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Is Dr Pepper Vegan – Is It Safe For Us?
On November 16, 2022 by Russell FranklinIn this guide, I’ll lay out why each of these ingredients is controversial amongst vegans, and which flavors of They’re in Dr. Pepper. I’ll also examine the ingredients for each flavor of Dr. Pepper one at a time and check to see if the soda is gluten-free.
Dr. Pepper is typically regarded as vegan. No blatantly animal ingredients are present. The only potential “gray area” ingredients in Natural flavor, sugar, caramel color, and Red 40 are all ingredients in Dr. Pepper products. Dr. Pepper is generally acceptable among vegans.
What is Dr Pepper
Dr Pepper is a fizzy soft drink that was first produced in a pharmacy in Texas in the late 19th century and has since spread to other countries. It was initially advertised as a digestive aid and is well known for having 23 flavors.
Is Dr Pepper Vegan?
Dr. Pepper is an acceptable beverage for vegans. It is made from a blend of natural and synthetic ingredients, but no animal products or byproducts are used in the production process.
Is Dr Pepper Zero Vegan?
For anyone who prefers drinking Dr Pepper Zero, you’ll be happy to hear that it’s also vegan-friendly.
Is Dr Pepper Cherry Vegan?
In general, Dr. Pepper Cherry is regarded as vegan. Vegans may avoid Dr. Pepper Cherry because it contains Red 40, which is still subject to animal testing.
Is Regular Dr Pepper Vegan?
Dr is vegan-friendly. High-fructose corn syrup and carbonated water make up the majority of the ingredients. Other components of the beverage include caffeine, flavorings, and colorings, but none of them are derived from animals.
Is Diet Dr Pepper Vegan?
Dr. Pepper Diet is animal-free. It merely has carbonated water, caramel food coloring, aspartame artificial sweetener, preservatives, additives, flavors, and caffeine. Therefore, no ingredients come from animals.
Why Dr Pepper is Vegan
Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), phosphoric acid, caramel color, flavors (natural and artificial), sodium benzoate (preservative), and caffeine are all listed as ingredients on the official Dr Pepper website.
The majority of sodas are vegan because they primarily differ in the natural and artificial flavors they use, using essentially the same ingredients.
Natural and Artificial Flavors in Dr Pepper
What’s happening with the natural and artificial flavors may have you wondering. These days, the ingredients used in food products can be pretty vague.
While some are either always or never made from animal products (such as gelatin and starch, respectively), others can be vegan if derived from one source but not vegan if obtained from another.
The ingredients that aren’t specifically named on the label are another group that can be particularly perplexing. For some reason, the majority of artificial and natural flavors only need to be listed as a group on food labels, rather than having the names of the individual compounds listed.
That’s not what you see with food colorings. For example, you’re not as likely to encounter “natural and artificial colors”. You’ll notice Red 40, Red Lake 40, Yellow 6, etc. instead.
My guess is that labeling guidelines often allow manufacturers to simply state “flavors” instead of exact ingredients to protect their patented formulations. But that’s only a hunch.
Understandably, many vegans find this to be a problem, especially those who are particularly careful to avoid ingredients that may have an animal origin.
Just be aware that the majority of vegans don’t take special care to avoid ambiguous ingredients. For example, mono- and diglycerides are used in almost every food product touted as “accidentally vegan”.
Although they are frequently made of plants, they originate from triglycerides that are found in animal tissue. This means that they might not be vegan.
However, because there is no real way to know and because they are probably safe, vegans (including myself) continue to eat these products.
If you are extra cautious and want to completely rule out the possibility of ingesting a natural or artificial flavor, you may want to stay away from highly processed food items altogether and opt instead for whole plant foods.
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What About the Preservatives?
The Dr. Pepper brand of sodas contains a fair amount of additives, just like any other highly processed food item. When searching the ingredients for any non-vegan additives, any ingredient that seems unusual or is difficult to pronounce can raise a red flag.
Sodium benzoate, phosphoric acid, and sodium phosphate, for instance, are frequently found in Dr. Pepper products.
In order to acidify soda and give it a tangy flavor, phosphoric acid is used in the beverage. It is produced without using any animals and only phosphate rock.
One of the many uses for sodium benzoate in the food industry is as a preservative in acidic foods, like soda. The VRG views this ingredient, which is synthetic and not directly derived from animals, as typically vegan.
The process of making sodium phosphate involves combining finely ground phosphate rock with sulfuric acid to create phosphoric acid (discussed above), which is then combined with sodium hydroxide. It’s regarded as vegan because it’s produced using phosphate rock and non-animal-derived precursors.
We’ll discuss each of the remaining additives individually in the paragraphs that follow. Just be aware that all of the strange-sounding ingredients listed on Dr. Pepper labels are suitable for vegans if you’re in a hurry.
Vegan Analysis of Other Dr Pepper Drinks
Is Caffeine-Free Dr Pepper Vegan?
Dr. Pepper without caffeine is vegan. Unsurprisingly, it functions similarly to the original formulation without caffeine. In particular, the ingredients include carbonated water, HFCS, caramel color, flavorings, phosphoric acid, and sodium benzoate.
When reading labels for vegan-friendliness, the color caramel frequently catches the eye of the reader. It makes sense because milk and milk sugar (lactose), which is a component of real caramel, is frequently used to make the candy.
The heat-induced browning reaction gives the sugar, whether it comes from milk or another source, its distinctive light to dark brown color.
Fortunately, while caramel can be produced using milk sugar, caramel color cannot. Instead, sugar from other sources is caramelized, which is how the brown hue is obtained.
Glucose, fructose, sucrose (glucose plus sucrose), invert sugar, malt syrup, molasses, and starch hydrolysates are all vegan-friendly sweeteners that are used to produce caramel color in place of lactose.4
Is Dr Pepper Cream Soda Vegan?
Dr. Pepper’s vegan cream soda. The regular diet and the diet both apply here. The regular includes carbonated water, vegan-friendly HFCS, caramel color, flavors, preservatives, phosphoric acid, sodium phosphate, and caffeine. The only difference in the diet version is aspartame.
In more detail, regular Dr Pepper Cream Soda contains:
- Carbonated water
- High fructose corn syrup
- Caramel color
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Preservative (sodium benzoate)
- Phosphoric acid
- Sodium phosphate
- Caffeine
Again, Diet Dr. Pepper Cream Soda simply substituted aspartame for the sugar.
High fructose corn syrup is a common sweetener in the food and beverage industry, and readers occasionally ask about it.
For a number of reasons, HFCS has a bad reputation. It is not a particularly healthy food (although it is not significantly worse than sugar), but vegans do not have any issues with it.
It is derived from corn, which is a plant, after all. Even if there are no animal ingredients in the finished product, the production of HFCS, like that of any other food product, could still be anything but cruelty-free.
Fortunately, HFCS does not fall under this category. The enzymes that transform the glucose in regular corn syrup into fructose are not derived from animals.
Is Dr Pepper Cherry Vegan?
Both regular and diet Cherry Dr. Pepper are vegan. The same components as the original and original diet formulations are included, along with a few color and flavor enhancers, specifically red food coloring and organic acids.
Specifically, regular Dr Pepper Cherry contains:
- Carbonated water
- High fructose corn syrup
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Caramel color
- Sodium benzoate (preservative)
- Citric and malic acids
- Phosphoric acid
- Sodium phosphate
- Caffeine
- Red 40
The diet version contains the same ingredients as usual, but with aspartame.
As you can see, regular and diet Cherry Dr. Pepper contain Red 40, another common food coloring. We briefly discussed caramel color above. Red 4, a related red hue that is now much less prevalent, and Red 40 are occasionally confused with one another.
The confusion is undoubtedly caused by the color and name having such a similar spelling. But there is one crucial distinction: Red 4 comes from beetles.
It is therefore not vegan.
In contrast, Red 40 belongs to the group of dyes known as azo dyes, which are produced by the petroleum industry. Once more, Red 40 is thankfully much more prevalent.
Is Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper Vegan?
Dr. Pepper Cherry Vanilla, both regular and diet, is vegan. It includes the original recipe in addition to cherry and vanilla flavors, a red food dye that is suitable for vegans, and organic acids (malic and citric). Naturally, artificial sweeteners are used in place of sugar in the diet version.
This variety is vegan because there are no ingredients derived from animals.
Specifically, the regular version contains:
- Carbonated water
- High fructose corn syrup
- Caramel color
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Sodium benzoate as a preservative
- Citric acid and malic acids
- Phosphoric acid
- Caffeine
- Red 40
Again, the aspartame-containing diet version is identical to the regular version.
Organic acids include both malic and citric acids. However, they are industrially synthesized to be used in food products even though they naturally occur. The fermentation of yeast (Aspergillus niger or Candida sp.) and malic via chemical synthesis (w/out animal-derived precursors).
Conclusion
You’ll be happy to learn that Dr. Pepper only produces vegan products. This applies to all types of beverages, including diet and non-diet, those that are cherry, vanilla, or cherry vanilla, or both. When it comes to this soda, whatever you can think of is always vegan.
Yes, there’s the elusive “natural and artificial flavors” to contend with. However, synthetic flavors are almost never not vegan. They were created in a lab because they are artificial.
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