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Water, grain, malt, hops and yeast may not be the only ingredients used in the production of your favorite brew. Did you know that the process might also include animal-derived products such as glycerin, casein, isinglass or even bugs? Many breweries use animal products as fining (clarifying) agents, foaming agents, coloring and flavoring, which means that their beers are not suitable for vegans, or most vegetarians.

If you are vegan or vegetarian, or have vegan or vegetarian friends, finding beer suitable for their consumption is not as hard as, say, finding vegan wine, but it can still be a bit of challenge - particularly since brewers do not have to list these ingredients on the label.

To read more about what makes beer vegan or not vegan, you can read my article Vegan Beer: Who Makes it and Where to Find it.

The following websites have Vegan Beer Guides to assist in your search for the perfect (and animal-friendly) brew.

Vegan Connection

Vegan Vanguard

Taste Better!

Sure, wine is mostly grapes with a bit of yeast and some sulfites thrown in, but did you know that the winemaking process also includes something called finings, which are most often made from fish, shrimp, ground up tendons and even blood?

For most wine drinkers, this may not be an issue, but for the vegan or vegetarian consumer, this is a big no-no.

I like my wine blood- and fish gut-free. I don't know, that's just the kind of girl I am. When I'm indulging in an occasional glass of wine, I'm just not looking for that extra hint of bull's blood, egg albumen, casein or ground up tendons, but hey, that's just me.

Most winemakers use animal-derived finings (even though non-animal finings are available and work great) and they do not have to put this information on the label. Therefore, you need to consult a vegan wine guide before you go wine shopping, since you won't be able to determine which is suitable for you once you are at the store.

Click here to read more about the non-vegan finings used by most winemakers and to find out where you can buy vegan wine.

Click here to get the printable Pocket Vegan Wine Guide from Vegans are from Mars.

And, a quick note on champagne - popular brands Dom Perignon and Moet & Chandon are both vegan and are sold anywhere that champagne is sold.

"If a man earnestly seeks a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from animal food."—Count Leo Tolstoy

"Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight."—Albert Schweitzer

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." —Albert Einstein

"Thousands of people who say they 'love' animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been utterly deprived of everything that could make their lives worth living and who endured the awful suffering and the terror of the abattoirs."—Jane Goodall

"I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other."—Henry David Thoreau

"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity."—Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable loathing and disgust."—Percy Bysshe Shelley

"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."—Thomas A. Edison

"Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore"—Franz Kafka

"The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? But rather, Can they suffer?"—Jeremy Bentham

"You call yourself an enviromentalist and you still eat meat?"—E The Environmental Magazine

"I think if you want to eat more meat you should kill it yourself and eat it raw so that you are not blinded by…having it processed for you."—Margi Clark

http://www.worldometers../

gives you real time statistics about real things like how many people are starving right this minute, how many are dieing, being born, and how many people are eating macaroni and soy cheese.

just picture someone dieing for every time that ticker moves...picture some starving kid taking his last breath ever...all because he didn't have food...I hope you remember that thought next time you spend 60 bucks on a dinner going out to eat, or the next time you complain about gas prices.

but seriously, gas prices do suck.


Did you know that the U.S. reducing it's livestock population by HALF, would make available enough food to make up for the calorie deficit of the nonsocialist underdeveloped nations nearly FOUR TIMES OVER??? Do we really need this much meat, guys?
Well, that's just grain, right? They need protein, too, right?!?

In one year 20 million TONS of protein was fed to livestock to produce a return of 2 million tons...because people prefer animal-flavored protein...so, no,to put it simply...

Food wasted by animal production in affluent nations would be sufficient, if properly distributed, to end both HUNGER and MALNUTRITION in the entire world!!!...All we'd need to do is work on a way to get the food to 'em...

thanks, Peter Singer, you rock ass.