Vegan Sugar

Since sugar comes from a plant, many people would assume that it is a vegan ingredient. Instead, it can be one of the sneakiest animal products around. This is because white sugar is sometimes refined using bone char, which is exactly what it sounds like. You don't actually eat the bone char, but it is involved in the process.

Are There Vegan Sugars?

Yes, luckily there are. White sugar traditionally comes from sugar cane, but it's not widely known that today a lot of white sugar actually comes from beets, since they're sweet and inexpensive. Only cane sugar is filtered with bone char, so this is good news for vegans. Also, there are many unrefined sugar cane products, such as Succanat, that you can get from health food stores and substitute for white sugar in recipes.

If you want to avoid cane sugar altogether, you can also experiment with alternative sweeteners like maple syrup, fructose, agave syrup, fruit juice concentrates, and rice or barley malt. These products tend to be less sweet than cane sugar and have distinctive flavors of their own, but some vegans enjoy the variety.

What About Brown Sugar?

While brown sugar may taste similar to unrefined sugar, that's because the molasses, which is removed during the filtering process, is added back in. Unfortunately, brown sugar is just about as likely as white sugar to be vegan, and for the same reasons (that is, the white sugar may be filtered with bone char before having the molasses replaced).

If you can't find a vegan brown sugar, try succanat, which has a brown-sugar-like flavor, or add a few drops of molasses to your recipe along with the sugar.

The Bottom Line

Because manufacturers are often reluctant to give details about their production methods, it may be impossible to tell for sure if the sugar in any given product is technically vegan. Many vegans choose to disregard this issue because vegan sugars are so common, and because the sugar itself is never made from an animal product. However, if you want to be 100% certain to avoid foods made with animal products, limiting yourself to beet sugar or an unrefined sugar product is a safer bet.