Admittedly, it can seem impossible to figure out the origin of the multi-syllabic ingredients that appear on a food label. Where does this stuff come from?
Unfortunately, a lot of the stranger-sounding food ingredients come from slaughterhouses or milk products. Many unfamiliar ingredients are actually in the dictionary, or you can Google them to find out where they come from. But there will always be ingredients whose origin is impossible to determine. Monodiglycerides, anyone? Probably the most frustrating aspect of seeing something chemicals like this on a food label is that they often can be derived either from vegan or animal sources, and it’s usually impossible to know which. If you are serious about keeping even small amounts of animal-derived ingredients out of your diet, there’s an easy way to accomplish this: eat a whole-foods diet that doesn’t contain these strange and questionable ingredients. In other words, eat foods made from vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, and fruits—foods that are unadulterated by strange chemicals. If you eat in this manner, not only will you avoid any trace of animal products, but you’ll undoubte
