Wednesday, October 25, 2006

What Candy is Cruelty Free or Vegetarian or Vegan: Your Halloween List

You will see a list of vegetarian or vegan candies at the end of the article.

You can also visit our Cruelty Free Shopping Page for a list mail or web-order companies that offer cruelty free candy and food. That page can be found at - http://www.geari.org/cruelty-free-shopping-products.html

For a List of Vegan Products that can be Found on Conventional Chain Grocery Store Shelves which includes candy, cookies, beverages, drinks and snacks see - http://www.geari.org/vegan-products-conventional-grocery-stores.html

Article:

Halloween treats for your vegan ghouls, goblins

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/ss/family/30115

By LIZ KOHMAN

Published: 10.25.2006

Vegans have no need to be scared on Halloween. Even though some candies have hidden animal products, there's still a variety of tasty treats to please even the pickiest of trick-or-treaters.

You could be trying to raise a vegan child or just want to hand out treats that don't betray your beliefs. There is a surprising amount of vegan candy available produced by vegan and mainstream companies.

Some vegan food companies, such as Sun Flour Baking Company – [http://www.sunflourbaking.com], offer vegan-friendly Halloween gift baskets of goodies.

Parents who want to keep their children vegan on this candy-filled holiday should be prepared.

Look for a vegan/vegetarian-friendly Halloween event to attend or make a game of sorting candy post-trick-or-treating. If your children are old enough to read, tell them to look for animal products such as gelatin, casein, honey, lard and pepsin in the ingredients list of the candies they collected.

Put all the candy with animal products in a special trade-in pile and have a variety of vegan candy to swap for the nonvegan candy.

TRICK-OR-TREAT CANDIES

Use this list of vegan candy as a guide:

Airheads taffy
Atkins peanut butter bars
Blow Pops
Charms lollipops
Chick-o-Sticks
Cracker Jack
Cry Babies
Dem Bones
Dots
Dum-Dums
Fireballs
Goldenberg's Peanut Chews
Hot Tamales
Hubba Bubba bubblegum
Jolly Ranchers (lollipops and hard candy)
Jujubees
Jujyfruits
Lemonheads
Mambas
Mary Janes (regular and peanut butter kisses)
Mike and Ike
pumpkin Now and Later
Pez
Ring Pop lollipops
Smarties
Sour Patch Kids
Starburst (jelly beans and hard candy)
Super Bubble
Swedish Fish
Sweet Tarts
Tropical Source mini chocolate bags
Twizzlers
Zotz

Source: Peta Kids
Posted by at

8 comments:

Pabelii said...

Palm oil is not cruelty free. Indonesia's rainforest is being burnt down by the second to make room for palm oil plantations. Palm oil is in a shocking amount of our processed foods. Orangutans are losing their homes and being killed by the hour for more palm oil plantations. lf this destruction continues, there will be no more orangutans (and other endemic species) in 10 years. Having your home burnt down or chopped down or being murdered for your land, is not cruelty free. As of right now, there are no self sustaining palm oil plantations. Check your ingredients for palm oil, Please.

1:26 PM
GEARI.ORG said...

Great points. I'm glad you posted on this issue. I agree. Thank you again.

4:29 PM
Anonymous said...

Although most are, some of these items are not vegan. For instance Starburst Jelly Beans contain Confectionery Glaze which upon looking up you will find is shellac. (Shellac is essentially bug goop. Ew.)

Thanks for the info though! :)

12:41 AM
GEARI.ORG said...

Thank you Kelly for the information. I do appreciate you bringing this to our attention. You are fully correct. From time to time, companies will change their formulas. At the time this article was posted, the information provider was certain the candy was ok. Unfortunately though, it seems they've changed the formula and isolated customers! Thank you again.

8:52 AM
Sara Natali said...

i thought mike n ike had gelatin which is made of animal bone.. am i wrong?

7:09 PM
GEARI.ORG said...

Thank you Sara for your question. Does anyone know for sure the answer to this question? The list I used was taken from PETA, so I'm hoping their research was good. If anyone knows for sure, please let us all know. Thank you!

9:08 AM
Anonymous said...

Unfortunetely the Peta list of "Vegan" stuff isn't actually vegan. It's an awful resource really because on the bottom of the list it has a disclaimer that basically says that the items that are listed are "mostly vegan...because it's hard for everyone to eat completely vegan". DO NOT USE PETA'S LIST IF YOU'RE A NEW VEGAN. At least not without double checking the ingredients after you've learned about the sneaky ingredients that make something not vegan. Some recipes do change over the years so you may get lucky and find one that used to not be vegan is now vegan! Some things to watch out for that were in MANY things from this list are: red 40, whey, casein and L-Cysteine (which you will find in some cookie/pastry type snacks. It's a dough conditioner used commercially that is made from hair.) If something contains margarine, DON'T assume it's vegan! Most margarine brands actually DO have dairy in them. A few off brand names are vegan. Speaking of off brands, you will have more luck with those brands being accidentally vegan. I'm not entirely sure but my guess is it's somehow cheaper to make them that way. In particular, a lot of dollar stores carry a lot of accidentally vegan snacks. With "Freshley's" brand oatmeal creme pies they use oils instead of creme, so it's vegan. BUT you still don't know if the sugar is vegan. This is tricky to find out so you'll either just have to trust it, call the company and talk to someone about where they get their sugar from (certain companies just don't use processes that involve animals) or forgo the cheap yummy snacks and pay for something labeled as vegan or an organic snack, as all organic sugar is vegan. Red 40 is something to really watch out for if you're committed to being vegan. I've seen a lot of vegans who simply ignore the fact that something has Red 40 in it because they like the snack. THAT MEANS YOU ARE EATING SOMETHING THAT IS NOT VEGAN. You need to know this and let this sink in before you nosh on that snack with Red 40 in it! Red 40 is a very commonly used dye that is made of smashed up carmine beetles. Recently there was huge scandal when people found out it's in about half of the Starbucks drinks. (Except you're totally fine with munching on those Skittles, "but God that's so gross, Starbucks!" I heard someone actually say that as they were eating a bag of skittles and gummy bears at the same time. Oh boy...) But anyways, there are a lot of sneaky ingredients and companies change their recipes a lot, which sometimes makes things accidentally vegan, but sometimes also makes something that was vegan NOT vegan. If anyone wants some cheap snack suggestions/brands for things that are commonly used/craved, e-mail me at k.a.mccarthy.02@gmail.com and I'd be more than happy to help!

5:06 PM
Anonymous said...

Re: the final post from anonymous, Wikipedia says that Red number 40 is not derived from insects; apparently this is a misconception. I'm a new vegan, so I'm trying to find this stuff out. =)

7:49 PM

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