Are Your Favorite Gummy Bears Actually Vegetarian?

A few thousand gummy bears deep and you’ve never once wondered what’s physically holding the thing together. I finally did. Genuinely regret it.

Short version: most gummy bears aren’t vegetarian. The full version involves rendered pig skin, insect byproducts, and a candy industry that counts on you never squinting at the back of the bag.

Not all bad news. A handful of brands cracked this without slaughtering anything to do it.

Eight things you should know before you tear open the next bag.

1. The Ingredient That Blows the Whole Thing Up: Gelatin

Gelatin is the structural core of every classic gummy bear. It’s also the stuff that remains after you boil pig skin and cow bones into a paste.

That satisfying rubbery snap? Collagen, extracted from animal hides through acid baths, heat rendering, and filtration. Been done the same way for 200 years.

In the US, pork is the feedstock. Full stop. Bag says “gelatin,” it’s not vegetarian. No exceptions.

2. Haribo Goldbears Are Out

I know. Gut punch. The original gummy bear, the one that defined the format, runs on pork gelatin in both the US and Germany.

Standard Goldbears are a hard no. Now here’s the weird part: Haribo’s Z!ng Sour Streamers and Sour S’ghetti lines ditch the gelatin entirely, swapping in modified starch and carnauba wax.

Same logo on both bags. Two totally different formulas. You have to read every label like it’s a rental contract.

3. Albanese “World’s Best” Aren’t, For This

Albanese earned their following through 12 flavors and a genuinely softer bite than most competitors. The gelatin situation hasn’t changed, though.

Every Albanese product is built on gelatin as the gelling base. Their True to Fruit line is dye-free, using fruit and vegetable juices for color instead of synthetic dyes, but it still runs gelatin.

Organic lettuce on a bacon cheeseburger. You follow.

4. Black Forest Is the Sneakiest One

USDA Certified Organic. Real fruit juice. Packaging that screams farmers market. This is the one that trips people up the most.

Pork gelatin. It’s in there. “Organic” and “plant-derived” are not the same certification, and Black Forest is exhibit A.

I grabbed a bag at an airport once, fully convinced I’d made the smart pick. I had not. They even fold agar-agar in to soften the texture, which makes the whole thing feel like a deliberate misdirect.

5. Three Other Animal Ingredients Most People Blow Past

Gelatin gets all the press. But there are three other things lurking on labels that most people skim right over.

Shellac shows up as “confectioner’s glaze.” It’s a resin scraped physically off the lac bug. Trolli’s Sour Brite Eggs are coated in it.

Beeswax is in Haribo’s shell coating. Carmine, ground from cochineal insects, still appears in some old-school candy lines.

Gelatin-free is not a free pass. Animal-free is the actual bar.

6. SmartSweets: Good Brand, Uneven Lineup

SmartSweets Fruity Bears are genuinely vegan. Pectin, stevia, allulose, soluble corn fiber. Nothing with a heartbeat anywhere in the formula.

Their Gummy Worms, though? Gelatin. Same brand, different supply chain entirely. I figured this out the wrong way at checkout.

SmartSweets is roughly 90% plant-based across their catalog. That remaining 10% will get you if you stop paying attention. The brand earns zero trust here. The label earns all of it.

7. The Brands That Actually Got It Right

You don’t need to grind down an animal to make a gummy bear worth eating.

Project 7 runs on pectin and organic sunflower oil. Their Watermelon-Grapefruit flavor is probably the best single vegan gummy I’ve actually eaten, and I’ve worked through a lot of them.

Surf Sweets Organic Fruity Bears are pectin-based and bone-char-free on the sugar, which matters for strict vegans. Katjes from Germany leans into a foamy, looser pectin texture that I find more interesting than the dense gelatin-style chew.

Trader Joe’s Scandinavian Swimmers are the sleeper pick. Vegan, cheap, at every TJ’s location in the country.

8. The Texture Gap Is Real. It’s Also Shrinking Fast.

Vegan gummies don’t chew like gelatin ones. That’s not opinion, it’s material science. Gelatin melts at body temperature. Pectin holds its structure.

Plant-based gummies fracture faster and skip the snap-back. You get a softer, shorter bite. I know most people call this a dealbreaker, but I’ve had genuinely better luck with the newer pectin-starch blends coming out of SmartSweets and Katjes.

The gap in 2026 is nowhere near what it was in 2023. Nostalgia > objectivity. That’s just how this works.

The Label Doesn’t Lie. You Just Don’t Read It.

Most gummy bears contain animal products. That’s the state of play. The candy industry has no reason to make this obvious, so they don’t.

But the plant-based options have caught up enough that you’re not taking a consolation prize anymore. Project 7, Surf Sweets, Katjes, SmartSweets Fruity Bears, TJ’s Swimmers — all of them hold up.

You just can’t grab whatever bag has the fun design and assume you’re good. Flip it over. That’s literally all you have to do.

Ten seconds.