Shellac

Shellac is a resin secreted by the lac insect. It is harvested from the branches the insects have coated, then refined into flakes and dissolved to make a glaze.

It is what makes some sweets glossy, what stops chocolate from blooming, what gives certain pills their sheen, and what is sometimes waxed onto fruit. It also has a long life outside food entirely, as a wood finish.

The name problem

This is the practical difficulty. Shellac is frequently not called shellac.

On a sweet it is often “confectioner’s glaze” or simply “glazing agent”. On a supplement it may be “pharmaceutical glaze”. In the EU it can appear as E904. On waxed fruit it may not be declared to the shopper at all, depending on where you are and how the fruit is sold.

So a person avoiding animal ingredients can read an entire ingredient list carefully and still miss it, because the word that would tell them is not there. This is one of the clearest cases for an app that knows the synonyms, and it is why every name we index is listed on the names page.

What the safety picture looks like

Reassuring, and specific enough to be worth stating rather than hand-waving.

EFSA re-evaluated shellac in 2024. The panel derived an acceptable daily intake of 4 mg per kilogram of body weight per day for wax-free shellac produced by physical decolouring. For shellac produced by chemical bleaching, that figure was treated as temporary, pending new data on the identity and levels of organochlorine impurities in the additive.

That is a normal, careful regulatory outcome: a number for the well-characterised version, and a provisional number for the version where a question remains open. The reasoning behind why an intake figure matters more than the word “insect” is in hazard versus exposure.

Why people look for it

Mostly not for safety. It is secreted by insects, and the harvesting process is not compatible with most definitions of vegan, so it sits in the same category as Carmine: an animal-derived ingredient whose name gives nothing away.

Some vegetarians are comfortable with it and some are not, which is a question about where you draw the line rather than one a website can settle for you. The wider picture is on the page for people avoiding animal ingredients.