Avoiding Vitamin D: Symbolic, Practical, or Neither?
or "Go Less Vegan...For the Animals!"
Written by Tommy Gun - 01/14/05

First off, what is vitamin D? Where does it come from? Not ALL vitamin D3 is non-vegan, however: Most of the vitamin D you'll find in common products is D3, and not vegan. Now that all of that's out of the way, should we avoid it?

I avoid honey, but I do so for symbolic reasons. I realize that it won't make a huge difference. There is the purity argument, and that's probably valid since some things contain a lot of honey. In one of the numerous honey debates online I mentioned that more animals are probably harmed farming soy, wheat, rice, etc., all of which are considered completely vegan. So from a practical standpoint it doesn't really matter if you avoid honey, but symbolically it shows non-vegans that you think it's wrong to enslave bees and steal their honey--the same is NOT true for things like vitamin D.

The difference is that if you tell people you avoid honey, they'll probably understand why. Almost everyone knows where honey comes from, and if they think it through it will make sense that it's an animal product. If you tell them you avoid vitamin D, what will they think? A lot of vegans don't even know where vitamin D comes from. Will non-vegans care, or will we look crazy (or crazier, I suppose)? I'm thinking the latter. Certainly there's nothing wrong with educating people, but there are much more important things to teach people, like for starters, that killing is wrong, or that fish isn't vegetarian. Why the hell should we spend time worrying about something petty like vitamin D?

Do companies care? Will it make ANY difference at all if we avoid it? Can you imagine a cereal company sitting down in a meeting, saying, "Well, cereal X has sold 49,972 boxes, but cereal Y has only sold 49,847! It must be the tiny amount of vitamin D that's in cereal Y, take it out!" Again, I feel we're just wasting our time. There's always the danger of people falling into circular logic, saying, "Well they're killing the animal for meat, so you might as well use the by-products." Then when asked about meat: "Well they're killing the animal for leather and other by-products, so you might as well use the meat instead of letting it go to waste." But that's just faulty debate logic, Vegan Outreach's point is absolutely valid.

From a purity point-of-view, most things I've seen (like cereal or orange juice) have vitamin D as one of the last ingredients! Ingredients are listed by amount contained, in descending order. How much is really in there? Probably very little, at least proportionally. Even the orange juice that has "vitamin D added!" contains "less than 1%"! Now, I totally understand if your friend makes you a "vitamin D pie" and you don't want to eat it, but when has that happened? Plus, unlike honey, it doesn't come directly from an animal. Vitamin D3 is derived from lanolin, which comes from wool, which comes from sheep. That's quite a few degrees of separation. The same argument (in terms of purity) could be true for things like casein, but I still always avoid it, even if it's the last ingredient. It will make more sense to non-vegans why we would avoid it since it comes "directly" from milk (casein is a milk protein). If something has a trivial amount of casein in it, it probably falls into the "doesn't make a huge impact if I avoid it or not" category. However, I'll probably always avoid it if possible, even if it's only for symbolic reasons, because to me milk is worse than wool and a bigger industry. Of course it's up to you to decide what you're comfortable with and how far you want to go.

From an "animals suffering" point-of-view, how many animals are harmed? There are probably more animal products in the plastic bag than there are in the cereal itself. Should we really beat ourselves up over a vitamin? Isn't this getting out of hand and losing sight of what's actually important? PeTA lists products containing vitamin D as being vegan. PeTA definitely isn't the ultimate authority on veganism and a lot of vegans dislike PeTA, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Does it make any sense to avoid all those foods just because of a little bit of vitamin D?

We already look like lunatics to the mainstream, why push it further? No one's going to go vegan if it seems crazy or way too difficult. They have to learn about things like casein, but now they also have to worry about avoiding vitamins?! We all know that nothing is truly vegan, nothing is bloodless. That's not what veganism is about. There's no reason to call something with vitamin D not vegan just because it's listed in the ingredients while at the same time calling vegetables completely vegan. If you believe the food you eat is 100% vegan you're fooling yourself. I don't think I'm redefining the word vegan here--vegan never meant "absolutely no animals harmed ever." If you can call yourself vegan while eating a potato, you can call yourself vegan while eating a product with trace amounts of an animal product...but that was never really the point. You don't have to live up to a label.

By all means, if you can get your vitamin D from sunlight, fortified foods, etc., do so. Buy vegan vitamins. I'm only suggesting not refusing to buy something just because it contains a little bit of vitamin D. We need to stop the purity contest and start setting a good example. Show people that veganism isn't about giving up everything you once loved. Make veganism look feasible and even easy, because it is. Way more animals will be saved if you can convince one person to go almost vegan or almost vegetarian than if you avoid every tiny animal ingredient (which is impossible anyway). Start focusing on what counts. Veganism is about the animals, not about us.

Veganism and Activism Reconsidered (nothing to do with vitamin D, but about setting a good example)
Vegan Vitamin D?
Dietary Supplement Fact Sheet: Vitamin D
Vitamin D: The Forgotten Nutrient