I would like to say that, I had planned on writing this blog post when I first emailed peelu for information about their gum. At the time I had hoped and believed that it woudl be a positive post boasting about the company. To be clear I have had a very positive experience dealing with the companies representatives, that being said…
Being vegan, you occasionally bump into products that you have been using for a while or that you used to use that you really need to double check. Lets face it none of us are perfect and every once and a while (it happens less the longer you’ve been vegan) you find out you have been eating something that’s not really vegan. Recently I looked at the bottle of Peelu that was sitting on my desk to read the ingredients:
Xylitol, gum base, glycerin, natural flavor, soy lecithin, gum arabic, peelu extract, resinous glaze, carnauba wax
I have made the questionable ingredients appear in bold font for those less familiar with those less familiar. To be honest, I totally missed resinous glaze for quite a while (I’ll have to add that one to my mental checklist) more on that later.
Glycerin is one of those really obnoxious ingredients, it could be either vegetable glycerin or animal glycerin. Food producers are not required to notify you which they are using. In my experience, sometimes they simply can’t tell you since they buy whichever happens to be cheaper at the time. This ingredient pretty much drives me crazy since the only way to tell is to write the company and ask, which I dutifully did. The response I received was extremely friendly (a big thanks to matt from Peelu) and notified me the glycerin was from a vegetable source, he also made a comment about the natural flavors. Score, we might be okay with this one.
Natural Flavors is pretty much a catch all ingredient that could mean just about anything. I’ll never understand why somethings can be labelled as a natural flavor and not others… I mean everything has a “flavor” doesn’t it. So why aren’t carrots, beans, etc just listed as natural flavor. Matt was kind enough to mention that they are trying to relabel the product to have peppermint oil or spearmint oil listed instead of natural flavors. After a quick email to confirm that these were the only natural flavors we can check off one more dubious ingredient. We are almost there.
I almost missed this one, but I re-read the ingredients list (I know its short, I’m not sure why I missed it like 3 times) and I noticed this ingredient. I will also be honest, I had no idea what the hell resinous glaze was; so I looked it up. According to Animal Ingredients A-Z its bug excretions:
Shellac. Resinous Glaze.
Resinous excretion of certain insects. Used as a candy glaze, in hair lacquer, and on jewelry. Alternatives: plant waxes.
What, what what… you mean there are bug excretions in my gum. Lets do a little mental exercise here… What do humans excrete? Do you want to eat/drink any of the things that just came to mind? It really skeeves me out to think I’ve been chewing on bug extracts. Ethical issues aside, that’s just plain nasty. I don’t want to eat or drink human extracts why in the hell would I want to be consuming bug extracts. Hoping that maybe there was a misunderstanding I emailed peelu again… There was no misunderstanding 
, there are in fact bug secretions in my gum. Thank you Matt for being so polite and prompt to answer my questions but I will not be eating Peelu gum until this is changed…
PEELU IS NOT VEGAN
There are however some alternatives out there which I have found after some quick searching. B-fresh Gum is the one I am thinking of trying. When I get around to getting some I’ll be sure to let people know how it is. It looks a bit pricy… but bug stuff… come on. Just to be clear it seems that Peelu has been looking into alternatives to this nasty ingredient but at this point have determined that it is not cost effective and fears they will price themselves out of the market. If you think this is not a wise decision please write to Peelu and tell them how you feel. The only way this would change is if they know people will stop buying their gum because its got bug stuff in it.
Just to be clear I am not blaming Peelu for the fact that I have been chewing on bug excretions, I should have done more research on these ingredients. However it does illustrate three points:
- Vegans aren’t perfect, we are going to make mistakes. If you are a new vegan or are considering veganism this is important to realize. You will make mistakes, the only thing you can do is accept it, try not to do it again and move on. This is not a valid excuse for drinking milk “on accident” or accidentally eating a meat lasagna, lets try to be clear. However you have to expect that things like this will happen to you too.
- Food labeling laws in the United states suck. I’m sorry but I shouldn’t have to write the company to find out what the ingredients are. Consumers should not have to deal with ambiguous labels, its not acceptable.
- Sometimes writing the company can get you the answers you need.
