Food packages are never dull. Many have claims, pictures and logos on them to help consumers easily identify products that they can trust depending upon their own personal needs. One such logo you may have seen on your favorite vegetarian foods, such as Lightlife deli products, is a heart with a "V" in the middle, certifying a product is vegan.

The Vegan Certification is administered by the Vegan Action non-profit organization which is dedicated to helping animals, the environment, and human health by educating the public about the benefits of a vegan lifestyle. The Richmond, Virgina-based group (whose official name is the Vegan Awareness Foundation) issues the trademarked logo for products that do not contain animal products and have not been tested on animals.

For very strict vegans and animal rights activists, please note that the vegan certification does not exempt manufacturers from using shared machinery (machinery that ran products containing eggs or dairy). Therefore, even though the machines are guaranteed to be cleaned thoroughly between non-vegan and vegan batches, shared machinery may theoretically contain trace amounts of eggs or dairy. The company believes that "extreme vegan purity" does not accomplish the goal of ending animal cruelty and suffering.

The logo itself only identifies vegan foods. It cannot ensure a product is "healthy." For example, foods that contain refined sugar can carry the "Certified Vegan" label as long as the sugar supplier provides a statement that they do not use any animal products in the production of sugar. Some sugar producers use a bone char filter, made from the bones of cows, in processing refined sugar. The activated carbon filter decolorizes sugar to make it white, but the resulting sugar does not contain any bone particles. Bone char is primarily used in the production of cane sugar; beet sugar refineries never use it because this type of sugar does not require decolorizing.

Organic foods may or may not be vegan, and vegan foods may or may not be organic, so the logo cannot be used as an identifier for foods made without pesticides or other chemicals. The "Organic" label on foods is regulated by the US Department of Agriculture. All food that carry this label must adhere to strict standards for growing, handling, and processing foods to be identified as "organic." The USDA has three separate labels, based on the amount of organic ingredients in a food:

• 100 percent organic. Products that are completely organic or made of all organic ingredients.
• Organic. Products that are at least 95 percent organic.
• Made with organic ingredients. These are products that contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients. The organic seal can't be used on these packages.

In addition to its certification program, Vegan Action offers tips on transitioning into a vegan diet. The website offers meal ideas, substitutes for recipes, how to shop in a grocery store for vegan foods, and how to eat out in restaurants.

This is a part of my ongoing series, 10 Minute Vegetarian. I'm busy, you're busy. We want to be healthy, but we don't have a lot of time. In the 10 minutes it takes you to read this article, you can learn something about the health benefits of the vegetarian diet and how to implement it in your own hectic schedule.