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Whether you are having a party or a movie night, you can’t go wrong with chips. But one challenge can be to find chips that are vegan, a lot of chips flavors today contains milk and the ingredient can be somewhat hard to spot. So, are Golden Flake chips vegan?
Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Original, Golden Flake Dip Style Original and Golden Flake Dip Style Kickin’ Dill Ranch are 100% vegan. Sweet Heat Barbecue, Hot and Mesquite Barbecue might be vegan but contains natural flavors or spices. The rest of the flavors contains milk and are not vegan.
Below is a table showing Golden Flake chips flavors and its vegan status.
| Flavor | Vegan Status |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Original | Vegan. |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Sweet Heat Barbecue | Vegan. |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Hot | Maybe, contains natural flavors & artificial colors. |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Dill Pickle | No, contains Milk. |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Sour Cream ‘N Onion | No, contains Milk. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Original | Vegan. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Kickin’ Dill Ranch | Vegan. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Mesquite Barbecue | Maybe, contains natural flavors. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Sour Cream ‘N Onion | No, contains Milk. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Cheddar & Sour Cream | No, contains Milk. |
For more vegan chips make sure to check out our article, which chips are vegan?
Golden Flake Chips Ingredients
Below are all the ingredients that I could find throughout the Golden Flake flavors.
- Artificial Colors (Yellow 6 Lake, Red 40 Lake)
- Canola oil
- Brown Sugar
- Citric Acid
- Corn Maltodextrin
- Corn oil
- Cottonseed oil
- Cultured Sour Cream
- Dextrose
- Dehydrated Parsley
- Disodium Guanylate
- Disodium Inosinate
- Extractive of Annatto
- Extractive Of Paprika
- Garlic Powder
- Lactic Acid
- Lactose
- Monosodium Glutamate
- Natural Smoke Flavor
- Natural and Artificial Flavor
- Onion Powder
- Palm oil
- Paprika
- Salt
- Sodium Caseinate
- Sodium Diacetate
- Soybean Oil
- Sesame oil
- Spices
- Sugar
- Torula Yeast
- Whey
- White Destilled Vinegar
[source]
As you can see I’ve highlighted some ingredients that we need to take a closer look at. These ingredients are either questionable or non-vegan.
Non-Vegan Ingredients
Milk
There are several ingredients derived from milk in some of the Golden Flake chips flavors.
- Lactose
- Sodium Caseinate
- Whey
- Cultured Sour Cream
These are of course not vegan since it’s made from cow’s milk.
Questionable Ingredients
Sugar
Sugar being of the most discussed topics in the vegan community is a highly questionable ingredient in the candy and snacks industry. Both the sugar and the dextrose found in Golden Flake chips have the potential of being non-vegan. There are often two popular sugar types used and that is refined cane sugar and beet sugar.
Beet sugar is 100% vegan, but refined cane sugar is a different story. Cane sugar is the most popular of the two and the problem is the production process. This often involves bleaching the cane sugar to fit the candy or snack product better and a common method is to use bone char from dead cows.
Now this causes a problem for vegans, because we don’t to exploit animals even if they are dead. So if the sugar would have used bone char in the bleaching process, that sugar would not be vegan-friendly. The only way to be sure about this is to contact the company in question.
Staying away from sugar that has been bleached with bone char does not effect the companies that much as not eating meat, eggs and milk. But some vegan still want to stay pure, and will not eat refined cane sugar.
Artificial Colors
The next controversial ingredient on the list are artificial colors. The vegan community is torn about this ingredient and I will try and explain why as good as I can. The main issue here is the animal testing that i still being conducted.
It’s old and outdated. There are several modern ways to performs tests and of them is computer simulations, which can yield great results.
I tend to stay away from artificial colors, but it’s also for health reasons. I look at this way, the day they stop the animal testing on artificial colors is the day that this ingredient can become vegan-friendly.
Natural Flavors & Spices
I’ll put natural flavors and spice under the same heading here because they share a similar problem. They are both umbrella terms, which means that companies can actually put vegan or non-vegan ingredients in these two and just call them natural flavors or spices.
This is a big problem for vegans, since we don’t want natural flavors or spices that has animal-derived ingredients in them. There are some articles on National Geographic talking about the use of butt goo from beavers as a vanilla flavor.
So think about that next you eat vanilla candy or snacks. The problem is also that the product would not need to disclose but would rather use terms like vanilla flavor, natural flavors or spices.
These ingredients are highly questionable and the only reason to be sure about its contents or origin is to contact the company and ask.
Corn & Soybean
As you might know corn and soybeans are two very common GMO crops in USA and the problem with this is the amount of herbicide used to grow these crops. This can severely damage the surrounding ecosystem and this makes a lot of ethical vegans stay away from GMO crops.
Vegan Alternative To Golden Flake Chips
Even tho Golden Flake Chips have some vegan flavors I wanted to add some more vegan chips options for you.
FAQ
Are Golden Flake Chips Vegetarian?
Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Original, Golden Flake Dip Style Original and Golden Flake Dip Style Kickin’ Dill Ranch are vegetarian. Cream ‘N Onion, Dill Pickle and Cheddar & Sour Cream are suited for Lacto- and Lacto-Ovo vegetarians. Sweet Heat Barbecue, Hot, Mesquite Barbecue might be vegetarian but contains natural flavors and spices.
| Flavor | Vegetarian Status |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Original | All Vegetarians. |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Sweet Heat Barbecue | Maybe, contains spices, natural smoke flavor. |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Hot | Maybe, contains natural flavors. |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Dill Pickle | Lacto, Lacto-Ovo. |
| Golden Flake Thin & Crispy Sour Cream ‘N Onion | Lacto, Lacto-Ovo. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Original | All Vegetarians. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Kickin’ Dill Ranch | All Vegetarians. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Mesquite Barbecue | Maybe, contains natural flavors. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Sour Cream ‘N Onion | Lacto, Lacto-Ovo. |
| Golden Flake Dip Style Cheddar & Sour Cream | Lacto, Lacto-Ovo. |
Conclusion
Knowing if a product is vegan or not, can be tough from time to time. Even tho something as obvious as chips can have animal-derived ingredients in them.
It’s great that some Golden Flake chips are vegan and I also added some more vegan options that might widen your horizon.
The most common animal-derived ingredient found in chips is Milk and it can come in many forms such as cream, cheese, lactose, whey and more. Sometimes it’s easy to miss these and that’s why I made the table in the beginning to see which flavor is vegan more quickly that looking at the ingredients label.
Thanks for reading, take care!
