Sprinkles and Soy

Hello! Welcome to Beyond Soy!

A familiar theme on this blog could be described as “foods that surprisingly contain soy”. We’ve previously discussed chocolate, tea, and cough drops as some of the oddest places we’ve found soy (in the form of soy lecithin in all three places). Here is one more food to add to the list: sprinkles.

IMAGE VIA PIXABAY

Some types of sprinkles contain soy lecithin! Smaller crystals or spheres are soy-free, but sprinkles that are thicker cylinders or other shapes usually contain soy. It can be helpful to check the ingredient label before buying sprinkles, but it is also possible to identify the soy-free options just by looking at them: if it looks like a “big” sprinkle then it probably contains soy lecithin because an emulsifier is needed to keep larger sprinkles together and the most commonly used emulsifier is soy lecithin. If you are concerned about identifying soy-free sprinkles, quiz yourself in the grocery store until you have a good sense for which sprinkles are soy-free and which should be avoided.

Sprinkles don’t usually cause us to avoid a food that is otherwise soy-free (more often than not, the baked good they are on is already questionable). This time of year sprinkles appear most frequently on Christmas cookies, but they can crop up on treats throughout the year (think donuts and ice cream). It’s always okay to brush the sprinkles off if you think they contain soy—don’t let them limit your enjoyment of a tasty dessert!