16 Foods That Look Vegetarian but Aren’t

The official recipe for Parmigiano Reggiano has three ingredients, and one of them comes from a calf’s stomach.

That’s how this usually goes. The animal ingredient is almost never the thing you’d guess.

It hides in the step nobody thinks about: the enzyme that sets the cheese, the filter that clears the wine, the frosting on the cereal, the oil the fries met before they ever reached the restaurant.

One honest note first. Three of these (wine, beer and sugar) come down to how a particular bottle or bag was made, and the animal product is something the food passed through, not something left in it.

Here are 16 foods with a secret, the label word that gives each one away, and the version that skips it.

1. Parmigiano Reggiano

The EU’s protected recipe fits in five words: “Cow’s milk, salt, calf rennet.” Additives aren’t permitted, and the cheese has to mature for at least 12 months.

Rennet is what sets the milk into curd, and the name is legally tied to that recipe. So if it says Parmigiano Reggiano, it was set with calf rennet. That’s the rule, not a brand choice.

American “parmesan” is a different legal thing. US rules allow rennet “or other safe and suitable milk-clotting enzyme,” which means a US parmesan can be made without the calf.

Look for “vegetarian rennet,” “microbial rennet” or “microbial enzymes” on the label. It’s dairy either way.

2. Worcestershire Sauce

There’s fish in the bottle. Lea & Perrins, the original, lists anchovies on its US label, right between the onions and the garlic.

John Wheeley Lea and William Henry Perrins created it, and the first bottles went on sale to the public in 1838. That’s a long run for an ingredient most people have never noticed.

Anchovy-free vegetarian and vegan versions are out there, and the check takes about five seconds: scan the ingredient list for “anchovies.” Keep in mind that anything made with the standard sauce inherits the fish. Which brings us to the salad.

3. Caesar Dressing

A classic Caesar can miss on three counts at once.

Count one: modern recipes typically include anchovies as a key ingredient. Count two: the Parmesan, if it’s the real Italian stuff, was set with calf rennet. Count three is the fun one.

By most accounts, Caesar Cardini created the salad in 1924 at his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, and according to his daughter, the original used no anchovies at all. The fishy note came from Worcestershire sauce. So the anchovies were there from the start, just hiding one bottle back.

Anchovy-free dressings exist and say so on the label. Caesar also has egg and dairy, so vegan readers need to keep reading past the fish.

4. Wine

Nobody puts the filter on the label.

Winemakers clear and soften wine with what they call fining agents, and several of the standard ones come from animals: gelatin, isinglass (fish collagen), egg white and casein, a milk protein. US regulations list all of them as approved wine treatments.

These aren’t ingredients. They bind to particles and get removed with the sediment, so the wine is clarified with them, not made with them. Gelatin and isinglass are the two that make a wine non-vegetarian, while egg white and casein are vegetarian but not vegan.

You usually can’t tell from the bottle. The EU’s allergen labeling rule covers egg and milk, not fish. Your best bet is a wine marked “vegan,” “vegetarian” or “unfined,” or one fined with bentonite, which is clay.

5. Beer

Guinness was filtered with fish bladders for generations, and it only announced a change in 2015.

The stuff is called isinglass, a collagen from dried fish swim bladders. It’s widely used in British brewing because it makes the yeast drop out so the beer clears faster. Beer will clear naturally without it, just not as quickly.

Guinness announced a new filtration system in 2015 and finished rolling it out a couple of years later. The company says the recipe and the taste haven’t changed.

Very little of it ever reached the glass, for what it’s worth. A 2007 study tested 13 beers and measured an average of less than 1 mg of isinglass per liter. If you’d like none, Guinness now qualifies, and so do beers labeled vegan or unfined.

6. Marshmallows

That bounce is gelatin.

The US ingredient list for Jet-Puffed runs corn syrup, sugar, dextrose, modified cornstarch, water, and then “Contains Less Than 2% Gelatin.” Gelatin is an animal protein, usually from pork or beef.

The bigger issue is everything a marshmallow ends up inside. Anything built on standard marshmallows carries the gelatin along with it. Gelatin-free marshmallows exist and are usually sold as vegan, so that’s the word to look for on the bag.

7. Frosted Mini-Wheats and Frosted Pop-Tarts

The frosting is where the beef is.

A January 2023 letter from the manufacturer to its US food-service customers spells it out: “Beef gelatin is used in Pop-Tarts Toaster Pastries.” The gelatin is in the icing. The same letter says beef gelatin is also used in Frosted Mini-Wheats, and that beef or pork gelatin may be used in all varieties of Rice Krispies Treats bars.

The letter covers US products only and warns that formulas can change without notice, so the ingredient list on the box is the real check.

The fix is right there in the name. Unfrosted Pop-Tarts skip the icing and the gelatin with it, and plain unfrosted shredded wheat is the obvious cereal swap.

8. Candy Corn

Brach’s candy corn lists gelatin, and that’s not even the strangest thing on the label.

It also lists confectioner’s glaze, which is shellac, a resin secreted by certain insects in India and Thailand. That’s the shine.

Both sit in the “2% or less” part of the label, alongside honey, so vegans are out on three counts. Formulas change, so read the bag in your hand. Gelatin-free candy corn exists if you go looking.

9. Dry Roasted Peanuts

The second ingredient in Planters Salted Dry Roasted Peanuts is gelatin.

It comes right after “Peanuts” and before the sea salt, and the brand says where it’s from: “The gelatin used in PLANTERS dry roasted peanuts is derived from beef.” The usual explanation is that it helps the seasoning stick to the nut.

This is about that one seasoned product, not every dry roasted peanut on the shelf. The same brand’s Unsalted Dry Roasted Peanuts have an ingredient list that’s one word long: “Peanuts.”

10. Pink and Red Foods Colored With Carmine

Until January 5, 2011, a US food label could hide this one behind the words “Artificial Color.”

Carmine and cochineal extract are red colorings made from the cochineal insect. The FDA now requires food labels to name them, a rule it wrote after reports of severe allergic reactions.

The famous case is Starbucks. In 2012, cochineal extract was in its Strawberries & Crème Frappuccino, its strawberry banana smoothie, a raspberry swirl cake and a red velvet whoopie pie. After a backlash that came largely from vegetarian and vegan customers, the company swapped it in the US for lycopene, a tomato-based extract.

The label still doesn’t have to say “insect.” It says “carmine” or “cochineal extract,” and whether a bug counts is your call. Reds from lycopene or beets sidestep the question.

11. White Sugar

Some white cane sugar gets its color from a trip through charred cattle bones.

It’s called bone char, and refiners use it because it’s the most efficient filter for removing colorants. It’s a filter, not an ingredient. The sugar passes through it and moves on, which is why plenty of vegetarians don’t count this one at all.

If you do, two kinds of sugar are in the clear. Bone char is never used in beet sugar processing, and certified USDA organic sugar can’t be filtered through it.

The practice is shrinking, too. In 2021, the company behind Domino and C&H estimated that 65% of its sugar was bone char-free. One catch: a refiner that uses bone char for its white sugar uses it for its brown and confectioner’s sugar as well.

12. Refried Beans

“Traditional” is the tell.

Old El Paso Traditional Refried Beans list lard, and then hydrogenated lard a few ingredients later. Rosarita’s traditional can is another one that lists it.

The word you want is printed on a different can. Old El Paso Vegetarian Refried Beans use soybean oil where the lard would be, and the rest of the list is beans, water, salt and seasonings.

13. Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix

The little blue box has lard in it.

The classic US mix lists it right after the flour, cornmeal and sugar, which is not where most people expect to find pork fat.

In 2014, Jiffy launched a vegetarian version that removes the lard and uses vegetable shortening made from palm and soybean oils. It’s sold as Jiffy Vegetarian Corn Muffin Mix, and US grocers still list it.

14. McDonald’s Fries (in the US)

The potatoes are fried in vegetable oil. The oil is where the beef flavor lives.

In the US, the ingredient statement lists “natural beef flavor” as part of the oil blend, and McDonald’s explains it this way: “When our suppliers partially fry our cut potatoes, they use an oil blend that contains beef flavoring.” The company says the flavor starts from hydrolyzed wheat and hydrolyzed milk, which also makes the fries a no for vegans.

It’s a leftover. The fries were cooked in beef fat until 1990, and the flavoring was added to keep the taste after the switch to vegetable oil.

Vegetarians sued over it in 2001. McDonald’s said it had never claimed the fries were vegetarian, then settled in 2002, apologized and paid about $10 million to vegetarian and religious groups.

Here’s the strange part. Order the same fries in Canada, the UK or Australia and they’re made without the beef flavoring. We’ve covered why McDonald’s fries depend on where you live in more detail.

15. Kimchi

It looks like cabbage and chili. Most traditional kimchi is also seasoned with fermented seafood.

The category is called jeotgal, and the two big names in it are fish sauce and salted shrimp. These condiments are considered essential to most kimchi types, because they’re where the deep savory taste comes from.

The seafood-free version isn’t a modern workaround, though. Buddhist temple cooks in Korea have long made kimchi with soup soy sauce or fermented soybean paste, plus dried kelp or vegetable broth, and fruit like Korean pear, apple or persimmon for sweetness. Look for a jar labeled vegan, or temple-style.

16. Miso Soup

The miso is fine. The water it’s dissolved in is the problem.

Miso soup is built on dashi, a family of Japanese stocks, and the most common one combines kelp with katsuobushi. That’s preserved, fermented skipjack tuna, shaved into flakes. Another common base uses small dried sardines or anchovies.

So by default, a bowl of miso soup starts with fish, even when nothing floating in it looks like one. The versions that skip it are kombu dashi, made from kelp alone, and shiitake dashi, made from dried mushrooms. It’s worth asking which one is in the pot.

The Front of the Box Is an Ad

The ingredient list is the only part of the package that isn’t trying to sell you something.

Every food on this list looks exactly like what it claims to be. The calf, the fish and the bug are all back there in the small print, waiting for somebody to flip the box over.