Is Nesquik Vegan? 3 Delicious Alternatives

To determine whether any type of product is vegan or not, you’d have to investigate the ingredients. Do they contain any animal products? Nesquik powder is a common favourite amongst kids who prefer chocolate, or strawberry milk over regular milk. Available in various forms, and flavours, a childhood favourite, but is Nesquik vegan?

Table of Contents

• What is Nesquik?
• What are the Ingredients in Nesquik Powder?
• Is Chocolate Vegan?
• Nesquik Powder Non-Vegan Ingredients
  • Sugar
  • Biotin
  • Natural Flavours
• Is Nestle Dairy Free?
• Can Vegans Have Nesquik?
• Nesquik Milk
• Are any Nesquik Products Vegan?
• Other Nesquik Products
• Vegan Alternatives to Nesquik
• Healthy Vegan Alternatives to Nesquik Powder
  • Ghirardelli Hot Cocoa Mix
  • Coconut Cloud
  • Castle Kitchen
• Vegan Milkshakes
  • Strawberry Vegan protein Shake
  • Banana Vegan Milkshake
  • Chocolate Vegan Milkshake
• So is Nesquik Vegan
• FAQs

What is Nesquik?

Nesquik was made by Nestle in Switzerland in 1948, it’s a drink mix powder to flavour milk. Initially marketed towards children to encourage them to drink enough milk and getting nutrients and minerals, as well as fortified with vitamins. Coming in a variety of flavours worldwide, the most popular being strawberry, chocolate and banana.

What are the Ingredients in Nesquik Powder?

Here’s a quick breakdown of all the ingredients found in Nesquik’s chocolate powder:

• Sugar
• Cocoa pressed with alkali
• Soy lecithin
• Carrageenan
• Salt
• Natural flavours
• Spice
• Sodium ascorbate (vitamin C)
• Iron
• Niacinamide
• Zinc oxide
• Thiamine hydrochloride
• Copper gluconate
• Manganese sulphate
• Biotin

Nesquik strawberry powder:

• Sugar
• Beet juice concentrate (for colour)
• Less than 2% of artificial flavour
• Citric acid
• Salt

Nesquik Banana Powder:

• Sugar
• Maltodextrin
• Natural flavouring
• Vitamins C and D
• Colours: Carotenes

Is Chocolate Vegan?

Most chocolate is made with dairy, but chocolate ultimately requires cocoa beans and sugar, that are grown from cocoa trees. As long as you don’t add dairy to the chocolate-making process, you can have hot chocolate, or vegan chocolate plant milk without breaking your diet.

Nesquik Powder Non-Vegan Ingredients

A quick peek at the above ingredients listed for this powdered beverage doesn’t instantly label Nesquik powder as not suitable for vegans. However there are a few of these ingredients that can be problematic such as:

• Sugar
• Biotin
• Natural Flavours

Sugar

Firstly, many assume that all sugars are vegan, unfortunately that cannot be more further from the truth. While sugar is natural or plant-based product, some companies create sugar using materials like bone char. Bone char is made from charred cattle bones, much like the name suggests. Consequently, any sugar filtered into a fine, powdery texture using bone char, is non-vegan. Any type of animal suffering eliminates the products chances of being vegan friendly.

Biotin

Biotin is a natural protein that survive in plant-based sources like nuts and seeds. Your body acquires a certain amount of biotin to properly maintain its organs, skin cells and more. However, biotin can also be harvested from animal sources including eggs, dairy, meat and fish.

Natural Flavours

Natural flavours don’t necessarily mean that they have been extracted from natural products. They can mean anything from animal-based or plant-based flavour agents. It’s hard to determine whether manufactured like Nestle often add animal ingredients to their products, because these products will not be categorised as non-vegan.

Is Nestle Dairy Free?

With mostly natural ingredients, the new Nesquik is a source of plant-based protein, naturally lactose-free and certified by the vegan society.

Can Vegans Have Nesquik?

Unfortunately, Nesquik isn’t vegan friendly, despite dancing around the ingredients used to create this seemingly magical powder, it is actually fortified with vitamin D, and this comes from lanolin, which is obtained from sheep’s wool. As this is a by-product of animals, Nesquik isn’t vegan.

Nesquik Milk

Nesquik strawberry, and chocolate milk, contains 100% real milk. The only Nesquik products that can be described as vegan are the Nesquik syrups and the All Natural Cocoa Powder. The syrups are available in strawberry and chocolate flavours, though they aren’t widely available in the UK. They can be added to vegan milk, to make a drink or used as a desert sauce.

Are any Nesquik Products Vegan?

Technically the ingredients found in Nesquik syrups are vegan-friendly, that being said there are plenty of ingredients you might want to avoid.

• Nesquik All Natural Cocoa Powder: Raw cane sugar, fat reduced cocoa powder, emulsifier, natural flavoiuring, cinnamon
• Chocolate Syrup: Sugar, water, cocoa pressed with Alkali, less than 2% salt, citric acid, artificial flavour, potassium sorbate, xanthan gum, caramel colour, red 40, blue 1, yellow 6
• Strawberry Syrup: Sugar, water, corn syrup less than 2% malic acid, propylene glycol alginate, artificial flavour, potassium sorbate, xanthan gum, red 40, blue 1, salt, yellow 6.

Ingredients like corn syrup, malic acid, soya lecithin, potassium sorbate, and xanthan gum are essentially extracted from plants, automatically making them vegan. Meanwhile propylene glycol alginate, is derived from processed kelp, which is a type of algae, so also vegan. The more questionable ingredients hover over the use of artificial colours.

Other Nesquik Products

You might find these products available at your fingertips, but none of the following are vegan:

• Nesquik Cereal: There are no obvious non-vegan items amongst these ingredients, but this contains vitamin D which Nestle primarily extracts from sheep.
• Nesquik Chocolate Flavour Milk Slice: This is definitely not vegan, as it contains ingredients that are derived from dairy milk. On top of that it also contains egg powder, so a massive no from the vegans.
• Nesquik Ready to Drink: At present, these all contain dairy milk, and/or milk derivatives and so the Nesquik Ready to Drink products are not vegan. However a new plant-based Nesquik Ready to Drink offering was released in 2020 in Spain, branded as Nesquik Go Vegetal the drink uses oats and peas instead of dairy.

Vegan Alternatives to Nesquik

There are plenty of alternatives to Nesquik powders that do not contain any derived ingredients, like Cadbury Chocolate Milkshake Powder Mix. Available in a vast majority of supermarkets, this milkshake mix contains non-dairy products with ingredients like soya lecithin, and maize fibre, which are extracted from plants. There is a warning of cross contamination, stating that the product could contain milk, but its usually left up to the people to decide.

Apart from this, you can create your own vegan alternatives using your favourite vegan ice cream, and adding that to a tall glass, allow the ice cream to melt, then add your vegan dairy-free milk, stir until smooth and there you have it, your very own vegan-friendly milkshake!

Healthy Vegan Alternatives to Nesquik Powder

While Nesquik chocolate powder might be a favourite amongst many, vegans are unable to enjoy such liberties with Nesquik containing non-vegan friendly ingredients, making it almost impossible for those on a plant-based diet to safely enjoy these delicious alternatives, for your morning hot drink, or evening tea:

• Ghirardelli Hot Cocoa Mix
• Coconut Cloud
• Castle Kitchen

Ghirardelli Hot Cocoa Mix

Ghirardelli offers a few different vegan hot cocoa mix with milk or other beverages, in an identical way that Nesquik powder does. Ghirardelli’s Double Chocolate Cocoa Mix is particularly good, as it includes vegan ingredients like sugar, cocoa processed with alkali, chocolate, soy lecithin, and vanilla. There are no elements of dairy included in the chocolate used for this hot cocoa mix. The ingredients include:

• Sugar
• Cocoa (process with alkali, unsweetened chocolate)
• Soy lecithin
• Vanilla

Coconut Cloud

This delightful vegan option, allows you to enjoy your favourite hot beverages without the fear of it containing non-vegan ingredients. Coconut Cloud is a plant-based hot chocolate and comes in several flavours, but its key flavour includes ingredients like coconut cream powder, coconut sugar, cocoa, rice starch, natural vanilla flavouring, sea salt and more.

Castle Kitchen

Finally Castle Kitchen provides a vegan hot cocoa mix with plant-based ingredients. It’s gluten-free, dairy-free and is both suitable for vegan and kosher diets. Its ingredients include:

• Cane sugar
• Cocoa
• Tapioca
• Maltodextrin
• Natural flavour
• Guar gum
• Sea salt

Vegan Milkshakes

Nesquik powder providing three flavours that contain questionable ingredients, is what would push vegans further away from even thinking about purchasing them to drink, let alone enjoy. Thankfully there are always delicious alternatives to a non-plant based product, whether it is a food or a drink, there’s always something impeccably fantastic to move onto. And once you do, you’ll never find yourself looking back!

Knowing that Nesquik powder provides the chocolate, strawberry and banana flavours in powder form, that would essentially be scooped up with a spoon and mixed into some milk. We could try to make a vegan strawberry, chocolate and banana milkshake instead, with ingredients that are purely plant based, with no additional colours or flavours whatsoever. Let’s take a look at the recipes below:

• Strawberry Vegan protein Shake
• Banana Vegan Milkshake
• Chocolate Vegan Milkshake

Strawberry Vegan protein Shake

This simple vegan strawberry protein shake recipe is irresistibly delicious, with a smooth and creamy texture loaded with fresh strawberries. You can make this for breakfast every morning, starting your day with a surge of scrumptiousness surging through your body. Here’s what you’ll need:

• 3/4 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk of your choice
• 2 scoops of vanilla vegan protein powder
• 3/4 cup frozen strawberries
• 1/2 tbsp coconut oil
• 1/4 cup ice cubes or more strawberries
• 1/2 cup unsweetened non dairy milk

Add all the ingredients listed above into a blender, blending until there are no chunks remaining. This smooth refreshing protein shake will have you hooked in no time, and the best thing is, its all vegan!

Banana Vegan Milkshake

This banana milkshake is thick, velvety smooth, and absolutely heavenly, a perfect recipe when craving a chilled beverage. This impeccably gorgeous milkshake, is dairy free, with purely vegan ingredients, and something for everyone to enjoy! You can use frozen bananas to get that ultimate thick consistency, almost like your chewing the milkshake, with the creamy iciness tickling your teeth. Let’s take a look at the ingredients below:

• Bananas: Make sure you’re using ripe bananas, and freeze them beforehand to achieve the thickest, and smoothest consistency.
• Milk: You can choose any dairy-free milk of your choice for this vegan milkshake such as, oat milk, soy milk, rice milk, coconut milk, etc.
• Peanut Butter: Just a single spoonful of peanut butter helps to achieve a super creamy banana milkshake, of course you could substitute this with any nut butter of your choice (cashew butter or almond butter) if you prefer a nut free milkshake, use sunflower seed butter.
• Vanilla extract: A little of this magical extract to help amp up the already gorgeous flavours of this milkshake

Frist peel and slice your bananas, before freezing them, preferably the night before, especially if you’re planning to make this milkshake in the morning. You’ll need around 300 grams of peeled bananas. Add the frozen bananas, dairy free milk, peanut butter, and vanilla extract to a blender then blend until super smooth and creamy.

You can drizzle the inside of your glass with a bit of melted peanut butter and dairy-free chocolate. Then pour the banana milkshake into the glasses, and top with some dairy-free whipped cream, yum!

Chocolate Vegan Milkshake

This brilliant chocolate vegan milkshake can be made with bananas or non-dairy ice cream for a thick, creamy, and mouth watering milkshake, that is both healthy and delicious. With easily customisable elements, this milkshake will have you up and ready for the day in no time, not to mention the sugar-free ingredients make this dreamy dessert a guiltless pleasure for sure! Enjoy this vegan milkshake at breakfast, snack time, for dessert, or any time you need a boost or want to cool down. Here’s the ingredients for you to take note of:

• Banana or non dairy vanilla ice cream
• Unsweetened almond milk – although you can use any dairy-free milk of your choice
• Cocoa powder – use your preferred chocolate, unless you prefer to keep this ingredient raw, then go for cocoa powder
• Vanilla
• Dates – to sweeten the milkshake even further, why not throw in a couple of dates for good measure?

Place all of these ingredients in a blender, and blend till silky smooth, serve in tall glasses for a refreshing beverage to complete your day.

So is Nesquik Vegan

Sadly vast majority of those following a vegan diet, will steer clear from Nesquik products, especially those in powdered form, as some ingredients are obtained from animal by products, and other questionable ingredients, forcing vegans and vegetarians to opt for alternatives.

FAQs