How to Identify Non-Vegan Ingredients

Video Transcript

"WHITNEY TESLER: Hi, I'm Whitney Tesler on behalf of Expert Village, and we're going over how to become vegan. We're about to go over some "bad" ingredients, ingredients that you want to avoid when you're looking for your vegan products in the stores. One is caseinate, it's a milk protein and it can be found in some soy cheeses and rice cheeses, yogurt so you really want to read your labels. Albumin is part of an egg white and that can be found in various products so just look out for that one. Animal shortening, lard, tallow, or suet, they're all animal fats and they can be found in soaps and other products. A lot of beauty products have them in there so look out for those. Gelatin, earlier I said it was found in film and cameras. Luckily, a lot of cameras are digital these days but gelatin is also in jello. It's also in capsule form, vitamins and things of that sort, medicines. You have to look out for that. And gelatin comes from bones of animals and tissues and all that stuff. Whey is another--it's a watery liquid from cheese making so it's found in cow's milk as well. It's in a lot of yogurts, milks, things of that caliber. Proteins, protein shakes, stuff like that. Pancreatin, I don't really find this very often but it's from cows and pigs. It is used as a digestive aide. And vitamin D and C, a lot of different vitamins you can find that are fortified and put into your milks and your juices; you want to make sure that those are vegan as well because they can be taken from animals also. There are natural forms and sometimes there are vegan but you want to look out for those. Also honey, some vegans do choose to eat honey because a bee is an insect and not an animal but it's really up to you. So, that's the main list to look out for when you're shopping around."