Sugar in Vegetarian Recipes

Refined white sugar and most brown sugar are processed either from sugar cane or sugar beets. Refineries that process sugar from cane often use charcoal made from animal bones as a filter. Sugar made from beets, however, is not made with bone char. Vegans and many other vegetarians often avoid all refined sugar because of the difficulty of determining the sugar’s origin. For home use, they may use unbleached sugar or beet sugar, but away from home it is easier just to avoid sugar altogether.

Some of the recipes in this book labeled as vegetarian have sugar as an ingredient. If you use any of these recipes on a vegetarian menu, make sure to use sugar from a purely vegetarian source, such as beet sugar or unbleached sugar. Note also that some of the recipes with the “vegetarian” label contain sugar as the only non-vegan ingredient. If you use sugar from a purely vegetarian source, then those recipes can also fit a vegan diet.