April 5th, 2008
So, sparked by Lara’s comment that animal products are used in personal grooming products, Husband and I have been digging deeper into our consumables in the house. Guess what we found? Animals are everwhere! I honestly feel a bit stunned. We really try to shop in such a way as to avoid animal products as close to entirely as we can, but they sneak in in the darndest places. You’ll all remember the Mini Meats (Mini Wheats cereal uses gelatin), but did you know margarine has animal products in it too? Our margarine contains whey protein, which is from dairy. What’s the point of vegetable spread if it has dairy in it? Of course, as Lara noted, a lot of our personal grooming products have animal stuff in them. The internet tells me the cosmetics industry is a huge secondary consumer of the meat industry, purchasing the parts that don’t get eaten (fat, organs, etc.). And sure enough, a lot of that stuff is in things we use.
Also, here’s where Husband gets interested: beer and wine manufacturers often use bone char as part of the processing… process. Not all of them, but I’m not sure how we’d find out which ones do. If Stella does it, Husband is really in trouble!
So we’re back on our education track, having moved on to sniffing out animal stuff in places other than food.