Uncrustables are sealed and crustless sandwiches that have a variety of fillings inside. Produced by the J.M. Smucker Company, a food manufacturer that also produces a range of fruit spreads, peanut butter, ice cream toppings, and such, the Uncrustables sandwich first appeared in 1995 as a common snack sold in schools.
As a sandwich, it highly depends on the fillings inside to determine if whether Uncrustables are vegan or not. There are many flavors that are considerably vegan since they do not contain any obvious animal product. However, there are some flavors that contain blatant animal products which therefore make them non-vegan.
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Are Uncrustables Vegan?
The official Uncrustables website provides a selection of ten different flavors(1), each with different ingredients. Thus, there are flavors that are relatively more vegan than others.
Firstly, there are Uncrustables flavors that are certainly non-vegan due to their ingredients. These include Hazelnut Spread Sandwich, Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwich, Uncured Ham and Cheddar Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Turkey and Colby Jack Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Taco Bites, and BBQ Chicken Bites. These are flavors that would either contain meat, dairy, or honey.
The rest of the flavors should be fine for most vegans, especially dietary vegans. However, there are also some ingredients found in Uncrustables that some vegans would avoid. These are called gray area ingredients and they are avoided due to the uncertainty of whether they are truly vegan or not. These include ingredients like sugar, natural flavors, and glycerides.
Uncrustables Ingredients List
Uncrustables come in a variety of flavors that all contain different ingredients. The official Uncrustables website lists ten different flavors such as Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jam Sandwich, Peanut Butter and Strawberry Sandwich on Wheat with Reduced Sugar, Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwich, Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Sandwich on Wheat, Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Sandwich, Chocolate Flavored Hazelnut Spread Sandwich, Uncured Ham and Cheddar Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Turkey and Colby Jack Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Taco Bites, and BBQ Chicken Bites.
Each flavor contains a different set of ingredients. However, here are the ingredients of the typical Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jam Sandwich as an example (2).
Bread: enriched unbleached flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, ferrous sulfate, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, unbleached whole wheat flour, sugar, yeast, soybean oil. Contains 2% or less of: salt, dough conditioners (distilled mono and diglycerides, DATEM, Enzymes [with wheat starch, ascorbic acid, calcium peroxide]).
Peanut Butter: peanuts, sugar. Contains 2% or less of: molasses, fully hydrogenated vegetable oils (rapeseed and soybean), mono and diglycerides, salt.
Strawberry Jam: sugar, strawberries. Contains 2% or less of: pectin, citric acid, potassium sorbate (preservative).
The article will look through all of the ingredients of the ten different flavors listed above and discuss ingredients that are outright non-vegan and some that are debatable (i.e., “gray area”).
Non-Vegan Uncrustables Ingredients
Meat
Meat consists of the flesh of various animals that humans prepare to consume. Since it is directly an animal product, meat is not considered vegan and is heavily avoided by vegans.
Many animals are raised and slaughtered for the purpose of meeting the demands of a meat-consuming population. Since vegans stand for animal rights, they abstain from meat since the acquisition of meat directly corresponds to the death and slaughter of these animals.
Meat that is specifically used in different flavors of Uncrustables includes ham, beef, turkey, and chicken. Uncrustables flavors that contain meat include Uncured Ham and Cheddar Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Turkey and Colby Jack Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Taco Bites, and BBQ Chicken Bites.
Dairy
The term dairy is used to refer to milk and products that are produced using milk. This can include butter, cream, yogurt, cheese, whey, and so on. Typically obtained from a mammal such as a cow, sheep, or goat, milk and dairy products are not considered vegan since they are direct products obtained from animals.
Milk and dairy are considered to be highly unethical by the vegan community due to the treatment of cows in the milk industry (3). Cows are often purposedly impregnated to induce lactation and milk production. When the offspring are born, they are often separated from the mother to be able to maximize the milk that can be collected from the mother.
Various milk and dairy products are used in several Uncrustables flavors such as skim milk, non-fat dry milk, whey, cream, and different kinds of cheeses.
Uncrustables flavors that contain dairy include Hazelnut Spread Sandwich, Uncured Ham and Cheddar Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Turkey and Colby Jack Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Taco Bites, and BBQ Chicken Bites.
Honey
Honey, a common alternative to sugar, is a natural sweetener used in the food and beverage industries. Unlike sugar, honey is derived from an animal source – particularly honeybees. Since honey is an animal product, honey and products that contain honey cannot be considered vegan.
There are several reasons why vegans avoid honey. The primary reason why vegans avoid honey is so that they can boycott the exploitation of honeybees used for honey production.
Another major reason why many vegans avoid using honey is that the industry of honey production has been considered to be highly detrimental to the environment (4). When large quantities of honeybees are raised and farmed, these bees compete with the native species of bees that also forage the nearby areas for food. Due to competition, raising honeybees can lead to the decreasing populations of native bee species around the world.
Only one Uncrustables flavor contains honey and that is the Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwich.
"Gray Area" Uncrustables Ingredients
Sugar
Sugar is a common ingredient and is typically used as a sweetener in the food and beverage industry. Although sugar is conventionally extracted from a plant source such as sugarcane or sugar beets, the sweet ingredient can still be considered non-vegan depending on how it was produced.
Unprocessed sugar is most definitely vegan as soon as it is extracted from a plant source. However, many sugar companies further refine their sugar to make it more appealing to mass consumers. Further refinement processes make the sugar whiter and finer. Many processes are involved in further refining sugar, but one process of note is filtration.
Filtration helps increase the purity of the sugar by removing non-sugar components in the product. Different companies can use different filtration methods. Some use granulated carbon which is a perfectly fine method. However, some companies use bone char – the charred and skeletal remains of animals (5). Although bone char is a cheap and effective filter, sugar that has been produced using bone char can no longer be considered vegan since bone char is an animal product.
A big problem with bone char is the difficulty in tracing the fact is has been used. This is especially difficult when large food manufacturers use sugar in their food products because they can possibly have multiple sources of sugar with each sugar company having different refinement methods. Many vegans avoid sugar due to the uncertainty of whether it is truly vegan or not. Since the practice of using bone char in the sugar industry is more prevalent in the US, vegans from other parts of the world are less worried about their sugar being non-vegan.
Uncrustables flavors that contain sugar include Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jam Sandwich, Peanut Butter and Strawberry Sandwich on Wheat with Reduced Sugar, Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwich, Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Sandwich on Wheat, Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Sandwich, Chocolate Flavored Hazelnut Spread Sandwich, Uncured Ham and Cheddar Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Turkey and Colby Jack Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Taco Bites, and BBQ Chicken Bites.
Glycerides
Glycerides are common additives in food and beverages, and they are typically used as emulsifiers due to their unique chemical composition. Emulsifiers are essential in many industries as they allow the mixing of substances of opposing polarities. Structurally, glycerides are composed of glycerol and fatty acids.
Many vegans avoid glycerides because it is considered a gray area ingredient. The components that makeup glycerides, glycerol in particular, can be obtained from both plant and animal sources. Unless stated specifically in the label or in the company website, there really is no way to truly determine if the glycerides that a company uses is vegan or not.
Uncrustables flavors that contain glycerides include Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jam Sandwich, Peanut Butter and Strawberry Sandwich on Wheat with Reduced Sugar, Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwich, Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Sandwich on Wheat, Peanut Butter and Grape Jelly Sandwich, Chocolate Flavored Hazelnut Spread Sandwich, Uncured Ham and Cheddar Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Turkey and Colby Jack Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, and Taco Bites.
Natural Flavors
Natural flavors are a common food additive that can be found in many food and beverage products. As an ingredient, natural flavors can consist of various substances as long as they all have to be accessible from a natural source. In contrast, artificial flavors consist of substances that are completely synthetic. Although natural flavors are composed of natural constituents, the issue with the ingredient is its definition. Specifically, the FDA defines natural flavors as (6):
The essential oil, oleoresin, essence or extractive, protein hydrolysate, distillate, or any product of roasting, heating or enzymolysis, which contains the flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof, whose significant function in food is flavoring rather than nutritional.
FDA.gov
Thus, the umbrella term natural flavors encompasses both plant- and animal-derived products. This means that there is no way to determine the actual ingredients that fall under the natural flavors definition. Many vegans avoid natural flavors to stay on the safe side since there is no way to truly determine if a product that has natural flavors is indeed vegan or not.
Uncrustables flavors that contain natural flavors include Peanut Butter and Honey Sandwich, Uncured Ham and Cheddar Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Turkey and Colby Jack Cheese Sandwich Roll-Ups, Taco Bites, and BBQ Chicken Bites.
References:
1. https://www.smuckersuncrustables.com/
