❓I heard white sugar is filtered using bone char — can vegetarians eat it?

This claim mainly concerns the refining process at some traditional cane sugar producers — certain sugar mills (especially some traditional cane sugar refineries in Europe and the US) use bone char, made from burnt cattle bones, as a decolorizing filter medium to make sugar whiter. But the bone char itself doesn't remain in the finished sugar (it's a processing aid, not an ingredient) — the finished sugar contains no animal matter, which is also why a lot of vegetarian classification standards (like lacto-ovo vegetarian) don't pay special attention to this issue. Strict vegans who care about the process itself, not just the final ingredients, can choose beet sugar instead (sugar refined from beets generally doesn't use the bone char process), or look for cane sugar brands that specifically label themselves as not bone-char processed. Most white sugar on the domestic market here comes from beets or modern local cane sugar mills and doesn't involve bone char filtering at all — this issue tends to come up more abroad (especially with some old-line cane sugar brands in the UK and US). If you're buying imported sugar and this matters to you, it's worth checking the brand's official website for details.