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Tazo Tea is a line of teas created by Steven Smith Teamaker and sold by Starbucks. The company was founded in 1994, and was acquired by Starbucks in 1999. TAZO tea is a delicious and refreshing way to enjoy a cup of tea. TAZO teas are made with high quality ingredients and have a great taste. However, is TAZO Tea vegan?
There are many vegan flavors of TAZO tea such as Regenerative Organic Awake English Breakfast, Dream, Regenerative Organic Zen and Organic Darjeeling just to name a few. There are also many flavors that contains natural flavors, which also probably are vegan.
Below is a table showing Tazo Tea flavors and its vegan status.
| Flavor | Vegan Status |
| TAZO Regenerative Organic Awake English Breakfast | Vegan. |
| TAZO Regenerative Organic Zen | Vegan. |
| TAZO Regenerative Organic Chai | Vegan. |
| TAZO Regenerative Organic Darjeeling | Vegan. |
| TAZO Energize | Maybe, contains Natural Flavor. |
| TAZO Dream | Vegan. |
| TAZO Juniper Mint Honey | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Elderberry Blackberry | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Prickly Pear Cactus | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Calm Chamomile | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors and Riboflavin. |
| TAZO Glazed Lemon Loaf | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Awake English Breakfast | Vegan. |
| TAZO Decaf Chai | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Organic Baked Cinnamon Apple | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Pumpkin Spice Chai | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Sweet Cinnamon Spice | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Wild Sweet Orange | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors and Riboflavin. |
| TAZO Organic Darjeeling | Vegan. |
| TAZO Refresh Mint | Vegan. |
| TAZO Vanilla Bean Macaron | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO China Green Tips | Vegan. |
| TAZO Zen | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Organic Peachy Green | Vegan. |
| TAZO Iced Passion | Vegan. |
| TAZO Cucumber White | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Vanilla Caramel Chai | No contains Honey. |
| TAZO Organic Chai | Vegan. |
| TAZO Passion | Vegan. |
| TAZO Iced True Black | Vegan. |
| TAZO Green Ginger | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Earl Grey | Vegan. |
| TAZO Classic Chai | Vegan. |
| TAZO Organic Peach Cobbler | Vegan. |
| TAZO Lemon Strawberry | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Joy | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Organic Spicy Ginger | Vegan. |
| TAZO Matcha Mate Grapefruit | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
| TAZO Turmeric Bliss | Maybe, contains Natural Flavors. |
Tazo Tea Ingredients
Below is a list of ingredients from some of the flavors that I could find.
- Blackberry Leaves
- Caffeine
- Cane Sugar
- Chamomile Flowers
- Chipotle Chili Pepper
- Fennel Seed
- Grapefruit Oil
- Green Tea
- Green Tea Extract
- Guarana Seed
- Honey
- Juniper Berries
- Lavender Flowers
- Lemongrass
- Licorice Root
- Matcha
- Natural Almond Flavor
- Natural Flavors
- Natural Vanilla Flavor
- Orange Peel
- Organic Black Tea From Darjeeling
- Organic Green Tea
- Organic Lemon Oil
- Organic Lemongrass
- Organic Spear Mint
- Organic Verbena
- Panax Ginseng
- Passion Flowers
- Peppermint Leaves
- Riboflavin
- Roasted Chicory Root
- Soy Lecithin
- Spearmint Leaves
- Valerian Root
- Yerba Mate Leaves
[Source]
As always I’ve highlighted the ingredients that we need to take a closer look at.
Non-Vegan Ingredients
Honey
Honey is extracted from the bee hive and placing it with sugar instead. Exploiting bees and eating honey is not something vegans want to do.
Questionable Ingredients
Cane Sugar
This ingredient is a tough one to determine if it’s vegan or not. The issue with cane sugar is the presence of bone char, but this is only a problem if the cane sugar is refined. Cane sugar is often refined to fit the product better and in this process the sugar is also bleached.
A common method to bleach cane sugar is to use bone char from dead cows. If animals are exploited in the production process a product is often classified as non-vegan and if the cane sugar has been bleached with bone char then that sugar would be a non-vegan product.
Natural Flavor
This is an important ingredient to talk about because many TAZO tea flavors do contain natural flavor and the probability of this ingredient containing non-vegan ingredients is very small. But I still need to say maybe vegan on the flavors that contains natural flavors, because I can’t be sure.
That being sad let’s talk more about what natural flavors is. It’s an umbrella term which means that companies put whatever ingredient they wish to accomplish their taste inside natural flavors without needing to disclose all the ingredients.
They normally don’t disclose if it contains non-vegan ingredients but rather if it contains milk, and this is due to the fact that people can be allergic to milk. There is however an article on National Geographic where they disclosed that butt goo from beavers can be used in vanilla flavoring. So keep that in mind.
Riboflavin
Riboflavin can be made from both animals and plants, which makes this ingredient questionable. However since it’s tee, this ingredient it probably made from plant sources.
Soy
I need to mention soy because it a common GMO crop in USA and it comes with some environment issues. A high amount of herbicide is needed to grow GMO soy crops and this can damage the surrounding ecosystem.
There is a label called non GMO project, that ensures that that products don’t contain any GMO crops. A lot of vegans tends to choose products that has the non GMO project certification.
Conclusion
It’s amazing that so many of the TAZO tea flavors are vegan. That being said, many more flavors are probably vegan and the reason for this is that they contain an ingredient called natural flavors. The source is not disclosed, but since the product is tee, this ingredient is probably vegan.
I hope you find your favorite TAZO marked as vegan in the list in the beginning of the article.
Thanks for reading, take care!
