Dear Big Questions: Is Library Paste Vegan? Asking for a friend…
Dear Friend, it beats the heck out of me. So I did some research.
The short answer is that library paste should be vegan, but it may not be.
Library paste is essentially water and starch with a little anti-insect ingredient (like clove or peppermint) and maybe a whitener/drying agent like alum. (The anti-insect ingredient is because there are bugs the like to eat book bindings, for example…wait for it…book worms!) There shouldn’t be anything that is not vegan in it, although there are some reports that bone meal can be substituted for some of the starch.
So, if you are on a strict vegan diet, you probably shouldn’t eat library paste. If you are not on a strict vegan diet, you probably shouldn’t eat library paste either, but that was not the Big Question.