Follow-up: cholesterol and lactic acid

Cholesterol

Since I found out that cholesterol is found only in animal product, I started reading the nutritional content in addition to the ingredient list. In less than a week, I came across two products: 70% dark chocolate and ready-made thai pesto that don't list any possible animal products, yet have cholesterol in the nutritional info section. Intrestingly, for chocolate, other flavors (also dark) by the same brand were fine. Same for pesto: other types, while having cholesterol, listed cheese as one of the ingredients, and one other kind (can't recall the flavor) had no cheese and no cholesterol. So it looks pretty ambiguios, whether its a copy-past label design error or a mistake in the list. Either way, read both ingredients and nutrients.

Lactic Acid

Now, this one is rather interesting. Numerous sources (vrg.org and wikipedia) both state that industrially used lactae/lactic acid is produced by bacterial fermentation and is suitable for vegans. Some other sources (e.g. the book "Animal Ingredients A to Z" by E.G. Smith Collective) groups them with L-lactate, which is of animal origin. It seems however that it is not economically viable to extract it for separate uses, so it is mainly found in dairy products, while bacterially producted lactic acid is used in non-dairy foods as preservative (my guess, no proof).