At last, it’s Pastille day for vegans!
New version will be softer
THEY’VE been a favourite of the sweet-toothed for almost 140 years. And now Rowntree’s Fruit Pastilles are to become vegan-friendly.
The new recipe will be used across the full range of Fruit Pastilles sweets, starting with sharing bags from next month.
Nestlé technicians trialled more than 30 recipes before settling on one. Their scientists’ mission was to remove the gelatine which makes the sweets chewy but comes from animals, while ensuring the sweets retained the fruity flavour and iconic chew they are famous for. However, the new pastilles will be softer.
The sugary treats are to join Nestlé’s expanding range of vegan products, which include Jelly Tots, Carnation vegan condensed milk and Nescafé Gold dairy alternative lattes.
Told the news yesterday, vegan Grainne Heather’s immediate reaction was: ‘Yeah!’
Ms Heather, from the Dublin
Food Co-Op, remembers eating the fruity, chewy sweets as a nonvegan child and is looking forward to tucking into a tube once again. She added: ‘There are some people who would shy away from all sweets but I’ll definitely be one to try those...’ Fruit Pastilles – a mix of different fruit-flavoured chewy sweets – contain no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. They were invented by brothers Henry and Joseph Rowntree, working with French confectioner August Claude Gaget, at their cocoa works in York in 1881. Nestlé Ireland’s Maria McKenna said: ‘We’ve had many requests from consumers over the years asking if we can make Fruit Pastilles vegetarian or vegan... In developing the new formulation, we were very conscious of our responsibility as custodians of this much-loved brand and its long history. Through this recipe change, we’ve made the sweets slightly softer, which we know has been a market trend for a number of years.’