Answer: It depends.
Adopting the vegan lifestyle is often associated with being careful with your diet and making sacrifices. This is true even when eating different kinds of butter added to various food items.
Recently, several questions about the veganism of natural butter flavor have arisen. The natural butter flavor is found in several baked goodies, including cookies, cakes, muffins, etc. While some natural butter flavors are vegan, others aren’t.
Whether or not the natural butter flavors are vegan depends upon the company selling them. Read on to learn more!
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Natural Butter Flavors: An Overview
Over the past few years, the demand for natural butter flavors has increased. Natural butter flavors have become popular amongst artisanal chefs.
These low-fat butter flavors are available at relatively lower rates than butter extracts.
Some of the flavors of natural kinds of butter are based on diacetyl acetic acid, ethyl formate, 2-butanone, ethyl acetate, acetoin, etc. These are compounds created by fermenting bacteria while digesting sugars. The global natural butter market has grown tremendously due to technological advances and developments.
These flavors use several naturally occurring elements and are extremely healthy choices for people. While some of these natural butter flavors are vegan, others contain dairy products.
In the global market, some of the companies that have made a mark in the field of manufacturing and selling natural butter flavors include the following:
- Edlong Diry Technologies
- Butter Buds Incorporation
- Frutrarom
- H.B Taylor Co.
- Tatua
- NOW Foods
- Commercial Creamery
- Advanced Biotech
Is Natural Butter Flavor Vegan? How Can You Tell?
Natural butter flavors available in the market usually come with specific labels. You can refer to these labels and tell whether the butter is vegan or not.
A product saying ‘may contain milk’ is likely to indicate that it has been made around other products involving the use of milk. If you’re a vegan who’d mind that, buying such a product isn’t recommended.
On the whole, there is no uniformity in terms of veganism when manufacturing natural butter flavors. You can either contact the manufacturer or make your purchase based on the information and ingredients listed on the package.
Top 5 Brands Selling Vegan Natural Butter Flavors
Terrasouls Raw Cacao Butter
Terrasouls Raw Cacao Butter is a 100% vegan product. It’s an innovative product for your vegan kitchen. It contains a certain amount of fat and 130 calories per serving. Terrasouls Raw Cacao Butter shouldn’t be used in daily cooking or on bread. It’s to be used for baking only.
Artisana Raw Coconut Butter
The Artisana Raw Coconut Butter is a non-dairy product known for its richness. The coconut puree can make a delightful addition to your experience. You can use this butter for cooking different food items.
You can also add the Artisana Raw Coconut Butter to your bulletproof coffee or latte for a creamy taste.
Kevala Organic Coconut Butter
The Kevala Organic Coconut Butter has a fuzzy element to it. It’s 100% natural and vegan. You can add the Kevala Organic Coconut Butter to your early morning coffees.
This is a wonderful pick for vegans with a sweet tooth. Additionally, its smell and taste are tender and not very strong.
Binnie’s Coconut Butter Organic Spread
Another coconut butter? Well, it appears too tasty not to be added to the list!
Binnie’s Coconut Butter Organic Spread comes in a variety of rich flavors. These include vanilla, coffee macaroon, and cinnamon. All flavors have a sweet taste drawn from several naturally occurring elements.
This butter is packed with flavor and can be used in many ways. Its use is endless, from cakes, cookies, and pancakes to more!
Every serving is known to contain 170 calories.
Zatural Therapeutic Hemp Butter
It’s a wise idea to invest in Zatural Therapeutic Hemp Butter. This butter is the right choice for your body. It can be used not only as butter spread on food items but also as a body moisturizer.
Its uses range from healing joint pains to providing muscular support. The Zatural Therapeutic Hemp Butter has a beautiful scent, vitamin E, omega-6, omega-3, and good fats.
OliveNation Natural Butter Flavor Extract
OliveNation is a fantastic addition to your popcorn or bread. You can use it for all your baking needs. It’s got a nice clear color and is a heat-stable butter flavor. You can use it for all sorts of cooking purposes and add that wonderfully buttery flavor to anything you make.
Nutiva Organic Coconut Oil With Non-Dairy Butter Flavor
You can use this wonderful spread with that wonderful butter flavor. Sunflower, coconut, and mint are the three central non-GMO plants that are among the ingredients. Use it in salads or coffee, or even give your bread a nice buttery flavor.
OliveNation Natural Butter Flavor Extract
OliveNation is a delicious addition to your popcorn or bread. You can use it for all your baking needs. It’s got a nice color and is a heat-stable butter flavor. You can use it for all sorts of cooking purposes and add that wonderfully buttery flavor to anything you make.
Nutiva Organic Coconut Oil With Non-Dairy Butter Flavor
Nutiva Organic Coconut Oil is another tasty spread that you can use. It comes with that rich butter flavor. Sunflower, coconut, and mint are the three major non-GMO plants that are among the ingredients. Use it in salads or coffee, or even give your bread a nice buttery flavor.
Where Does Butter Get Its Flavor From?
One thing that draws people to butter is its beautiful, rich, and creamy texture. It adds a ton of flavor and an extra texture to all the food it’s applied to. It can make a plain old piece of toast or a bucket of popcorn sing.
The flavor comes from the diacetyl and acetoin produced during sugar fermentation. This gives rise to milk compounds like cream, butter, and buttermilk.
How Can You Tell if Natural Butter Flavor Is Vegan or Not?
The problem with this question is that it never has a straightforward answer that works universally. Some brands that you find may be vegan, while some may not be. Unfortunately, the only way to ensure this is to physically check or enquire before buying the product.
Certain brands are very clear about their product. They mention very evidently whether the product is vegan-friendly or not. Some products are marketed as a variant of butter flavor but contain some form of milk derivatives.
Almost all products you see in the market today have their ingredients listed very clearly. Go through the list and check if you can identify any that might not be vegan-friendly. If there’s anything you doubt about, it’s nothing a quick Google search can’t fix.
Is It Possible for Natural Butter Flavor to Be Dairy-Free?
Most of the time, when it comes to natural butter flavor, some non-vegan component is included in the ingredients to give it that flavor. This non-vegan component will usually be a part of the natural flavors of butter.
This non-vegan component is usually a dairy derivative. These components are made from milk or milk solids. Although you may find some natural butter flavor products that are vegan, the truth is that most of them aren’t.
What Does ‘May Contain Milk’ Mean?
Depending on the product you choose, the brand, and where you shop, you may or may not have a label that clearly indicates whether the product contains milk. That gives you the answer as to whether or not the product is vegan.
While it may sound a little foreboding, the warning ‘May contain milk’ is a good sign for vegans. This is a good indicator that the product itself wasn’t made with any milk products. The sign has a pretty innocuous meaning.
The warning ‘May contain milk’ lets the customer know that the product was made in a factory that produces milk or milk products. There is little risk of cross-contamination, where some drops of milk may have landed in your product. That’s very rare.
In Conclusion
Unfortunately, butter’s natural creamy flavor is derived from non-vegan sources. Some milk solids and milk products lead to the rise of the taste and create the various dairy products we know, like cream, cheese, and butter.
Thanks to the advancement in food technology, there are vegan options for butter’s ‘natural flavor.’ You will find many products on the shelves you could use as a vegan substitute for that buttery flavor. Make sure that your product doesn’t have any milk products.
The vegan butter flavor you buy may not give you the exact feel of real butter. However, it’s the closest you can get to the original thing. When you pick up a product in a store, go through all the ingredients. You can always ask if you have any doubts about any of them.