Is Malic Acid (E296) 100% Vegan-Friendly?
Malic Acid is listed on many packaged foods, but is also naturally occurring in many fruits and vegetables, but is Malic Acid always Vegan?
To put it simply — YES.
Malic Acid is always vegan-friendly as while it can technically be derived from animal-sources that recently ate vegetables/fruits, it is in practice literally never derived in such a way. If it’s in a packaged food it’s definitely from fruits like apples/cherries or blackberries — or more likely from one of the various vegetable-sources.
Is Malic Acid Safe or Healthy?
Malic Acid isn’t particularly healthy, but it’s definitely not unhealthy or unsafe to consume. You shouldn’t worry about consuming it in normal everyday cases, although I wouldn’t supplement it as you won’t get a real benefit from it in most cases.
With that being said you can have malic acid powder to use as a “seasoning” to make sweet treats sour or to make no-sugar drinks taste better.
What Even Is Malic Acid?
Malic Acid is simply an extracted compound from plants that give certain fruits/vegetables a sour taste.
Malic Acid is also known as E296 in Europe and many places outside of North America where they use a E-number system to categorize such food compounds as Malic Acid. In other words, like Malic Acid E296 is Always 100% Vegan Friendly.