bakers margarine and caramel

[mssara1214]

does anyone know if bakers margarine is vegan or not? We arent sure, but since it says margarine we think it isnt, but since its bakers maybe it is? We looked on www.isitvegan.org (http://www.isitvegan.org) and nothing came up.

same with caramel, does anyone know about that?

[Seaside]

I've never heard of baker's margarine. Do you mean shortening? I guess you would have to read the ingredient list to be sure.

Caramel is made with milk. There is an organic vegan caramel syrup available at Whole Foods, but I can't remember its name, and it is used for flavoring.

You can melt sugar over low heat until it turns brown, but it will harden up when it cools, unless you can find a good substitute for the milk to melt with the sugar.

[mssara1214]

thanks. we bought pita bread and one of the ingrediants was bakers margarine, we have never heard of it either, but thats just what it said. and thanks about the caramel, i would have never known what it was.

[Seaside]

You can look at the cholesterol count in the nutritional profile of the food if you don't know the ingredients. If it lists cholesterol, there is something animal in it. If it has no cholesterol, it should be vegan. This isn't the same as saturated fat, though. Coconut and palm oils are vegan saturated fats.

[Pob]

From what I can tell it is a solid margarine, used as a replacement for butter. It may or may not have milk products in, but it will be hydrogenated fat. Avoid it and be healthy.

Here's a googled breakdown of one make of baker's margarine: http://www.geocities.com/hs_associates/BakersMargarine.html

[Mr Flibble]

both are examples of ambiguous ingrediant labelling. Both margerine and caramel can be and often are vegan.

Margarine is traditionally hydrogenated vegetable oil. It was used as a substitute for those who couldn't afford butter, and those who wanted a fat for baking with. About 10 years ago in the UK a lot of manufacturers started adding buttermilk to margerine, and calling it low fat spread instead. This makes it more creamy and butterlike (if you ever look at the ingrediants of I can't beleive Its Not Butter you won't beleive it isn't butter either, as it's one of the main ingrediants!!). When cooking this isn't actually needed, may have bad effects (such as having a lower boiling point - if you've ever put low fat spread into boiling sugar instead of pure margerine (not the brand!) you're in for a nasty (possibly painful, possibly involving cleaning the walls) shock) and just makes the price of your product go up. Thus bakers margerine could be a name to distinguish proper margerine from spreads, but you can't trust it as being vegan.

Caramel is a good example of a term which has been used over the years for different things and can be used sometimes interchangably with toffee or fudge. If it's listed as an ingrediant however, one would hope that they are refering to sugar that's been boiled to the point of caramelization (160 degrees celcius for sucrose), which results in a slightly nutty flavour and gives a nice dark brown colour. Caramelising vegetables (like onions that have a high sugar content) is the process of slowely cooking and letting the sugar content caramelise (can be speeded up by adding some sugar granules if you're super lazy). So again, it could be used just to refer to burnt sugar, but could be non vegan if they actually mean a caramel sauce or toffee. Caramel colouring can just mean a colouring that is the colour of caramelised sucrose - it needent nessecarily contain it. Like blue colouring doesn't contain blue ;)

[feral]

I've got a tub of curry paste (suitable for vegetarians) and it has caramel colouring in it, is this normally vegan?
The only other thing it has that I don't recognise is Silicone Dioxide, does anyone know off hand if it's vegan?
Thanks :)

[Mr Flibble]

have a looksie here (http://veganforum.com/forums/showthread.php?p=82233&highlight=caramel#post82233)

[feral]

Thanks Mr Flibble, I didn't see that one when I searched!