How accurate is the is-vegan library for checking ingredients?

It's highly accurate for common ingredients due to its curated list from reputable vegan sources, but may miss new or regional items, so manual verification is advised for critical uses.

Is is-vegan better than other vegan ingredient checkers like vegan API services?

Is-vegan is open-source and free, ideal for simple text-based checks, while paid services might offer more features or real-time updates, making it a cost-effective but limited alternative.

How to add custom ingredients to is-vegan?

Submit a pull request to update the JSON files in the i18n directory, following the README steps to maintain alphabetical order and language alignment for translations.

Can is-vegan handle ingredient lists in multiple languages at once?

No, you must set the language using setIngredientsLanguage before checking, as shown in examples; it doesn't support mixed-language lists out of the box.

Is is-vegan suitable for high-traffic commercial apps?

It's lightweight but may not scale well for high-throughput needs without caching, as the static database requires manual updates and lacks enterprise support.

How does is-vegan deal with flagged ingredients like glycine?

Flagged ingredients are returned separately in the checkIngredients method, indicating they may be vegan or non-vegan and require further investigation by users.

Open-Awesome

is-vegan

MITTypeScript

A JavaScript library that identifies vegan and non-vegan food ingredients using a comprehensive database.

GitHub

490 stars34 forks0 contributors

What is is-vegan?

Is-Vegan is a JavaScript library that helps identify whether food ingredients are vegan or non-vegan. It uses a curated database of over 850 non-vegan ingredients to analyze ingredient lists, supporting multiple languages and providing clear results. It solves the problem of manually checking ingredient labels for animal-derived components.

Target Audience

Developers building applications related to food, nutrition, or product labeling, such as recipe apps, food databases, or ingredient analysis tools. It's also useful for vegan-focused platforms that need automated ingredient verification.

Value Proposition

Developers choose Is-Vegan for its simplicity, multi-language support, and comprehensive database sourced from reputable vegan organizations. It offers a lightweight, open-source alternative to manual research or proprietary APIs.

Overview

Is-Vegan helps you to find out which food ingredients are vegan / non-vegan

Use Cases

Best For

Building vegan recipe apps that filter non-vegan ingredients
Creating food product scanners for ingredient analysis
Developing nutrition or diet-tracking tools with vegan filters
Integrating ingredient checking into e-commerce food platforms
Adding vegan verification features to health and wellness apps
Supporting multi-language ingredient databases in food applications

Not Ideal For

Projects requiring legally certified vegan verification for product labeling
Real-time food scanning apps that need integrated OCR or image recognition
Applications processing highly scientific or chemical ingredient nomenclature

Pros & Cons

Pros

Multi-Language Ingredient Support

Supports five languages (English, Italian, Spanish, French, German) via ISO 639-1 codes, enabling international ingredient checking as demonstrated in the usage examples.

Comprehensive and Sourced Database

Based on over 850 entries curated from reputable vegan sources like veganpeace and PETA, providing a reliable foundation for accuracy.

Simple and Clear API

Offers intuitive methods such as isVeganIngredient and checkIngredients with structured JSON outputs, making integration straightforward for developers.

Open-Source and Extensible

The ingredient lists are open for updates and translations via pull requests, fostering community contribution and ongoing improvement.

Cons

Static and Manual Updates

The database is static and requires manual pull requests for new ingredients or translations, which can lag behind new food products or trends.

Limited to Curated Lists

Relies solely on pre-defined lists, so it cannot handle ambiguous or novel ingredient names without human intervention, lacking AI or machine learning capabilities.

Complex Translation Process

Adding new languages requires maintaining line-by-line alignment with English lists, as per the updating steps, which is error-prone and cumbersome for contributors.

Frequently Asked Questions

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