Vegan Gifting Guide

Whether you’re a vegan building your holiday wishlist, or somebody shopping for a vegan friend or family member, there are many things to consider that you may not expect when it comes to selecting gifts that are suitable for vegans.

The first year of being fully vegan can bring some awkward conversations as the people in your life adjust to new “rules”, especially if they have known you for a while.

Many conversations like this as a vegan tend to center around what you can and can’t eat, but there are also animal-derived components in many things that aren’t food that will need to be considered. This could be things like kitchen equipment, gym equipment, clothing, and more.

The golden rule here is really, “when in doubt, just ask”. This can be questions about food, clothing, or any other materials or items that may incorporate animal products.

Early in your vegan journey, you may find that people will get defensive if you frame these conversations as “vegans don’t do that” or “vegans can’t have that”. I find that it is typically more productive to just say something like “these are things that I don’t use anymore”.

Many of these things are tricky for even long-time vegans to navigate, so it will definitely be easy for people to get tripped up if they aren’t familiar with the details.

Things to Avoid (or Double-Check) When Buying Gifts for Vegans

Learning all the details of what things are made from animal-derived projects can be pretty complicated and take a lot of practice and experience. There are some common things to look out for though that will be a strong indicator that an item is not suitable for vegans.

Food

The main things to avoid in food are the more obvious ones:

• Dairy
• Eggs
• Butter
• Meat

You may run into gifts with these ingredients where things like family food traditions or having bakers in the family are concerned.

If your family has been sending each other cookies for years before you were a vegan, they may not even consider that they may have milk in them and might no longer be appropriate.

Likewise, if you have home bakers or confectioners in your family that are used to making a treat to give out as gifts, they may not even stop to think that there are some non-vegan ingredients in them. Then, everybody involved will be sad when they give you something that you can’t eat, and that they worked very hard on.

You will often see milk or eggs included in an allergen list if a product contains it, so that one line on the label can help eliminate a lot of unsuitable options. Some less obvious things to check the ingredient list for are:

• Honey: sneaks its way into many things. Even candied nuts sometimes have honey.
• Gelatin: marshmallows, jelly beans, gummies, etc. will often have gelatin
• Shellac: any kind of “shiny” candy, like Lemonheads, is likely to have shellac

Another one that shows up a lot around the holidays, especially as stocking stuffers, is store-bought candy. The majority of a standard candy aisle at the grocery store is unfortunately not vegan.

However, some brands do have vegan options like:

• Trupo Treats (fully vegan!)
• Unreal
• Reese's plant-based cups
• Hershey's plant-based chocolate bar

Clothing

Luckily, most clothing is pretty good about listing their materials, but there are several common clothing materials that are animal-derived products.

The main ones to avoid are:

• Leather: patches, wallets, belts, etc.
• Fur
• Suede
• Wool
• Silk
• Down/feathers: most common in jackets

One special note about shoes. Some otherwise non-leather shoes have leather upper sections and also use non-vegan glues. Unfortunately, unless the company specifically lists vegan shoes, which is not common, it can be very difficult to get accurate information in all the materials used in a particular shoe.

Home-Made Gifts / Arts and Crafts

Family members who are into arts and crafts often hand-make gifts to give out to their loved ones. You should be aware of non-vegan materials that could be used for these, like alpaca yarn and wool.

Stick with yarns that are vegan-friendly like acrylic, cotton, or bamboo. Leather should also be avoided here.

Home Goods

This category is short but important around the holidays:

• Candles: beeswax isn’t vegan, but soy candles are common
• Throw pillows and comforters with down feathers
• Wool blankets

Personal Care

Cosmetics and other personal care items are a bit of a minefield for trying to find vegan options. You will want to look for cruelty-free and vegan labeling on these items individually.

Keep in mind that cruelty-free does not necessarily mean vegan, it just means they don’t test on animals. The product itself could still contain animal-derived ingredients.

Look for cruelty-free or vegan labels on products like:

• Cosmetics
• Hair care
• Soaps

Cruelty-free ≠ Vegan

This one probably won’t come up in the gifting context unless it’s for a gag gift or just somebody you don’t like, but a lot of toilet paper also isn’t technically vegan because it uses gelatin.

Lesser Known Things

Musical instruments sometimes have non-vegan components. For example, some guitar strings are made from animal intestines instead of metals or nylon. Luckily, the “gut strings” have largely been replaced by new technology, so they are actually expensive and difficult to find. You may also need to confirm that equipment like drums do not use leather.

Notebooks, journals, and sometimes even normal books can have leather covers, but those are usually a little easier to spot due to their higher price tag. If you’re getting a fancy premium notebook or journal to track your gym progress or anything else, just make sure it doesn’t use leather.

There is also an online shop called Vegan America that is a marketplace of various vegan brands and products that have been vetted to be 100% vegan. This helps take a lot of the guesswork out of shopping for vegan items. I haven’t actually used this shop since I recently learned about it, but it’s an awesome concept!

Some online brands like Sephora will also let you sort their catalog by vegan and cruelty-free.

Good Things to Buy for a Vegan (or yourself)

Now that you know what to avoid, you may still not quite know what to get a vegan for a gift. To try to make that a little easier, we’ve put together a list of the types of things that, we think, make great gifts, including some specific things that we own and have tried.

Some of these will be more affordable, but a few of them may be pricier. The more expensive things here are high quality and reliable based on our experience.

Some links in this section are affiliate links. That means that we may earn a commission if you buy through the links, at no extra cost to you.

Kitchen Equipment

Before we get into the kitchen equipment, let’s cover the golden rule:

Don't buy your wife kitchen things (or a vacuum) without her enthusiasm

Now that that is out of the way, here are some things you might think about getting for a vegan that spends a lot of their time in the kitchen.

Blending, Chopping, and Grinding

Since we will be working with countless vegetables in the kitchen for vegan meals, you will save a lot of time by using some of these tools to prepare those ingredients.

I recommend at least having:

• Food processor
• A good blender: We recommend Vitamix, which is pricey but worth it
• A good set of knives

For the blender, you can go with less expensive options, but I really think spending the extra money on a Vitamix is worth it if you can swing it. I always assumed they were just marketing hype, but they really do make a difference in the smoothness and texture of some ingredients after they are blended.

One good example is when trying to blend cashews for cashew queso. Most blenders end up with it being a little gritty, but the Vitamix makes it very smooth like normal queso.

Another common example is that you can make hummus from canned chickpeas without peeling them if you’re using a high-powered enough blender, which can save a lot of peeling time.

A couple of other bonus options in this category are:

• Immersion blender
• Vegetable grater
• Slap-chop
• Spice grinder

The immersion blender is a nice quick tool for things like sauces and dressings so you don’t have to pull out a whole blender and then have to clean it too.

A wooden cutting board can also be a great option. Some non-vegans tend to shy away from wooden cutting boards because they worry about raw meat contamination. If you’re not prepping raw meat, that specific concern is reduced.

With a wooden board, you can avoid using plastic boards that may embed some plastic in your food. There are also glass cutting boards, but those can be awkward and slippery if you aren’t used to them.

Baking

You may have seen the high-protein vegan baked goodies that Protein Deficient Vegan makes. She has a lot of recipes for muffins, cookies, and bread that are protein packed alternatives for the more traditional version of these baked goods. If you’re making something like these recipes, then it may be helpful to have some standard baking equipment handy in your kitchen.

Some tools that can be useful for baking are:

• Stand mixer: especially for dough
• Air Fryer or copper crisping tray
• Dutch oven (very expensive)

KitchenAid makes great stand mixers, and they are extremely reliable and robust. You could also use a hand mixer, which is much cheaper, but if you do a lot of mixing you will probably wish you had a stand mixer.

A Dutch oven can be expensive, but there are also more affordable options. We’ve only baked bread in ours, and it turned out the same in an expensive one and a cheaper one, so I’m not sure if there is any real benefit to spending more on these.

Specialty

One newer product that has been growing in popularity is the Ninja Creami. This is a home ice cream maker, but it has also been discussed a lot in online fitness communities because people have been using them to make protein ice cream!

I don’t have any specific recipes to recommend, but we have tried some things on our own with our Creami that turned out pretty well! As long as you follow the “rules” in the instruction manual, you can experiment pretty freely with additions and mix-ins in your ice cream, including protein powder.

Something else that is pretty cool is a home herb growing stand like an Aerogarden. If you can actually use the herbs as fast as they grow here, you will save a lot of money over the long run, and you’ll always have fresh herbs.

Random Vegan Fun Things

Here are some random things that vegans may appreciate as a gift if you can’t find any specific items that seem to be a good match:

• Subscription to VegNews
• Vegan cheese box subscription
• Vegan snack or beauty box subscription
• Donate to an animal sanctuary (for the right kind of person)
• Fun vegan shirts/stickers

Wrapping It Up

Whether you are shopping for a somebody else or grabbing deals for yourself, there are plenty of vegan-friendly options.

You may need to check some materials or find brands that are more vegan friendly and more clearly labeled. Hopefully, this guide helps you navigate some of those options and lets you know what you should be on the lookout for.