredibly profitable and mainstream, what naturally happens is that companies will get extremely creative, figuring out additional ways to make profits even on the smallest parts of the animal.

If you’ve ever asked yourself the question “seriously? do they put animal products in everything?”, rest assured that you are not alone.

Animal by-products are in everything from the paper in the framed photos you have around your house, to your everyday electronics, medications and more. These animal by-products are also often used, not as ingredients themselves, but as part of the production of certain foods or beverages.

Things like:

• Using bone char (burnt animal bones) as part of the refining process of sugar to make it white.

• Crushed up red beetles (yes) to make cochineal, a red pigment used for the production of some food colorings, certain alcoholic beverages, and certain candies or sweets.

• Isinglass, obtained from the tiny swimming bladders of fish (a special bladder in fish that makes them buoyant and that helps them stay at particular depths in the oceans, rivers or lakes), and used in the processing of certain kinds of beer and wine. I mean… how did they even come up with this one?!

• Using gelatin, made from the tendons, cartilages and bones of animals, and used as a thickener, gelling agent, etc.

• Among others like casein (from milk), or albumin (from eggs) used for clarification, processing, refining, coloring, adding texture, etc.

Many of us who are vegan find it easy to stay away from a food product that clearly lists some of these non-vegan products in the ingredients. I’m thinking mostly of gelatin, or things like albumin (from eggs) or lactose or casein (from milk). When you can see this as part of the ingredients, that’s as simple a choice as not purchasing products that include meat, dairy or eggs. However, we can’t tell whether some of these I’ve mentioned, or others, were part of the production process by looking at the ingredients list, so what to do? What to do?

We go from big problem to little problem

In every new system or paradigm, from simple in our daily lives, to complex and involving policy and governmental changes, we usually go from big to small.

If a child is learning how to swim, we start their lesson out with learning how to go underwater and blow out, and coming up for air again. We teach them how to paddle and move in the water to stay afloat. Then we might teach different swimming styles. Only after a long while do we nit pick and correct their arm strokes, their speed, the strength with which they need to move their legs to have perfect and beautiful form.

Right now, in our current paradigm where our raising and killing of animals is too big to comprehend, I always recommend to our students and new vegans, to focus on big first, small later.

Big first, small later

What does that mean?

That means that we can stop supporting these cruel industries by reducing or eliminating our consumption of the big guns: meat, fish, dairy and eggs.

That means that as these industries get smaller, as a bigger market develops for kinder alternatives, there will also be a reduction in all of those by-products being used in the processing of foods, and companies will choose plant-based alternatives which are becoming more readily available these days.

But we can’t get to the small stuff before tackling the big stuff.

This in turn means that as perhaps one of the early generations that have witnessed the vegan movement going more and more mainstream, we have the responsibility to inspire many others to make this change, and often, it’s the very small things that turn people off, believing that veganism is too extreme, too rigid, too out of grasp.

Whether we want to or not, we are walking, talking, examples of a lifestyle that once felt completely fringe and is now becoming easier to understand and picture for people, and we will be the example many people have of what it means to be vegan. Showing vulnerability and imperfection in our choices won’t turn people off, it will show them that we are just like them, and that it’s a process that isn’t about perfection.