Which E-numbers are not vegan?

E-numbers are the European Union’s codes for permitted food additives. The code identifies the substance and its function, but for a vegan the question is where it came from, and the code alone often does not say. This article goes through the additives whose origin changes a vegan verdict, grouped by how certain the answer is. It is drawn from the small table Bitewise consults when it finds an E-number on a label, which in turn is built from the EU’s additives regulation (Regulation 1333/2008, Annex II), the UK Food Standards Agency’s additive guidance, and the Vegan Society’s and Vegetarian Society’s listings.

A note on scope first. This is deliberately not the whole E100 to E1520 range. Most additives are synthetic or plant-derived and irrelevant to a vegan; listing them would add rows nobody reads. The table only contains additives where origin actually matters for one of the diets the app checks, and this article covers the vegan-relevant part of it.

Always animal-derived: avoid

These are made from animals every time, whatever the brand. If one is on the label, the product is not vegan.

Code	Name	What it is
E120	Cochineal, carminic acid, carmine	A red colour made from cochineal insects.
E441	Gelatine	A gelling agent from animal collagen; the source animal is rarely stated.
E542	Bone phosphate	An anti-caking agent made from animal bone.
E901	Beeswax	A glazing agent produced by bees.
E904	Shellac	A glazing agent made from resin secreted by the lac insect. Common on shiny sweets and some fruit.
E913	Lanolin	A glazing agent from sheep wool grease.
E1105	Lysozyme	A preservative extracted from egg white, found in some cheeses.

E120 deserves a special mention because it is the one most often missed. It appears in red and pink confectionery, some yoghurts and drinks, and is sometimes printed as “carmine” or “natural red 4” rather than as a number. It is an insect product every time.

Depends on the manufacturer: caution

This is the long list, and it is where a simple yes-or-no answer would be dishonest. Each of these can be made from plant or animal sources, the label almost never says which, and the only way to know is the manufacturer.

Emulsifiers and fatty-acid derivatives. The fat can be plant or animal.

• E471 mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids
• E472 esters of mono- and diglycerides
• E570 stearic acid and fatty acids
• E572 magnesium stearate
• E481 sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate
• E491 sorbitan monostearate
• E432 polysorbate 20 and E433 polysorbate 80

E471 is the one you will see most. It is in bread, margarine, ice cream, biscuits and countless other products, and in most of them it is plant-derived, but “most” is not “all” and the label does not distinguish.

Flavour enhancers.

• E631 disodium inosinate: often made from meat or fish, sometimes from tapioca.
• E627 disodium guanylate: may be produced from fish or yeast.
• E635 disodium 5’-ribonucleotides: a blend of the two above, so it inherits the doubt.

Others.

• E920 L-cysteine, a flour treatment agent: can be made from feathers, hair or bristles, or by fermentation.
• E422 glycerol: may come from animal fat, and is sometimes carried in alcohol.
• E640 glycine: may be produced from animal gelatine.
• E153 vegetable carbon: usually plant-based, but bone char has been used.
• E966 lactitol, a sweetener: made from lactose, which comes from milk.
• E304 ascorbyl palmitate: the palmitate may come from animal fat.
• E160a carotenes and E161b lutein: plant-derived colours, but the carrier they are dissolved in may be gelatine or dairy.

The last pair is a useful reminder that even an unambiguously plant-derived substance can arrive in an animal-derived carrier. The colour is vegan; the preparation may not be.

Misleading names: usually fine

Several additives sound animal-derived and normally are not. These are the ones people avoid unnecessarily.

• E270 lactic acid, E325 sodium lactate, E326 potassium lactate, E327 calcium lactate. Despite the “lact-” in the name, these are normally made by fermenting plant sugars, not from milk.
• E330 citric acid. Made by fermentation, not from citrus fruit, and not from animals.
• E621 monosodium glutamate. Made by fermentation; not animal-derived.
• E300 ascorbic acid. Vitamin C. Not animal-derived.
• E100 curcumin. From turmeric.
• E252 potassium nitrate. Used to cure meat, so it appears on meat products, but the additive itself is not animal-derived.

Bitewise leaves these alone: they carry no vegan flag in its table, so their presence does not lower a verdict.

How Bitewise applies this

When the app reads a label it pulls E-numbers out of the ingredient text, however they are written: “E471”, “e 471”, “(E471)”, “E-471”, or “INS 471” on a label from outside Europe. A bare “471” with no prefix is deliberately ignored, because those digits appear in weights and batch codes far more often than as an additive. Suffix letters are respected, because E160a and E160b are different substances.

Each code found is looked up in the table above, and the result can only ever make a verdict stricter. An “avoid” additive on a vegan check produces an avoid verdict with the additive named as the culprit. A “caution” additive produces a caution with the note explaining why it depends. If the model that read the label was already more cautious, for example because it saw an explicit “contains gelatine” line, the table does not override it downward.

The reason this is a fixed table rather than left to the model is stated in the app’s own source: the answer for E120 is the same every time and should not depend on which model happened to answer, and “it depends on the manufacturer” is a fact a model under pressure to be helpful tends to round away. A table cannot be talked out of it.

What the table cannot do

It cannot tell you which manufacturer’s E471 is plant-derived. Nobody’s label can; only the manufacturer can, and if the answer matters to you, that is who to ask. It does not cover certification marks, though a clearly printed vegan mark on the packaging is evidence the model can see and weigh. And it is not a substitute for reading the list yourself, particularly for the ambiguous words that have no number at all: “natural flavours”, “vegetable fat”, enzymes. There is more on those in How to read an ingredient label abroad.

Bitewise is informational and not medical or dietary advice. Where a mistake would matter, check with the manufacturer.