Meat-free lifestyles have been on the rise over the past several years, with some estimates suggesting that as many as 7 percent of Britons now identify themselves as vegetarian and consume no meat. Furthermore, 4 percent of the people in the United Kingdom identify themselves as vegan and use no animal-sourced products of any kind. Even if you don’t fall into either of those groups and don’t adhere to a strict diet, it’s still possible that you’re looking for ways to reduce your consumption of animal products for health, ethical or environmental reasons.
When you transition to a diet that’s free of meat or animal-derived products, you’ll quickly learn that a few animal ingredients are actually somewhat hard to avoid. One of those ingredients is gelatine. Gelatine is obtained by boiling animal parts – primarily the bones and skins of cows and pigs – sometimes after treating those parts with acidic or alkaline solvents. It’s definitely neither vegan nor vegetarian, and it’s a key ingredient in a great many products. It’s a common thickener and texture improver for desserts and candies. It’s even used to give capsules a slippery coating for easier swallowing. Gelatine is the biggest ingredient that you need to look out for if you want to buy vegan CBD gummies, and it’s not the only one.
If you’re concerned about ingesting animal products when you use CBD, you’ll be glad to know that we offer vegan CBD gummies here at Blessed CBD. If you’re a vegan or vegetarian – or simply don’t want to consume animal products unnecessarily – our CBD gummies are completely vegan friendly.
If you’re looking for a more detailed explanation, though, read on because you’re about to learn everything you ever wanted to know about animal products in CBD gummies.
Why Do Some CBD Gummies Contain Gelatine?
Gelatine has the ability to absorb many times its weight in water when it’s heated. When it’s cooled, it forms a gel that remains stable at room temperature but immediately softens and melts in the mouth. Almost all of the world’s gummy candies contain gelatine because it’s an ideal ingredient for gummies. All that you need to do is combine gelatine with water, sugar and flavours and pour the mixture into moulds. When the liquid cools, you’ll have gummies that you can pop out of the moulds and eat. Many CBD gummies contain gelatine for the same reason that most gummy candies contain gelatine – because it’s a reliable gelling agent that’s cheap and easy to use.
Although gelatine may be the simplest and cheapest gelling agent to use when making CBD gummies, it’s also possible to make vegan CBD gummies by substituting a vegan gelling agent. Our CBD gummies, for instance, use pectin as a gelling agent. Agar-agar is also a popular ingredient in vegan gummies, as is carnauba wax.
If you want to make sure that you’re always buying vegan CBD gummies, you’ll want to check the ingredient list for gelatine. If you don’t see gelatine and do see pectin, agar-agar or carnauba wax, you probably don’t have to worry. However, there are two other ingredients that you may also want to look out for if you want to be absolutely certain that a package of CBD gummies is vegan friendly.
What Other Animal Products May CBD Gummies Contain?
Honey
The first non-vegan ingredient that you can potentially find in a package of CBD gummies is honey. Produced by bees as food and stored in wax cells, honey is one of the world’s most popular sweeteners. Cave paintings show that humans have collected and eaten honey for at least 8,000 years, and one might even say that we have developed a symbiotic relationship with honeybees as a result. Honey is vegetarian since collecting it doesn’t require killing the bees that produce it. However, it is an animal-derived product and therefore isn’t vegan. Gummies that are produced commercially generally don’t use honey as a sweetener because it’s more expensive than sugar. It is possible to sweeten gummies with honey, though, so you should look out for it if you’re vegan.
At Blessed CBD, we use sugar and corn syrup to sweeten our vegan CBD gummies.
Carmine
The other animal-derived ingredient that you might find in CBD gummies is carmine. Carmine is also known under a variety of other names, including:
- Crimson lake
- Carmine lake
- Cochineal extract
- Natural red 4
- E120
- I. 75470
Carmine is a red colouring agent extracted from the cochineal insect, which is ground into powder for processing after it dies. In the United Kingdom, a food that includes carmine must have the ingredient listed on its label as E120, carmine or carminic acid. Carmine isn’t particularly popular as a food colouring agent, but it’s still something to watch for since it is neither vegan nor vegetarian.
As Blessed CBD, we use only natural plant-based colouring agents in our vegan CBD gummies.
