Can vegans eat sugar refined with bone char?!

I'm vegan, and I occasionally eat things containing white sugar. It's pretty much impossible to know if it was refined using bone char unless you call the company, and even then sometimes they don't know, or they'll just tell you what they think you want to hear. I try to avoid it as much as possible, though, both for that reason and just for health reasons. I usually just eat things that are as close to their natural state as possible.

Vegans do not. It seems to me that your problem is twofold-you want the label without doing the extra work it may entail and have a poor grasp of proper nutrition. You buy juice with added sugar and don't make your own pasta sauce? Or nut butter? Although you can buy natural nut butters without added sugars in any large grocery store these days.
If you want to buy processed food you are at the mercy of the processor. Eat closer to nature and you problem will automatically be solved.

Sugar refined through bone charcoal is not Vegan. Therefore, Vegans will avoid sugar unless they know that it is not refined through bone charcoal (meaning most store-bought items containing sugar).
Beet sugar is never refined through bone charcoal; cane sugar is the issue.
If you need sugar for baking/cooking, try Wholesome Sweeteners. They have refined, unrefined, and powdered and their refining methods do not involve bone charcoal.

Forget titles and what others think of you. Do what makes you happy.

So come to the UK - all sugars are vegan.
None have ever been processed with bone char.

Sugar comes from two different plants - the beet sugar plant and the cane sugar plant. Neither types of sugar contain any animal ingredients, but depending on how you define the word "vegan" may depend on which brand of sugar you choose to eat.

It is all down to the refining process of sugar that may make a difference to you.

Cane sugar processing methods takes place in two stages - the sugar mill and the refinery. The fining process of cane sugar can involve the use of bone charcoal - also called bone black, ivory black, animal charcoal or abaiser - which is used to remove the colour and impurities in the sugar. The charcoal is sometimes derived from animal bone, which may be an issue for some vegans. If this is a concern for you, then you have a few choices.

The production of sugar from the sugar beet plant uses an ion based transfer process, so bone char is not used.

According to various sources, beet and cane sugar are nutritionally equivalent and taste more or less the same as they are both composed of sucrose. The production and sale of both sugar types are also roughly equal.

Most sugar brands do not label their products as being either from cane or beet so you may need to contact the manufacturer. If they say that their sugar is from the sugar cane plant, ask them if they still use bone char in the refining process.

You could also use Turbinado and Sucanat sugars as they are not refined to the same extent of whitening which uses bone char. Other options include maple sugar, date sugar, brown rice syrup, agave syrup (which I love), malt syrup and concentrated fruit juices.

Another option would be to use sugar which is organic. Organic sugars are only milled and do not go through the refining process which involves the bone char filtering method.

Brown sugar is refined white sugar with molasses added which gives it the brown colour. You may or may not consider it vegan depending on if the white sugar is cane sugar and where it was refined.

Fructose sugar may or may not be refined using bone char depending on the manufacturer.

Supermarket own brands of sugar buy their sugar from several different refineries, so there is no way of knowing whether it is vegan or not - unless they label it as such. I have noticed that some supermarkets here in the UK (Sainsbury's) do label their sugar if it is vegan.

So, if you are using beet sugar or organic sugar, you do not need to worry. If you are using cane sugar, you may want to contact the company to see which refining process they use.

If you consider sugar to be non vegan due to the processing method - then you could consider other products to be unsuitable as well.

For example, in many areas bone char is used to remove fluoride from water.

It is also used to refine crude oil in the production of petroleum jelly.

general

Ok, you are freaking out for no reason regarding processed foods, at least if you live in the US. Almost all American packaged foods (such as Skippy peanut butter and Prego pasta sauce) are sweetened with High Fructose Corn Syrup, which is completely vegan and although it gets a bad rap lately it's no different than any other sugar. The reason we use HFCS in the US instead of cane sugar is because the US produces tons and tons of corn so it's cheaper than cane or beet sugar. Speaking of beet sugar, it is never refined with bone char and is usually cheaper than cane sugar too.

To answer your question though, many vegans don't worry too much about the bone char issue. It is made from found bones so it's not a bi-product of the slaughter industry and it's actually not legal to be collected within the US. Many sugars are not even made with it, only cane sugar is and only some brands of cane sugar. Using bone char to refine sugar is more expensive than other methods thus it is being phased out. So just chill out - you can get beet sugar and don't sweat the packaged items because it's a 99% chance it was made with HFCS and not cane sugar anyway.