About Princess Tofu

Princess Tofu is a friendly, in-depth guide to vegan living. We check which products and fast-food menu items are vegan, explain the animal-derived ingredients that hide in everyday food, and publish practical cooking guides and the vegan recipes we cook at home in Ireland. Whether you're new to eating vegan or have been at it for years, the aim is the same: clear, sourced answers you can act on.

Who writes Princess Tofu

Philippe

Philippe writes the "is it vegan?" verdicts and the ingredient guides. He reads ingredient panels and manufacturers' own product pages, notes the date of every review, and updates pages when a recipe changes. Outside the site he teaches yoga.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth develops the recipes. She cooks and tests every one in her kitchen in rural Ireland, where she also grows and forages much of what she cooks. Her recipes use ingredients you can find in an ordinary supermarket.

How we decide whether something is vegan

A product is vegan on this site when none of its listed ingredients comes from an animal. We follow the usual definition: no meat, fish, dairy, eggs, honey, gelatin, insect-derived ingredients (carmine, shellac) or animal-derived additives such as lanolin-based vitamin D3.

A product gets it depends (or some) when only some versions or flavors are vegan, or when an important ingredient could come from an animal and the maker won't say which. Minor ingredients that are almost always plant-based in practice, such as natural flavors in candy, don't change a verdict on their own. When we've made that call, the ingredient table on the page says so.

We also flag grey areas that some vegans avoid and others accept:

• Sugar that may have been filtered with bone char. None of the bone char ends up in the sugar, but some vegans avoid it anyway. Read more.
• Palm oil, which is plant-based but linked to deforestation.
• Artificial colors such as Red 40, which contain no animal ingredients but have been tested on animals.

We note these on each page but don't count them against a product's verdict, because most vegans eat them and the choice is yours.

"May contain milk" warnings are about shared equipment, not ingredients. We note them because they matter for allergies, but a product with a may-contain warning can still be vegan.

How often we re-check

Every verdict shows the month we last reviewed it. We re-check product pages at least once a year, and sooner when a reader tells us about a change or a company announces a new recipe. Most verdicts are for the US version of a product. Where the UK or Irish version is different, we say so on the page.

Report a recipe change

If a label you're holding doesn't match what we say, tell us the product, the country you bought it in and, if you can, a photo of the ingredient list. Email hello@princesstofu.com or use our contact page, and we'll re-check the page and credit you if you'd like.

What we don't do

We don't accept payment for verdicts, and a brand can't buy a "yes". If we ever add affiliate links, we'll label them on the page. Nothing on this site is medical or allergy advice: if you have a food allergy, always read the pack.