Is Cocoa Powder Vegan?
The Most Important Things You Should Know

Cocoa powder is generally considered vegan, and if you see it as an ingredient, it would be reasonably safe to assume it doesn’t contain animal products.

That being said, there are still plenty of cocoa powders on the market that have either been sweetened with sugar or creamed with milk.

So in case you see it is an ingredient in other products, the best thing you can do is check for any allergy warnings.

If it does indeed contain dairy or cocoa powder, that fact needs – no, must be highlighted on the label.

But those who buy pure cocoa powder won’t have any trouble with unwanted dairy – they don’t call it pure for nothing!

Looking out for organic and fair-trade labels on your cocoa doesn’t just make them more expensive it also ensures they are a lot more ethically sourced. This, for most vegans, is a small price to pay. Let’s look a little closer at what each label means in detail.

The majority of organic cocoa beans originate from Latin America, which, for the most part, doesn’t have the same child labor and slavery concerns as West Africa. The farms operate as naturally as possible to grow and process their cocoa powder and sell it for a fair price, passed onto the farm and its employees.

The fair-trade and slavery-free labels also have some fairly strict guidelines on what a cocoa producer has to do to earn those pretty little badges on their labeling. While they might not be foolproof, any sneaky attempts to bypass their minimum requirements are usually found.

In the past, there have been attempts by farms that use child labor to sell on either pure cocoa or cocoa powder to fair trade suppliers in West Africa. Still, they are usually discovered fairly quickly based on the reports and research I’ve looked into.

If you want an ethical and vegan cacao powder why not check out our Navitas Organic Cacao Powder review as it’s one of the best I’ve found so far.

If you are buying vegan dark chocolate bars or cocoa powder, another thing to keep an eye out is added sugar. This isn’t just for the health of your teeth and waistline, either.

The fact is that sugar is another problematic ingredient that shouldn’t necessarily be considered vegan.

A lot of processed sugar is given its pure white hue by using bone char. So while the end product might not have actual traces of animal products in it, they are certainly used in its production.

You cannot have bone char without dead animals, and so for most vegans, sugar is on the no-no list.

Like cocoa powder, sugar also has a long history with slavery. While that has largely been stamped out in the modern world, sugar produced in poorer countries still runs the risk of child labor or unfair wages for those that harvest and process the product.

If you are going to buy sugar, it’s best to purchase fair-trade, organic, brown sugar, which should ensure the workers’ ethical conditions and less of a chance that they used bone char during the product’s processing.