Nesquik Powder is a favorite for kids who prefer chocolate milk over regular milk. Or maybe you like to use Nesquik Powder to make hot chocolate in the winter, when there’s nothing better than snuggling up under a blanket with a mug of hot cocoa. Nesquik Powder has been one of the most popular chocolate powder brands for decades. But is it vegan?
Nesquik Powder is not vegan because it contains three potentially non-vegan ingredients: sugar, natural flavors, and biotin. While all these ingredients can be produced using vegan processes, they also come from animal sources. The best vegan alternatives to Nesquik Powder are Ghiradelli Hot Cocoa Mix, Coconut Cloud Instant Hot Cocoa Mix, and Castle Kitchen Vegan Hot Cocoa.
In this guide, we’ll break down why Nesquik Powder isn’t really vegan even though it appears to be on the surface. Let’s get started.
Contents
Nesquik Powder Ingredients
Here’s a quick breakdown of all the ingredients in Nesquik’s Chocolate Powder:
- Sugar
- Cocoa processed with alkali
- Soy lecithin
- Carrageenan
- Salt
- Natural flavors
- Spice
- Sodium ascorbate (vitamin C)
- Ferric pyrophosphate (iron)
- Niacinamide
- Zinc oxide
- Thiamin hydrochloride
- Copper gluconate
- Manganese sulfate
- Biotin
Why Are Some Nesquik Powder Ingredients Potentially Non-Vegan?
A quick look at the above ingredients doesn’t immediately make Nesquik Powder seem non-vegan. But let’s explore why three of the ingredients in that list are problematic.
Sugar
For starters, not all sugar is as vegan as you might think. While sugar is a natural or plant-based product, some companies create sugar using materials called bone char. Bone char is made from charred cattle bones, as its name suggests. Because of this, any sugar filtered into a fine, powdery texture using bone char is non-vegan since an animal suffered for the process to take place.
Nestle – which is Nesquik Powder’s parent company – has not said one way or the other whether they use bone char for their sugar filtering processes. But given that it’s Nestlé (more on that below), we’re willing to bet that they do since bone char sugar filtration is supposed to be very cost-effective.
Biotin
Next up is biotin. Biotin is a natural protein that exists in plant-based sources like nuts and seeds. Your body actually needs a certain amount of biotin to properly maintain its organs, skin cells, and more.
However, biotin can also be harvested from animal sources including eggs, dairy, meat, and fish. As with bone char, it’s often more cost-effective for companies like Nestlé to harvest biotin for their products from animal sources rather than cultivate biotin from nuts and seeds.
Whenever you see biotin on a product’s ingredient label, odds are that it came from an animal source. However, some biotin is synthetic and therefore suitable for vegans.
Which is the biotin in Nesquik Powder? It’s tough to say. But once again, Nestlé hasn’t taken any steps to alleviate vegan concerns or inform us about whether their biotin is vegan safe or not. Therefore, we recommend erring on the side of caution and treating any biotin from Nestlé as non-vegan.
“Natural Flavors”
Last but not least are the natural flavors included in every container of Nesquik Powder. Natural flavors can mean anything from animal-based or plant-based flavor agents. But manufacturers like Nestlé often add animal ingredients to products and don’t necessarily have to mark those flavors as non-vegan.
We don’t know for sure whether the natural flavors in Nesquik Powder are non-vegan or not. But we’d bet that they aren’t totally vegan, even if they don’t come from animal sources.
Nestle’s Ownership
While the ingredients alone are troubling, to say the least, you also have to remember that Nesquik Powder is owned by Nestlé: one of the least environmentally friendly companies in the world.
Nestlé has been routinely accused of terrible practices like child labor, animal cruelty, and deforestation or other environmentally unfriendly acts. Because of this, many vegans may consider supporting Nestlé by purchasing their products to be an inherently non-vegan act.
If you give Nestlé your money, you empower them to continue treating the world in harmful ways. Instead, it’s better to avoid paying Nestlé any money if possible so they eventually change their practices or go out of business.
That said, whether or not all products from Nestlé are inherently non-vegan is dependent on your perspective. Some vegans just focus on the diet and only consider food to be non-vegan if it includes animal ingredients.
If that’s the case for you (which is totally fine), then Nesquik Powder could be vegan safe… possibly. In our eyes, it’s a gamble either way.
Nesquik Powder Nutritional Facts
Even if Nesquik Powder was found to be vegan, you may not want to give it to your kids because of its high concentration of sugar. Take a look at these nutritional facts:
- 60 calories per serving
- 30 mg sodium or 1% DV
- 90 mg potassium or 2% DV
- 14 g carbohydrate or 5% DV
- Less than 1 g fiber or 3% DV
- 24 g sugar or 24% DV
- 4 mg iron or 2% DV
As you can see, a single serving of Nesquik Powder’s chocolate drink mix is about a quarter of what anyone needs for sugar in a single day. Since sugar is present in many other modern food and drink products, avoiding Nesquik Powder might be wise if you want to stay healthy and keep your vegan diet.
What About Nesquik Strawberry Powder?
There’s some good news if you don’t mind the fact that Nesquik’s Strawberry Powder is also made by and sold by Nestlé.
Nesquik’s Strawberry Powder doesn’t have as many potentially problematic ingredients mentioned above. Instead of biotin, this powder includes sugar, beet juice concentrate, artificial flavors, citric acid, and salt.
However, some manufacturers also claim that this powder may contain milk, soy, and wheat. There’s no direct evidence that the strawberry powder includes dairy, but you may wish to be safe rather than sorry.
Its ingredients include:
- Sugar
- Salt
- Beet juice concentrate
- Citric acid
- Artificial flavor
Nesquik’s Strawberry Powder has the following nutritional information:
- 60 cal per serving
- 15 g carbohydrate or 5% DV
- 15 mg sodium or 1% DV
- 15 g sugar
- 100 mg calcium
- 6 mg vitamin C
What About Nesquik Banana Powder?
Nesquik’s Banana Powder is actually worse than the other powder types. Its ingredients include:
- Sugar
- Maltodextrin
- Natural flavoring
- Natural colors including beta-carotene and curcumin
- Sodium ascorbate
- Thiamin hydrochloride
- Cholecalciferol
- Magnesium carbonate
- Ferric pyrophosphate
- Zinc sulfate
Nesquik’s Banana Powder has the following nutritional information:
- 75 cal per serving
- 6 g protein
- 8 g fat
- 2 g carbohydrate
- 9 g sugar
- 11 mg salt
Aside from the sugar and natural flavors, the Banana Powder includes cholecalciferol, which gives the powder its vitamin D content. Unfortunately, this product is not vegan since cholecalciferol is derived from sheep’s wool. Thus, Nesquik’s Banana Powder is definitely non-vegan no matter what you think about the sugar and natural ingredients mentioned earlier.
Healthy Vegan Alternatives to Nesquik Powder
While you can use Hershey’s cocoa powder for baking needs, let’s look at some vegan-suitable chocolate powders for hot cocoa, chocolate milk, and more.
Ghiradelli Hot Cocoa Mix
Ghiradelli offers a few different vegan hot cocoa mixes you can mix with milk or other beverages in the same way as Nesquik Powder. Ghiradelli’s Double Chocolate Cocoa Mix is particularly good and includes vegan ingredients like sugar, cocoa processed with alkali, chocolate, soy lecithin, and vanilla. There are no dairy products included in the chocolate used for this hot cocoa mix.
Ingredients:
- Sugar
- Cocoa (process with alkali, unsweetened chocolate)
- Soy lecithin
- Vanilla
Nutritional Facts:
- 120 cal per serving
- 5 g fat or 2% DV
- 50 mg sodium or 2% DV
- 30 g carbohydrate or 10% DV
- 2 g fiber or 8% DV
- 27 g sugar
- 1 g protein
Coconut Cloud
Coconut Cloud offers a Vegan Instant Hot Cocoa Mix you can enjoy with hot or cold beverages alike. This plant-based hot chocolate offering comes in several different flavors, but its core flavor includes ingredients like coconut cream powder, coconut sugar, cocoa, rice starch, natural vanilla flavoring, sea salt, and more.
Check this brand out for other flavors like frozen hot chocolate frappe, peppermint cocoa, salted caramel, or toasted marshmallow!
Ingredients:
- Coconut cream powder
- Organic cane sugar
- Cocoa
- Rice starch
- Acacia fiber
- MCT oil powder
- Sea salt
Nutritional Information:
- 70 cal per serving
- 5 g fat
- 29 g sodium
- 11 g carbohydrate
- <1 g fiber
- 6 g sugar
- <1 g protein
Castle Kitchen
Lastly, Castle Kitchen provides a vegan hot cocoa mix with plant-based, non-GMO ingredients. It’s totally gluten-free, dairy-free, and is both vegan and kosher! In other words, it may be the best vegan hot chocolate choice on the market today. Its ingredients include cane sugar, cocoa processed with alkali, sea salt, natural flavors, and more. Even better, each serving only has 19 g of sugar, making it a little better for you than Nestle’s Nesquik Powder.
Ingredients:
- Cane sugar
- Cocoa
- Tapioca
- Maltodextrin
- Natural flavor
- Guar gum
- Sea salt
Nutritional Information:
- 110 cal per serving
- 5 g fat or 1% DV
- 95 mg sodium or 4% DV
- 25 g carbohydrate or 9% DV
- 2 g fiber or 7% DV
- 20 g sugar or 40% DV
- 1 g protein
- 160 mg potassium or 4% DV
- 1 mg iron or 4% DV
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, Nesquik Powder isn’t really vegan if you want to adhere to the spirit of the diet and lifestyle. While Nesquik’s Chocolate Powder could potentially count as vegan-friendly if you squint, it’s made by a very non-vegan company, and supporting the company through purchasing their Nesquik Powder isn’t a good idea.
Furthermore, Nesquik’s other flavors of milk powder aren’t really vegan-friendly either. You’re better off getting a vegan alternative for yourself or your child.
Related Questions
Is Chocolate Vegan?
Sometimes. Most chocolate is made with dairy, but chocolate only really requires cacao beans and sugar, that former of which are grown from cacao trees. So long as you don’t add dairy to the chocolate-making process, you can have hot chocolate or chocolate (vegan) plant milk without breaking your diet.
Why is Nestlé so bad for the environment?
It’s largely due to pollution. Nestlé has been involved in hundreds of different incidents regarding local or international pollution. For example, there are some studies that indicate that Nestle regularly breaks water pollution limits in places like the UK, other European countries, and especially China.