What Are Vegan Cookies?

To best clarify what a vegan cookie is, its best to look at what it means to be vegan in the first place.

The term "vegan" was first coined in the 1940s by the Vegan Society founded by Donald Watson. Basically a vegan is a term for people who choose not to eat any animal products at all. Vegans refrain from consuming eggs, dairy products, and honey even though no animal has directly died for that food. In comparison, vegetarians do not consume animals, but will eat eggs, dairy products, and honey, which are products made by animals. Vegans also dont use silk, wool, fur, leather, and cosmetics and soaps derived from animal products.

So a vegan cookie simply follows the guidelines of a vegan diet. A true vegan cookie should not contain any ingredients that involve or have ever involved any animal product, by-product, or derivative. This can be difficult as many processed foods often include hidden animal by-products. Vegan cookies can also be tasty treats for non-vegans. People who have allergies or intolerances to milk and eggs can benefit since these ingredients are always left out of any vegan cookie.

With this in mind there are cookies that may be considered vegan but may still have ingredients that arent healthy, even though vegan foods in general are associated with being healthy. Besides having just vegan friendly ingredients, the sweeteners and other elements of the cookie must contain healthy alternatives to make it a healthy cookie that is vegan.

In healthy vegan cookies high-fructose corn syrup and refined white sugar are replaced with healthier sweeteners like date sugar, pure maple syrup, or agave nectar to name a few. Honey, which is an alternative sweetener in regular healthy cookies, is never used in vegan cookies since this is considered a form of exploitation of, and cruelty to, the animal kingdom by vegans. Flours such as whole wheat flour, oat flour, spelt flour, or brown rice flour replaces less healthy bleached white flour and refined white flour commonly found in regular cookies, both vegan and non-vegan alike. Healthy vegan cookies are not only made up of healthier flours and natural sweeteners, but usually contain less sodium and often contain organic or all natural ingredients as well.

Vegan cookies are becoming more popular. Not only do many mainstream grocery stores and bakeries carry vegan cookies now, but there are cookie manufacturers such as Lauras Wholesome Junk Food that bake only vegan cookies.