Dairy-free non-vegan chocolate?

[rachelepstein]

I went to the GreenFestival in Chicago yesterday.  There were lots of samples of food.  At one place that sold cacao nibs covered in dark chocolate, I had this conversation with an employee

Comments

[see_me_naked]

I once knew a German vegetarian who wouldn't eat chocolate - she swore it contained blood! .....I wonder if some European chocolates actually do, or if she was just crazy..

[reify]

Maybe she doesn't know whether the chocolate was humanely harvested.

I found a bag of raw cacao nibs last time I went to Stanley's and have been slowly making my way through it. It's intense. Coconut butter sounds like a good addition.

[rachelepstein]

you could put cacao nibs in ice cream. That would probably be yummy.

[reify]

That's an excellent idea. Sweet vanilla ice cream would contrast nicely with the intense bitter of the raw cacao.

[awibs]

I think someone told me once that some types of sugar are bleached in a process that involves animal bones, so it becomes nonvegan by merit of requiring animal product to make. Maybe that's the sort of "nonvegan" processing the chocolate rep meant?

[rachelepstein]

Yeah, refined sugar is often made with bone char. You might be right that they were thinking about something like that. But it is still strange that she couldn't be more specific about why it might not be vegan.