Vegans and Veganism

To begin with, what is a vegan?

A vegan is someone who has chosen to remove animal products from their lifestyle. Vegans do not eat meat, dairy, eggs or anything that comes from an animal. Vegans also avoid animal products in other areas, such as wearing leather clothing or shoes. Veganism is the term used to refer to the practice of being vegan — of removing animal products from one’s lifestyle.

There are many reasons to become vegan. Some of them include:

• Animal rights or animal welfare: Animals are mistreated by our society. We tend to view them as products for our consumption, and completely disregard their interests and comfort on factory farms. Vegans disagree, and argue that we should value the well-being of animals.
• Environmental concerns: Animal farming methods use up quite a bit of land and produce greenhouse gasses. By converting their feed crops into crops for direct human consumption, we can more efficiently feed ourselves and slow global warming.
• Health reasons: Some people believe that adopting a vegan diet can help you become more healthy. Indeed, being vegan does bring nutrition to mind and can help you make better dietary choices.

Whatever their reason for adopting a vegan lifestyle, most vegans share the belief that trading our consumption of animals and animal products for the adoption of a vegan lifestyle is generally in the best interests of human beings.

Veganism and Vegeterianism

While we’re talking about vegans, we may as well touch on vegeterianism as well. Vegeterians, like vegans, do not eat any meat. However, unlike vegans, they still eat animal products such as eggs and milk. They may also eat products like marshmallows, which usually contain gelatin (which comes from animal bones).

Some people even confuse the name “vegeterian” and consume more animal products that fits that name. Some people call themselves “vegeterians” but still eat fish. (The actual term for that is pescetarian.) There are even people who say they’re vegeterian, but eat poultry and fish… claiming that they simply don’t eat red meat. Neither of these are actually vegeterian. Vegeterians don’t eat meat of any kind of animal, whether it’s from a mammal, bird, fish or any other group. Vegans are vegeterians, but they also don’t eat anything that animals make, such as milk or eggs.

So why not just vegeterianism?

One of the key reasons that people choose to be vegan, rather than just vegeterian, is again tied to animal welfare. In factory farms, egg-laying chickens and dairy cows are greatly mistreated. For vegeterians that think eating eggs or milk is OK because no animals are killed, they are greatly mistaken.

Egg farmers will kill male chicks upon birth, because they don’t lay eggs and are not profitable — let alone that they cut off or damage the beaks of females and leave them in tiny cages where they can’t turn around (for their entire lives). Dairy farmers repeatedly breed cows repeatedly to maximize milk production. Many of the male calves are sold off to become veal. On factory farms, cows are then pushed into crowded areas to harvest their milk. Sometimes, it’s the animals we leave alive that suffer the most harm.

For these reasons, the appeal of a vegan diet is simply to further reduce the suffering that we cause to animals.