Ever have a hankering for some fruit-flavored candy? You might have considered popping a few Mike and Ike candies from time to time. These popular candies can be found in gas stations, grocery stores, and plenty of other shops. But if you’re a vegan, you already know you have to be careful about what kind of candy you consume; lots of popular candy brands are non-vegan.
Unfortunately, Mike and Ike candies are not vegan. While they don’t contain any non-vegan ingredients from a dietary perspective, Mike and Ike candies include potentially non-vegan ingredients such as confectioner’s glaze, several food dyes. Some of the best vegan alternatives to Mike and Ike are YumEarth Organic Strawberry Licorice and Annie’s Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks.
Today, let’s take a closer look at Mike and Ike and explore why these candies aren’t really vegan-friendly despite how they may appear on the surface. We will also highlight healthier and vegan alternatives to Mike and Ike. Let’s get started!
Contents
Non-Vegan Ingredients and Practices
While there isn’t anything in Mike and Ike candy that’s explicitly non-vegan, there are a couple of potentially problematic ingredients you need to be aware of.
1. Confectioner’s Glaze
Many vegans don’t consider candy made with an ingredient called confectioner’s glaze to be vegan-friendly. Why? Because this shiny coating, which helps make candy pieces look more palatable or colorful, is made from shellac resin. This resin is only produced by the lac beetle.
That said, shellac resin isn’t necessarily harvested by harming the beetles. The beetles leave behind the resin on tree branches when they crawl around (although some manufacturers can also harvest the resin by harming the creatures). Normally, the resin is scraped up and turned into confectioner’s glaze, shellac varnish, and other processed products.
Therefore, it’s ultimately up to you whether shellac resin and the confectioner’s glaze used for Mike and Ike candies disqualifies them as vegan-friendly. But this resin isn’t the only potentially non-vegan ingredient included with Mike and Ike.
2. Refined Sugar
There’s also sugar. Naturally, practically all candies use sugar. But Mike and Ike use cane sugar, which is unfortunately often processed using bone char: charred animal bones that are left over from the meat industry. Bone char is used to filter the sugar and turn it into a fine grain end product.
It’s true that some cane sugar is refined without bone char. For example, beet sugar doesn’t require the bone char refinement method, so it’s a cruelty-free sweetener that vegans can appreciate. Some artificial sweeteners aren’t tested on animals and are therefore cruelty-free.
But Mike and Ike haven’t explained whether they use bone charring for their sugar processing. On top of all this, Mike and Ikes is known to contain ingredients that aren’t vegan from an ethical perspective rather than a dietary perspective.
3. Food Dyes
For instance, most Mike and Ike candies use food dyes. Many food dyes are tested on animals before they are added to complete products. Red #40 is a great example. This popular artificial coloring is tested on mice, rats, and insects and is also found in a variety of candies like Mike and Ike.
4. Natural and Artificial Flavors
We still aren’t done breaking down the potentially non-vegan ingredients in Mike and Ike candies. These non-vegan ingredients also include so-called “natural and artificial flavors”.
In a nutshell, vegans have to be careful whenever a food product includes these ingredients as there is no way to tell where these flavorings come from. Even worse, Mike and Ikes is very cagey when asked about the origins of these flavors. It’s very possible that the flavors come from cruel animal testing-related practices.
So, bottom line – Mike and Ikes don’t necessarily have any non-vegan ingredients included in their candy products. But they do create some of their products using questionable practices and there isn’t any guarantee that their candies are vegan-friendly, either.
Because of these uncertainties, if you want to be sure that you don’t eat anything non-vegan, you should look elsewhere for a sweet treat.
Mike and Ike Nutrition Facts
To better understand how frequently non-vegan ingredients crop up in Mike and Ike’s candies, let’s take a look at the nutrition facts and ingredients in several of their major candy offerings.
Mike and Ike Original
The ingredients in Mike and Ike Original candies are as follows:
- Sugar
- Corn syrup
- Modified food starch
- Citric acid
- Malic acid
- Fumaric acid
- Sodium citrate
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Dextrin
- Confectioner’s glaze
- Carnauba wax
- Medium chain triglycerides
- Red 40
- Yellows 5 and 6
- Blue 1
Its nutritional info is:
- 110 cal per serving
- 27 g carbohydrate or 10% DV
- 18 g sugar or 36% DV
Mike and Ike Mega Mix Chewy Candy
The ingredients in Mike and Ike Mega Mix Chewy Candies are as follows:
- Sugar
- Corn syrup
- Modified food starch
- Dextrin
- Fumaric acid
- Fruit juice from concentrate, including orange, pear, lime, lemon, strawberry, and cherry fruit juices
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Sodium citrate
- Citric acid
- Malic acid
- Artificial colors
- Carnauba wax
- Confectioner’s glaze
- Medium chain triglycerides
- Yellow 5 and 6
- Red 40
Its nutritional info is:
- 110 cal per serving
- 10 mg sodium or <1% DV
- 18 g sugar or 36% DV
Mike and Ike Mega Mix Sours
The ingredients Mike and Ike Mega Mix Sours are as follows:
- Sugar
- Corn syrup
- Modified food starch
- Citric acid
- Malic acid
- Fumaric acid
- Sodium citrate
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Dextrin
- Confectioner’s glaze
- Carnauba wax
- Medium chain triglycerides
- Red 40
- Yellows 5 and 6
- Blue 1
- Artificial colors
Its nutritional info is:
- 110 cal per serving
- 26 g carbohydrate or 9% DV
- 17 g sugar or 34% DV
Mike and Ike Root Beer Float
The ingredients in Mike and Ike Root Beer Float candies are as follows:
- Sugar
- Corn syrup
- Modified food starch
- Citric acid
- Malic acid
- Fumaric acid
- Sodium citrate
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Dextrin
- Confectioner’s glaze
- Carnauba wax
- Medium chain triglycerides
- Red 40
- Yellows 5 and 6
- Blue 1
- Artificial colors
- Lactic acid
That last ingredient is particularly worrying because lactic acid often comes from blood and muscles. This organic acid is, therefore, often derived from animals, especially by manufacturers who may be more concerned about the bottom line than doing what’s right for animals.
Therefore, these root beer-flavored candies are probably the least vegan candies from Mike and Ike. These candies’ nutritional info is:
- 140 cal per serving
- 20 mg sodium or 1% DV
- 36 g carbohydrate or 12% DV
- 25 g sugar
Vegan Alternatives to Mike and Ike
While there are lots of vegan alternatives to Mike and Ike candies, keep in mind that many of them will include sugar. Even M&Ms aren’t safe! Given the prevalence of bone charring to make sugar in the US, it’s likely that many candy types will use sugar from this process.
Still, let’s take a look at some potentially better alternatives to Mike and Ike.
YumEarth Organic Strawberry Licorice
How about some vegan licorice with ingredients you don’t have to worry about? Indeed, these tasty licorice bites are gluten-free and come with no artificial dyes or GMO ingredients. Even though they are surprisingly delicious, they somehow manage to be ultimate anti-allergen candy – they are free from peanuts, gluten, milk, eggs, and many other problematic ingredients.
Ingredients:
- Organic cane sugar
- Organic rice syrup
- Organic cornstarch
- Organic palm oil
- Natural flavors
- Citric acid
- Organic strawberry juice concentrate
- Organic licorice extract
- Salt
- Organic concentrations for color, including carrot, apple, and blackcurrant
- Organic carnauba wax
- Organic sunflower oil
Nutritional Facts:
- 110 cal per serving
- 1 g fat or 1% DV
- 50 mg sodium or 2% DV
- 25 g carbohydrate or 9% DV
- 16 g sugar or 32% DV
- 1 g protein
Annie’s Organic Bunny Fruit Snacks
If you’ve got a sweet tooth for fruit snacks, Annie’s Organic Bunnies are an ideal choice, especially since they are both vegan-friendly and gluten-free. Each delectable bite is made with real fruit juice, which means you’ll also get more vitamins and healthy antioxidants than you would with traditional candy choices.
Ingredients:
- Tapioca syrup
- Cane sugar
- Tapioca syrup solids
- Pear juice concentrate
- Water
- Pectin
- Citric acid
- Sodium citrate
- Ascorbic acid
- Sunflower oil
- Carnauba wax
- Natural flavors
- Natural extracts for color
Nutritional Facts:
- 70 cal per serving
- 55 mg sodium or 2% DV
- 19 g carbohydrate or 6% DV
- 11 g sugar
- 100% DV of vitamin C
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, Mike and Ike candies aren’t really vegan-friendly since they include a number of artificial, core ingredients that may be harmful to animals. In addition, Mike and Ike isn’t doing anything to dispel rumors of animal cruelty or to change their ingredient compositions to use ingredients that are created without animal testing processes.
Sure, Mike and Ike candies might not include dairy products or other non-vegan ingredients. But any vegan who wants to do the right thing for the environment and to practice their diet ethically should stay away from Mike and Ike. There are plenty of tasty alternatives to check out to satisfy your sweet tooth instead.
Related Questions
Is Confectioner’s Glaze ever vegan?
It depends on how the glaze is made. As we broke down above, you don’t have to harm the beetles from which the core resin is harvested. If you’re concerned about the environment or the morality of the vegan diet, you’ll probably want to stay away from confectioner’s glaze whenever possible unless you know 100% that the company made it in an environmentally and cruelty-free way.
Is all cane sugar processed using bone char?
No, but the majority of it is (at least in North America). This is purely because it is cheap from an economical perspective. It can be very difficult to know whether a company has made its sugar using bone char or if it has done it using cruelty-free practices. It’s just one more reason why it’s difficult for vegans to know which candies or sweets are suitable for their diets.