Looking to consume Haribo sweets but don’t know if they’re vegan?
Unfortunately, most Haribo sweets are not vegan because they contain ingredients such as gelatin (pig bones, skin, and cartilage), beeswax (bees), and carmine (crushed insects). However, there are some varieties that lack such ingredients.
In this article, I’ll cover why most Haribo sweets are not suitable for vegans, their ingredients, and find out which ones are suitable for vegans (and also vegetarians).
What Are Haribos?
For those who do not know, Haribo was founded in 1922 by Hans Riegel in the German city of Bonn. The name came from the initials of his name and the city HA – RI – BO. In the beginning, the production was small and delivered by bicycle by the family itself.
The company is today run by Hans Riegel’s grandson, Hans Guido Riegel, with family management that is considered rather authoritarian and old-fashioned, but that seems to work very well, after all, there are more than 6,000 employees and a production of more than 80 million units per day.
Apparently, Germans are very fond of sweets and bears, and the inspiration for making the bear-shaped gum candies came from the “dancing bears”— animals trained to entertain the masses in public squares in medieval times, which is a rather non-vegan start to a brand.
Haribo was also the company that created the first gummy candy in the form of little gummy bears called Gummibärchen (gummy bears in German), however, the company now has an array of gummy sweets, and while most of them are made with animal ingredients, there are a few vegetarian and vegan-friendly options.
Why Are Most Haribo Sweets Not Vegan?
Unfortunately, there are several ingredients used by the Haribo brand that might make them non-vegan, so you should definitely keep an eye out for the following ingredients.
Gelatin
Gelatin is one of the main ingredients used in chewy candies, and most Haribo sweets have it, as well as a wide array of different products such as shampoos and face masks.
Gelatin is a protein obtained by boiling animal bones, skins, ligaments, and tendons, and whilst there are alternatives such as pectin, agar-agar, and carrageen, gelatin is still the most widely used.
Beeswax
Beeswax is produced by bees to create a structure that allows them to store honey and nurture young bees. A process that happens during honey production.
Unfortunately, we know that the conventional honey industry isn’t ethical, and therefore some harsh methods are used to ramp up honey production.
Methods like removing the wings of queen bees to prevent worker bees from leaving the colony are one of the few methods employed by some industrial bee farmers. While this seems more pertinent to honey, the fact that beeswax is crucial to the process doesn’t change the gravity of the problem.
In any case, because beeswax is produced by bees, it can’t be deemed as a vegan ingredient.
Carmine
Carmine is a red pigment obtained from cochineal, which is a type of scale insect closely related to the aphids, mealybugs, and whiteflies.
Cochineal bugs have flat, oval-shaped bodies about the size of a grain of rice and are native to tropical and subtropical South America, though they also exist in North America.
The carmine dye/pigment is produced from the acid that the female cochineal naturally secretes to deter predators, and up to 20% of this insect’s body weight is made up of carminic acid.
To extract this dye, cochineal insects are harvested, dried out, and ground up to produce the dark red color in powder form. Most cochineal insects are harvested in the wild, but there are also locations where they are farmed, which involves either cultivating cactus plants already infested with insects, or adding insects by hand to wild cactus pads.
The carminic acid extracted from the cochineal insect is boiled, filtered, and mixed with basic aluminum salts to produce the colorant, which must also be pasteurized or treated to eradicate salmonella microorganisms.
Unfortunately, because carmine is derived from an insect that is killed, vegans choose to avoid carmine.
Palm Fat (vegan but controversial)
Palm oil is a plant-based ingredient.
However, conventional palm oil farming is responsible for the destruction of rainforests and natural habitats. As a result, animal species end up losing their homes and die as they’re unable to adapt.
Indonesia and Malaysia account for 85% of the world’s palm oil production. It’s also in those two countries where a population of orangutangs is being pushed to extinction.
According to research available