A closeup of yeast under a microscope<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThere really seems to be little debate, as said, but there do exist a very small number of people who avoid yeast on ethical grounds, namely “Level 5 vegans”. The term \u201cLevel 5 vegan\u201d is largely used in jest but the strictest of the strictest (of the strictest!) vegans may argue that as yeast is a living ingredient it is not right to consume it.<\/p>\n
It’s Alive, But It’s Not an Animal<\/h3>\n
Yeast is everywhere – in the air and in our bodies. Bacteria are also alive, as are plants, but just \u201cbeing alive\u201d doesn\u2019t make something an animal. Whether or not something is an animal is at the heart of whether or not it is vegan friendly, and yeast is a fungus. Not an animal.<\/p>\n
Scientists classify the world in various ways and the key distinction here is that whilst cats, dogs, pigs, chickens and so on belong to the Animalia kingdom, yeast belongs to the world of Fungi. The former are, scientifically speaking, animals, whilst yeast is most definitely not.<\/p>\n
Yeasts are single-celled organisms that reside in the Eukaryote domain. We cannot say it any more clearly: they are not animals and therefore not subject to the ethical concerns of veganism. Whilst many breads, wines and sweet delights, such as Panettone, may not be vegan, it isn\u2019t down to yeast. So, all in all, yeast is one less thing all vegans need to concern themselves with!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":197,"template":"","tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/is_it_vegan\/115"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/is_it_vegan"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/is_it_vegan"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/is_it_vegan\/115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}