Which foods contain gelatin?

An exhaustive list is not possible and would not help anyway, because formulations change and one manufacturer’s yoghurt contains gelatin while another’s does not.

What is useful is knowing which categories to check, because Gelatin is always declared. This is not a hidden ingredient. It is an unread one.

The obvious ones

Gummy sweets, wine gums, marshmallows, jelly and anything with that particular chew. Many mousses and panna cotta. Aspic, which is the original use.

Most people avoiding gelatin already check these, so they cause few problems.

The ones that catch people

Low-fat and thickened dairy. This is the big one. Take fat out of a yoghurt or a cream cheese and you have to put texture back, and gelatin does that cheaply. The product reads as dairy, dairy is fine for vegetarians, and the list goes unread. Not all of them contain it, which is exactly what makes it a trap.

Capsule shells. Supplements and medicines. The capsule is not what you were thinking about when you bought it. Vegetarian capsules exist and are usually made from cellulose, and they say so.

Frosted and marshmallow cereals. The coating or the marshmallow pieces, not the grain.

Some sweets that do not feel chewy. Certain chocolate fillings, nougat, and the marshmallow layer inside some biscuits.

Sour cream and some cottage cheeses, again for texture.

Clarified drinks. Some juices, beers and wines are fined with gelatin or isinglass, a fish-derived agent. This is the one case where reading the list does not work, because a processing aid removed before bottling is not an ingredient and does not have to be declared. Certification, or the producer, is the only route.

What it is called

Almost always “gelatin” or “gelatine”. Occasionally “hydrolysed collagen” or “collagen hydrolysate”, which is the same protein broken down further and is common in supplements and drinks sold for skin or joints.

It carries the E number E441 in Europe, though it is rarely printed that way on food.

The reliable shortcut

Manufacturers who avoid gelatin advertise it. A vegetarian or vegan mark on a sweet, a “suitable for vegetarians” line on a yoghurt, a “vegetable capsule” on a supplement.

So the useful heuristic runs in reverse: in a category where gelatin is common, a product that says nothing on the front probably contains it. That is not a rule, and it is not a substitute for turning the packet over, but it tells you which packets are worth turning over first.

If the reason you are checking is religious observance rather than diet, the origin question sits on top of this one, and the label will not usually say which animal. That is covered on the page on whether gelatin is halal.