9 foods that aren't as vegan as you think

The difficult part of eating vegan is not avoiding meat. It is the products that look entirely plant-based and are not, because something animal was used somewhere in the process and never made it onto the label.

1. White sugar

Some cane sugar is filtered through bone char — charred cattle bone — to achieve its white colour. None of it ends up in the final product, so it is a processing aid and does not have to be declared. Beet sugar never uses it, and organic cane sugar generally does not. Where it matters to you, look for beet or organic.

2. Beer and wine

Both are commonly clarified with animal products: isinglass (fish swim bladder) in beer, gelatin, egg white or casein in wine. Again, processing aids, again unlisted. A growing number of producers now state "suitable for vegans" precisely because so many people ask.

3. Red and pink sweets

E120, also written carmine or cochineal, is a red colouring made from crushed scale insects. It is in sweets, some yoghurts, drinks and cosmetics. This one is on the label — as a number most people have never looked up.

4. Shiny sweets and shiny fruit

E904, shellac, is a resin secreted by the lac insect. It is the glaze on hard sweets, chocolate beans and — surprisingly often — on apples and citrus to make them shine in the supermarket. Loose fruit rarely carries an ingredient list at all.

5. Orange juice and "heart-healthy" drinks

Fortified juices often add omega-3 from fish oil or vitamin D3 from lanolin, the grease in sheep's wool. The fortification is a selling point printed on the front; the source is not.

6. Bread

Commercial bread can contain L-cysteine (E920), a dough conditioner historically produced from feathers or hair. Synthetic and microbial versions exist and are increasingly standard, but the code alone does not tell you which was used.

7. Crisps and savoury snacks

"Cheese and onion" is often genuinely cheese-derived, but the bigger trap is E631, disodium inosinate, a flavour enhancer frequently made from meat or fish. It appears in many savoury snacks that look otherwise plant-based.

8. Pesto and Parmesan-style sauces

Traditional Parmesan uses animal rennet, an enzyme from calf stomach. Many hard cheeses do. This affects vegetarians as much as vegans, and it is rarely stated beyond the word "rennet".

9. Chewing gum

The gum base can include lanolin or stearic acid of animal origin, and the coating is often shellac again. Gum base is declared as "gum base", which discloses nothing.

The short list to memorise

If you remember five codes, you catch most of what hides in plain sight:

• E120 — carmine, from insects
• E441 — gelatin
• E542 — bone phosphate
• E904 — shellac, from insects
• E913 — lanolin, from wool

And two words worth treating as unknowns until proven otherwise: "natural flavouring" and "emulsifier" without a stated source.