Last Updated on November 9, 2023 by Fasting Planet
A surprising number of not-so-good-for-you foods on store shelves and in vending machines are vegan. Take, for example, original Oreos, Crackerjack, or Airheads candy. Since chips are often potato-based, you assume they’d be vegan as well, but you’re just not sure. Can vegans eat chips?
Vegans can eat chips, but not necessarily all flavors. If a brand or flavor of chips uses refined sugar, whey, casein, powdered cheese, or cheese flavoring, then you’ll have to avoid it on your vegan diet. Chip brands such as Lays, Doritos, Fritos, and Pringles do have vegan chip varieties.
Not sure how to navigate between which chips are vegan and which aren’t? In this guide, we’ll make it easy for you. First, we’ll explain the ingredients in some chip brands that make this potato-y snack non-vegan. Then we’ll present a full list of vegan chip flavors from all your favorites to explore. Keep reading!
Can Vegans Eat Chips?
The vegan diet is built around healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, and potatoes qualify as a vegetable. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about Russet potatoes, sweet potatoes, or even purple potatoes, they’re all vegetables.
That’s why chip brands that are just potatoes with some oil and maybe a touch of sea salt should be vegan. However, it’s still always a good idea to check the ingredients list. Depending on the chip brand as well as the flavor, certain ingredients can sneak in that would make a bag of chips off-limits on your diet.
Let’s talk about those ingredients now.
Refined Sugar
Chips are often salty, not sweet, yet refined sugar might be an ingredient in chips anyway. Not only chips, but crackers, pizza, and French fries tend to have refined sugar as well. The slight sweetness only adds to the addictiveness of junk food.
We’ve talked about this many times on the blog, but the problem with refined sugar is in how it’s manufactured. Refined sugar is another way of referring to granulated sugar or table sugar. Although you know of table sugar as a pristine white color, it doesn’t start that way.
When sugar is harvested from sugarcane plants, it has a distinct brownish hue. How deep, caramel-like brown the sugar is depends on its molasses content. The more molasses, the deeper and richer the hue. Even if the sugar is only a pale tan, it’s still not white like consumers have come to expect. That has to change.
Food manufacturers will whiten sugar using bone char, which is a black puck that consists of burned animal bones. Bone char whitening is not the only method of producing white sugar. To commercially manufacture beet sugar, for instance, the sugar loses its color when the beet juice goes through a diffuser. Then the sugar is combined with additives. However, it would be vegan-safe even still.
Here’s where the confusion arises. A food brand will only list refined sugar on its ingredients list as such. You don’t get any specifics on whether the sugar used in the chips is bleached with bone char or sourced from beet juice. Thus, as a vegan, you have to assume that all sugar is processed with bone char unless the label says otherwise. This can mean seriously modifying your diet, especially if you have a sweet tooth, but it’s a necessity if you care about the wellbeing of animals.
Whey
When milk curdles, its pH changes, becoming more acidic. Normally, the protein-based molecules in cow’s milk don’t bunch up together as they float in a solution. Yet once the pH of the milk solution shifts, so too will the behavior of the molecules. Now they stick to each other, becoming clumps.
By filtering the clumps through a sieve, the resultant liquid solution is whey. It’s a dairy byproduct that commonly pops up not only in snacks like chips but seasonings as well. So what does whey add to a bag of chips?
That’s the thing, nothing. Food manufacturers have the whey available and they’d rather put it in the chips than throw it away. Whey doesn’t really augment the flavor, nor does it take away from the chips. It’s just there. That’s not much of a justification for its inclusion.
Casein
Those milk proteins are a specific type of phosphoprotein known as casein. In cow’s milk, nearly half of the proteins (40 percent) found in milk are casein. In our own milk, it’s upwards of 60 percent in some instances.
If chips have milk or other dairy products on the ingredients label, then you can bet casein is in there. You might want to watch the snack crackers, cereal bars, and non-dairy coffee creamer you eat, as these foods may contain casein as well.
Powdered Cheese or Cheese Flavoring
Cheesy chips are a favorite of many, but as a vegan, you’ll have to give them up. It doesn’t matter if the ingredients label says powdered cheese outright or only refers to cheese flavoring. Since cheese is dairy, you can’t eat it or anything flavored with it, even if the powdered stuff doesn’t have much flavor authenticity.
Vegan Chip Brands and Flavors to Shop
While you may have to walk through the snack aisle at a grocery store with caution as a vegan, there’s still plenty of foods you can buy, such as any of these chips. Do keep in mind that just because a brand is on this list doesn’t mean all chips from that brand are vegan.
Pop Chips Sweet Potato
Yes, that’s right, sweet potato chips are a thing! You may like these better than regular chips. Pop Chips Sweet Potato chips are made with annatto for color, organic yellow corn flour, citric acid, natural flavors, sweet potato powder, maltodextrin, dried cane syrup, rice flour, sea salt, tapioca starch, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and dried sweet potato.
Santitas Totopos De Maiz Tortilla Chips
You can’t go wrong with tortilla chips, especially these from Santitas. You’ll love how simple the ingredients list is too, with only salt, sunflower oil, canola oil, corn oil, and corn on the list. The next time you have a party, you’ll know just which chips to put out for all your guests.
Ruffles All Dressed
This Ruffles variety was a favorite in Canada, growing so popular that it eventually came to international waters. The All Dressed flavor includes tastes of barbeque, ketchup, and salt and vinegar. Here are the ingredients: natural flavors, paprika extract, malic acid, sunflower oil, onion powder, garlic powder, sodium acetate, spices, monosodium glutamate, torula yeast, dextrose, salt, sodium diacetate, sugar, corn-based maltodextrin, canola oil, seasoning, corn oil, sunflower oil, and potatoes.
Kettle Brand Sea Salt & Vinegar Potato Chips
The tangy taste of Kettle Sea Salt & Vinegar chips is one you can enjoy for lunch or as a nice snack whenever the mood strikes. The ingredients consist of citric acid, maltodextrin, sea salt, white distilled vinegar, vinegar powder, canola oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, and potatoes.
Munchos Flamin’ Hot Potato Crisps
Are you in the mood for chips with a kick? Munchos’ Flamin’ Hot potato chips will certainly satisfy. At $2 a bag, what’s not to love? The ingredients for these red-hot chips are citric acid, malic acid, onion powder, sugar, sodium diacetate, natural flavorings, garlic powder, dextrose, artificial colors, green pepper powder, red pepper powder, monosodium glutamate, vinegar, aged cayenne pepper sauce, spices, yeast, salt, corn-based maltodextrin, potato starch, folic acid, riboflavin, thiamin mononitrate, niacin, ferrous sulfate, enriched cornmeal, dried potatoes, sunflower oil, canola oil, and corn oil.
Sun Chips Original
The crispy waviness of original Sun Chips can be yours to have anytime you want since these chips are vegan. The ingredients are super simple, including corn-based maltodextrin, natural flavors, salt, sugar, whole oat flour, brown rice flour, whole wheat, canola oil, sunflower oil, and whole corn.
Taco Bell Tortilla Chips
You might not be able to eat much on the menu at Taco Bell as a vegan, but their tortilla chips are vegan-safe. The Classic version of these chips is made with sea salt, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and whole-grain corn masa flour.
Taco Bell’s spicy Fire tortilla chips are fine too, as their ingredients are onion juice, natural flavors, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, citric acid, maltodextrin, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, sugar, paprika extract, beet powder, autolyzed yeast extract, tomato powder, spices, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and whole-grain corn masa flour.
Yes, the Mild Taco Bell chips are vegan too. These are the ingredients: paprika extract for color, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, jalapeno pepper powder, citric acid, onion powder, maltodextrin, garlic powder, salt, sugar, autolyzed yeast extract, tomato powder, spices, seasoning, canola oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, and whole-grain corn masa flour.
Fritos Original Corn Chips
Skip the OG Fritos on the vegan diet? Not if you don’t want to! Made with salt, corn oil, and corn, these Frito Lay chips are as uncomplicated as it gets.
Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos
The next time you get a Doritos craving, make sure you pick up the Spicy Sweet Chili chips. The ingredients are natural flavors, dextrose, disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, caramel color, spices, paprika extract, malic acid, torula yeast, garlic powder, hydrolyzed corn protein, hydrolyzed soy protein, corn-based maltodextrin, onion powder, salt, wheat, soy sauce, sodium diacetate, fructose, monosodium glutamate, sugar, salt, sunflower oil, canola oil, corn oil, and corn.
Conclusion
Chips are not a healthy part of the vegan diet, nor are they healthy on a non-vegan diet. However, one of the hardest parts of being a vegan is the struggle to eat socially. If you’re at a party and you can’t partake in the meat platter or the cheese plate, a bowl of chips is a safe option to nosh on while still following your diet. You can feel just like all the other partygoers, which can really reduce the feelings of isolation that haunt some vegans.