This debate has gone on for quite a while, but it’s something that I find is relatively alien to newer vegans. As for me, I was introduced to the knowledge that sugar wasn’t vegan by my first friend in college. I was eating my standard snack food, bananas with peanut butter, when she grabbed my Skippy jar and announced that it had sugar in it.

“So what?” I responded. Of course I knew it was junky, unnatural peanut butter. What I didn’t know was that sugar was sometimes processed with bone char, and animal by-product. After she told me that, I felt like my very young vegan world had been spun on its head. Suddenly I become one of “those people” who compulsively read labels and held my breath waiting for sugar to pop up under the ingredients list of everything I liked to eat.

These days, when people ask my what’s most difficult about veganism, I usually respond that the uncertainty about sugar makes it difficult to eat some of the most innocuous foods.

So, that said. What is it about sugar that’s not vegan? As I’ve already mentioned, it is the troublesome nature of the bone char whitening process that makes certain sugars non-vegan. Sugar itself has no problems, whether its from sugar cane or beets (a large percentage of sugar comes from beets).

More after the jump!

However, the whitening process requires the use of charcoal. This charcoal does not need to be bone char, but oftentimes is. Because you can’t tell where your sugar comes from when it comes in another product, it’s usually best to avoid sugar in case bone char was used in processing.

This begs the question: Is there any way to figure out whether or not your sugar is vegan? Besides writing to the company, there’s not much you can do, but there are a few rules. For example, beet sugar never uses bone char as a filter. The same is true of organic or unrefined sugars (my personal choice). Beyond that, PeTA, in one of the few things they’ve done that I appreciate, has done a bit of digging for us:

“The following sugar companies DO NOT use bone-char filters:
Florida Crystals Refinery
P.O. Box 86
South Bay, FL 33493
407-996-9072
Labels: Florida Crystals
Refined Sugars Incorporated
One Federal St.
Yonkers, NY 10702
914-963-2400
Labels: Jack Frost, Country Cane, 4# Flow-Sweet
Pillsbury
Makes powdered brown sugar
Supreme Sugar Company (subsidiary of Archer Daniels Midland)
P.O. Box 56009
New Orleans, LA 70156
504-831-0901
Labels: Supreme, Southern Bell, Rouse’s Markets

The following sugar companies DO use bone-char filters:
Domino
1114 Ave. of the Americas
25th Fl.
New York, NY 10036
212-789-9700
Savannah Foods
P.O. Box 335
Savannah, GA 31402
912-234-1261
California & Hawaiian Sugar Company (with the exception of its Washed Raw Sugar)
830 Loring Ave.
Crockett, CA 94525-1104
510-787-2121”

So, with this knowledge in hand, keep in mind that I know many vegans who aren’t terribly strict about sugar. If it’s going to be a deal breaker for you, I was say forget about sugar and just do everything else.

If you know about the veganness of any products or sugar brands, do send me an email. I’m going to be contacting a few companies and trying to make a list!