Veganism & Vegetarianism Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for those committed to a vegan or vegetarian lifestyle and anyone interested in learning more. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
A lot of drugs you get without prescription in a pharmacy contain lactose and gelatine. Often there are other options that contain the same active ingredient, but have different fillers (i.e. titanium dioxide instead of lactose).
What non-vegan ingredients typically occur in medicines like aspirine, paracetamol and ibuprofen? How can they be avoided?
Avoid colorants at all costs, many (if not most of them) are tested on animals. It's perfectly fine to use blandly colored drugs, it won't affect their effectiveness.
Other than those:
Gelatin: used in capsules, it's made of animal collagen.
Beeswax: usually a filler.
Stearic acid (and its derived stearates): it's a fatty acid fairly uncommon in vegetal sources. Most soaps are made with it. It might be extracted from cocoa, though, so it's not necessarily non-vegan.
Palmitic acid (and its derived palmitates): similar to stearic acid, but a lot safer because it can be extracted from soy and sunflower, which are a lot more prominent in agribusiness than cocoa.
Egg shells: also a filler.
Egg phosphatide: lubricant extracted from egg yolks.
Shellac: it's a resin produced by an Asian bug, used as a conservant. While the resin itself is excreted by the insects, the extraction process harms their natural habitat and inevitably kills many of them.
