A Guide to Spotting Animal-Derived Ingredients in Toiletries

When people first start living vegan, their attention usually goes to the food on their plate, and it's easy to overlook the row of bottles on the bathroom counter. Shampoo, body wash, and conditioner often contain animal-derived ingredients that aren't easy to spot at a glance—raw materials that can come from wool, animal fat, or even insect secretions.

Common Hidden Animal Ingredients

Some of the more common ingredients worth watching for include lanolin, extracted from wool; hydrolyzed keratin, often used in hair products for added smoothness and typically derived from feathers or hooves and horns; and animal-derived glycerin and collagen, sometimes used as thickening or emulsifying agents. The English names for these ingredients are often far from self-explanatory, and recognizing them takes some practice.

Building Your Own Habit of Checking Labels

To shop for animal-ingredient-free toiletries with confidence, a few approaches can help:

• Favor products clearly labeled "vegan" on the packaging
• Learn and memorize a handful of the most frequently appearing animal-derived ingredient names
• Use an ingredient-checking app on your phone to cross-reference labels
• Look for brands that also carry cruelty-free certification, for an extra layer of assurance

Learning to read a shampoo bottle's ingredient list might seem like a small thing, but it's an important step in extending vegan values from the dinner table to the everyday products we use.