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Veganism (also known as strict vegetarianism or pure vegetarianism) is a philosophy and lifestyle that avoids using animals and animal products for food, clothing and other purposes. In practice, a vegan (an adherent of veganism) commits to the abstention from consumption or use of animal products, including meat, fish, poultry, honey, eggs and dairy products, as well as articles made of fur, wool, bone, leather, feathers, pearls, nacre, coral, sponges and other materials of animal origin. Many vegans also avoid products that have been tested on animals. People become vegans for a variety of reasons, including ethical concerns for animal rights or the environment, as well as more personal reasons such as health benefits and spiritual or religious concerns.
A 2002 ''Time''/CNN poll, found that 4% of American adults consider themselves vegetarians, and 5% of self-described vegetarians consider themselves vegans.[ This suggests that 0.2% of American adults are vegans. Also in 2002, the UK Food Standards Agency reported that 5% of respondents self-identified as vegetarian or vegan. Of that 5%, 29% said they avoided "all animal products."]
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Definition
The word vegan, usually pronounced , was originally derived from "vegetarian" in 1944 when Elsie Shrigley and Donald Watson, frustrated that the term "vegetarianism" had come to include the eating of dairy products, founded the UK Vegan Society. They combined the first three and last two letters of vegetarian to form "vegan", which they saw as "the beginning and end of vegetarian".• The British Vegan Society defines veganism as:
Other vegan societies use similar definitions. •••
The term "animal product" in a vegan context refers to material derived from non-human animals for human use or consumption. Human breast milk for example is acceptable when voluntarily used for human babies, but by comparison when a human being drinks a cow's milk, it is regarded as the consumption of an "animal product". Animal products include meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy products, fur, leather, wool, pearls, and nacre (mother of pearl), among other things. By-products include gelatin, lanolin, rennet, and whey. Items derived from insects include items such as silk, honey, beeswax, shellac and cochineal.
Some vegans avoid cane sugar that has been filtered with bone char and will not drink beer or wine clarified with albumen, animal blood, or isinglass, because though these are not present in the final product, they are still used in the process. Some also avoid food cooked with equipment that has been used to cook non-vegan foods. Vegans also avoid toothpaste with calcium extracted from animal bones if they are aware of it. Similarly, soap with ingredients which may have been extracted from animal fat (e.g. stearic acid) is avoided.
Most vegans refrain from supporting industries that use animals directly or indirectly, such as circuses and zoos, and will not use products that are tested on animals.
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Ethics
•">(female pigs) in a factory farm. Opposition to factory farming is one of the most common ethical reasons given for veganism.•
Vegans generally oppose the violence and cruelty involved in the meat, dairy, non-vegan cosmetics, clothing, and other industries.• (See draize test, LD50, animal testing, vivisection, and factory farming)
Some utilitarian philosophers, such as Jeremy Bentham and Peter Singer, argue that the suffering of sentient animals is relevant to ethical decisions, though they do not rely on the concept of rights and believe that non-human animals only have an interest in not suffering. Others like Gary L. Francione, believe that all sentient beings have an interest in both not suffering and continuing to live. A common argument is that animals have the ability to feel pleasure so killing them is wrong, because it destroys any hope of future pleasure. He claims that it is therefore unethical to treat them as property or a means to an end (see animal rights). Although these theories draw similar conclusions, they are not wholly compatible with one another.
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Health
Studies have strongly correlated a plant based diet with better health benefits than an omnivorous diet.••• Vegans note additional health benefits are gained by not consuming artificial substances such as growth hormones and antibiotics, which are often given to farmed animals.••••
The American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada state that "well-planned vegan and other types of vegetarian diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including during pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence."•
Vegan diets tend toward several nutritional benefits, including lower levels of saturated fat, no cholesterol, and higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, antioxidant vitamins C and E and phytochemicals.
Vegetarians have been reported to have lower body mass indices than nonvegetarians, although there was no significant difference in blood pressure rates.• The evidence is overwhelming that vegetarians have lower rates of death from ischemic heart disease, and that non-meat eating reduces all-cause mortality by 50%.• One small scale study has observed that a vegan diet can reduce blood cholesterol in people with, and significantly reduce the complications of non-insulin dependent diabetes (NIDDM).•
There are a growing number of vegan athletes. Vegan athletes compete in a variety of sports, such as powerlifting, bodybuilding, martial arts, long distance running, and many others.•• Multiple Olympic gold medallist Carl Lewis has stated that he was vegan at the peak of his career, when he became the first man to officially break 9.90 seconds in the 100 Metre sprint.• (Ben Johnson broke 9.90 seconds in the 1988 Olympics but was disqualified for the use of performance enhancing drugs.)
Some studies have found benefits associated with diets rich in whole plant foods, and risks associated with diets rich in animal-based foods. One of the researchers from the 1990 epidemiological study, "The China Study", said "Even small increases in the consumption of animal-based foods was associated with increased disease risk."•• Studies in Japan found that increased consumption of some animal products coincided with a decrease in risk for some forms of cerebrovascular disease and stroke mortality.•
There are also claims that industry livestock feeding practices pose health threats to human consumers. According to Dr. Michael Greger * in a January 2004 lecture at MIT (which was the basis for Whistleblower, a 2006 documentary film by Jeff Bellamar) each year more than one million tons of animal excrement are fed back to farm animals raised for human consumption to lower the feed costs. He also says that up to 10% of blood from killed animals is mixed into some cattle feed, and up to 30% of some poultry feed is made up of the blood. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is believed to be caused by cows being fed with contaminated meat and bone meal, a high-protein substance obtained from the remnants of butchered animals, including cows and sheep. In most parts of the world, such remnants are no longer allowed in feed for ruminant animals, but the practice persists in a few countries.
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Resources and the environment
People who adopt a vegan diet to reduce resource consumption or ecological footprint extend the idea of environmental vegetarianism to all animal products. The fundamental rationale is that each additional trophic level in a food chain passes on only a fraction of the energy it consumes, so a diet that consists of plant products rather than animal products will generally use significantly less of all resources, and indirectly cause less environmental damage.
A study by Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, assistant professors of geophysics at the University of Chicago, compares the CO2 production resulting from various human diets. They find that a person switching from the typical American diet to a vegan diet would, on average, reduce CO2 production significantly more than switching to a hybrid vehicle. They go on to recommend a vegan diet for this reason, as well as the potentially adverse health effects of dietary animal fats and proteins.• They go on to support their claims by referencing various studies linking animal fats to cardiovascular diseases and animal proteins to cancer.
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Vegan cuisine
For recipes and further information see the Wikibooks Cookbook article on Vegan Cuisine.
The cuisines of most nations contain dishes that are suitable for a vegan diet, as are specific traditional ingredients, e.g. tofu, tempeh and the wheat product seitan in Asian diets. Many recipes that traditionally contain animal products can be adapted by substituting vegan ingredients, e.g. nut, grain or soy milk used to replace cow's milk; eggs replaced by substitutes such as products made from potato starch. Additionally, artificial "meat" products ("analogs" or "mock meats") made from non-animal derived ingredients such as soya or gluten, including imitation sausages, ground beef, burgers, and chicken nuggets are widely available, though many such products contain egg whites and are therefore suitable for vegetarians but not vegans.
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Similar diets and lifestyles
There are several diets similar to veganism, though there are significant differences, including raw veganism, fruitarianism, the raw food diet, the macrobiotic diet and natural hygiene. There are also numerous religious groups that regularly or occasionally practice a similar diet, including Jainism, some sects of Buddhism, Hinduism, and some Christian churches, particularly the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Fasts in the Eastern Orthodox Church resemble a vegan diet, however believers are not expected to be vegan throughout the whole year. More recently, some young people who are a part of the anarcho-punk, hardcore punk and straight edge movements have embraced veganism and the corresponding beliefs of the animal rights movement.
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Vegan nutrition
Nutrition authorities say that a properly planned vegan diet presents no significant nutritional problems. Supplementation is highly recommended, although this applies to non-vegans, too — Drs. Fletcher and Fairfield concluded, in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) in June 2002, that "it appears prudent for all adults to take vitamin supplements."• Vegans are potentially at risk for being deficient in several nutrients, such as vitamin B12, iron and iodine. These deficiencies can have potentially serious consequences, including anemia, pernicious anemia, cretinism and hyperthyroidism.
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Difficulty
Veganism is often perceived as being a difficult diet to adhere to. Evaluating products as vegan or not requires knowledge of food ingredients and production methods which may not be common to the general popuation. Furthermore, the near ubiquity of non-vegan ingredients in vitamins, supplements, prescription medicine, toiletries and cosmetics can make fully avoiding animal products impossible as these items are not consistently labelled with their ingredients.••• The extra effort required to replace non-vegan ingredients in traditional recipes, the inadequacy of some vegan substitutes, and the difficulty in eating out at restaurants also contribute to the perception of veganism as a difficult diet.
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Ethical criticism
Some scientists dispute the assumption that a vegan lifestyle totally prevents the unnecessary death of animals. Steven Davis, professor of animal science at Oregon State University, claims that the number of wild animals killed in crop production is greater than those killed in ruminant-pasture production. A rebuttal by Gaverick Matheny claims that Davis' reasoning contains several major flaws, including distorting the notion of "harm" to animals, and miscalculating the number of animals deaths based upon areas of land rather than per consumer.•
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Health concerns
The American Dietetic Association says that a well-planned vegan diet is appropriate in all stages of life, but "individual assessment of dietary intakes of vegetarians is required."
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Specific vitamins
Vegans should be particularly concerned with adequate intake of vitamins like Vitamin A, Vitamin D and Vitamin B12. However, adequate amounts of vitamin D may be obtained by spending 15 to 30 minutes every few days in the sunlight.•• However, the British Dietetic Association contended that the findings of the study were not applicable to vegan children in the developed world. They note that B12, reliably found only in animal products, is now included in many fortified foods generally available. Noting that the impoverished children in the study had diets deficient in zinc, B12 and iron, they concluded, "There is no evidence that our vegan and vegetarian children in this country suffer impaired development". They did note, however, that young children, pregnant and nursing women are vulnerable as vegans, urging parents to review their children's diets to be sure that they have a well-balanced diet.•
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Parental concerns
Vegan mothers who do not obtain adequate vitamin B12 in their diet while breastfeeding can cause severe and permanent neurological damage to their infants.• Other studies and statements by counselors and dietitians support this conclusion. ••
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Footnotes
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See also
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