Are Wham Bars Vegan?

What are Wham bars? 

Wham bars are a type of sweet first produced in the 1980s, and come in a range of flavours; they are a chewy bar with sherbet inside to give it a sourness. It is particularly popular with children and young people because it is typically a very cheap sweet (they were often 10p a bar at corner shops), meaning that it is definitely a nostalgic sweet now for lots of adults.

Is it vegan?

This depends, though the answer is mostly no, they aren’t vegan. This is because the bars contain hydrolysed milk protein in them and so are not suitable for those on a fully plant-based diet. However, some websites that sell the sweet don’t have this listed as an ingredient and label it as vegan which may cause confusion. 

Barratt, the company that now produces Wham bars, have in the past changed the recipe for the sweet, removing the milk protein and replacing it with rice or pea proteins instead. The use of a plant-based replacement here made it vegan during this period. However, this was a temporary change and so after changing the recipe back the newer batches of Wham bars became unsuitable for vegans once more. If you see Wham bars on sweet websites or in sweet shops, be sure to check whether the ingredient contains the milk or plant protein, as some places sell the older stock with vegan-friendly ingredients whereas others may sell the Wham bars with the new formula.

For alternative sweet recommendations that are vegan-friendly, check out our blog post here.