Where to draw the line in micro-ingredients

Everyone's different, for different reasons, and nobody's right or wrong on this I believe.

I used to be very particular, but as I've become a more active animal advocate, my pickiness of animal micro ingredients has actually reduced. It's not because I care less about animals -- quite the opposite actually...

Personally, I avoid obvious animal ingredients. I read labels when I'm by myself in the supermarket, but won't quizz a waiter on the ingredients in a bread roll...

The reason for this is that I don't mind taking the time to read ingredients myself -- as I know there are vegan versions of just about everything; I just need to find which ones they are! -- but I also know not everyone is willing to do this, and I also know that it's important that I don't make being vegan appear as a difficult, meticulous thing to be. This will turn some people off from the outset, and in my opinion there's a potential veg/vegan lost.

The other reason I don't worry too much about micro ingredients usually is because they wouldn't be there in the first place if we didn't have a thriving meat/egg/dairy industry. It simply wouldn't be economical to have a squillion different animal micro-ingredients/by-products if there didn't exist the money-making animal products that they came from originally. By this logic, cutting out meat, dairy, eggs (take it further if you will), eliminates your financial support of 99.+% of animal industries. And it's easy.

I know for a fact that nobody can be 100% animal product free. Nobody. At least not today. So it's really a question of how much time is worth devoting to that extra ~1%. There are animal micro ingredients used to make the computer I'm using to write this on, I believe. But likely only because people are eating meat, and the micro ingredients therefore exist...

I'd rather spend my time advocating for animals. After all, if you can get 3 people to stop eating animals, that will be better for the animals than me being able to eliminate that extra 0.1% of by-products that are still in my diet.

That's my perspective anyway I hope it helps.

Isn't Karen just amazing?

Aye, it reeks of sensibility

I don't worry about micro ingredients because I don't actually know what half of these micro ingredients are. There seems to be heaps of them! And based on the words I've come across on this website, I doubt I would be able to remember them all anyway...

On my road to Vegetarianism, I have promised to myself never to eat anything with gelatin in it.

I have accidentally a few times, but if I see it on the label, I put the product straight down again.

Yeah, I avoid the really obvious ones, and read my ingredients, but Karens got it!

There have been times where i've been out and friends have made an effort to say, make me vegan cupcakes, I can see the red colouring which could be shellac and stuff, but I eat it anyway, because they've made an effort and it's not going to look good refusing it. Those bloody vegans!

What counts as micro ingredients?

Is it food that has "milk, egg whites" Eg. A indian cream base OR food that has "may have traces of...

I aviod gelatine as the thought makes me sick

If I can I avoid shellec, carmin and those but it does get hard. For example, I bought a Powerade after exercising and forgot to look at the ingredients, thankfully it didnt have Carmine in it anyways

As Karen said, When it comes to going out we dont want to look like nazi's

Exactly! I avoid all the animal products I can, and avoid all the obvious ones as I am a vegan. But if there's an ingredient that I don't understand that probably comes from a plant source, but could come from an animal source, I won't worry too much. I think I'd drive myself crazy emailing every company and being militant about it like that. The other night, I was eating out at an Indian restaurant and asked the waiter what things could be veganised. He pointed them out and I ordered them. At the back of my mind, I kept thinking that it wasn't a vegan or vegetarian restaurant, and they could easily miscommunicate to the kitchen. This does happen a lot I'm sure, but we can only do our best!

Thanks for bringing this up!!
It can be really stressful not understanding the ingredients and off putting not just for other but for myself too. I am glad with all these responses, its made me feel so much better about my choices