What is a vegetarian or vegan
In order to understand #what is a vegetarian vs a vegan we first need to give a definition to each term.
The basic definition of a vegetarian is someone who abstains from eating meat, fish, poultry, pork or any other animal food product even such as gelatin, or some food colouring as they are animal based as well. The list is long believe it or not.
The vegan is much stricter though. They start with the basic vegetarianism then add no egg, or dairy to the list. Typically as well vegans will not associate purchases of non-food items related to animal based products as well. That means no alligator shoes, leather handbag, snake skin belt etc.
This list is very basic yet fundamental. The list includes many derivatives of vegetarian levels of commitment such as
#What is a Lacto-Ovo Vegetrian - Again, similar to vegetarian diet in restricting animal, fish, poultry etc, but they will consume dairy or egg products.This is the basic vegetarian level diet.
#What is a Lacto- Vegetarian - this category consumes no meat, fish, poulry or animal products. They also do not consume egg products, They will however consume dairy products. We will consider this as step up from basic basic entry level vegetarian.
#What is a Ovo-Vegetarian - They also do not consume any listed animal products similar to vegetarian diet but include no consumption of dairy products. They will consume egg products however.
#What is a Vegan - this is the strictest level of vegetarian. They will also not eat fish, meat, poultry or any derived form of animal product but also add to this list no egg or dairy. Typically as well vegans will not associate purchases on non-food items related to animal based products as well. That means no alligator shoes, leather handbag, snake skin belt or wool sweater etc.
#What is a Polloterian - this is a category where you are #semi-vegetarian, meaning you are on the road to becoming vegetarian. You will not eat red meat, fish or seafood, pork but will still consider to consume poultry. Poultry and fowl are the only meat this group eats.
#What is a Pescatarian- this group of people like polloterian do not eat fowl, red meat or animal land products. They still however eat fish and seafood.
#What is a Flexitarian - a flexitarian is a plant based diet with the occasional intake of all meat, fish or seafood in their diet. They will try their best to limit how much non-vegetarian product they consume in their daily diet.
As a vegetarian myself eventually on my way to being vegan as is my whole family and my wifes family, we must pay respect to all those already vegetarian or vegan. What is more important though is pay our our highest respect to those making the true effort to become vegetarian. Even though Pescatarian, Pollotarian and Flexitarian are truly not a class of vegetarian, these categories have been developed due to the ever increasing amount of people recognizing the need to try to eat vegetarian. For some of us, it was or seemed easy to make the change. There is a reason for this, as we were most likely ready physically, emotionally and mentally for the change, maybe we even had support of friends or family. It is not that easy though for many people to make the change suddenly, and lets be honest here; most of us grew up where eating animal life was considered a normal part of life without a second thought. It is for this reason that we must honour those people making the effort to change, because if we offer any other feedback, we may derail their efforts therein hurting oursleves.
The numbers are very stagerring in North America for the vegetarian/vegan population. In Canada there are a reported 2.8million vegetarians or vegan as of this year 2016. In the U.S. there are a reported 16million reported vegetarian or vegan followers as of this year. These numbers are amazing considering how many there were when i grew up. I never met a vegetarian or vegan actually until my early 20′s. Great for them though for what they had to have endured so long ago and the feedback they would have received. The numbers are of course self-reported which means there could be a variance of 2% each way but none the less this is incredible.
But WAIT - there are even more categories of Vegetarinas out there. My list above presumes we are all from North America. Well we aren’t, so allow me to add to my list from other cultures where the vegetarian, vegan movement started while we as a country were not even a country yet.
#Vegetarian Jain - This category of vegetarian is for pure vegetarians. They will eat only fruit or stem vegetables which grow above the ground and not eat egg of milk. On top of that they don’t consume onions, mushroom, garlic, ginger, carrot, beet and radish etc. There are more of course. Jain is one of the oldest styles of vegetarian from India.
#Asian Pure Vegetarian - similar Jain vegetarian but they do eat fruit and vegetables form the ground. They don’t consume onion or garlic though.
#Raw Vegetarian - this category of vegetarian does not consume any animal product or product of animal origin and won’t eat food cooked above 44c. They typically eat fruits, nuts, nut pastes, legumes, sea vegetables, mushrooms, herbs. The list of course is far longer but in essence basicall not cooked food.
If you fly on an airplane I will list the codes for you below when available how the airlines code your meal.
#Airline meals
#VGML - Vegetarian Meal, also called vegan meal as it contains no meat, animal product, fish or seafood, nor egg or dairy products or by-products
#VLML - Vegetarian Lacto-Ovo Meal, this is the standard regular vegetarian meal as described above. No animal products or bi-products but contain egg and dairy.
#VOML - Vegetarian Oriental Meal, this is a standard vegetarian meal but prepared Asian Style
#VGML - Vegan Oriental Meal, this is a vegan meal prepared Orintal Style
#AVML - Asian Vegetarian Meal, this is a vegetarian meal which is prepared using aromatic flavours and spices form the Indian sub-continent.
#VJML - Vegetarian Jain Meal, this category is the same as the described Jain Vegetarian above.
#RVML - Raw Vegetarian Meal, as described above it is the uncooked vegetarian meal.
#FPML - Fruit Platter Meal, although this is not a category of vegetrian or vegan as of yet, on the airlines it can be requested.
#HNML - Hindu Meal, this is for the Hindu community who are not strict vegetarian, it does not contain beef.
I really enjoyed sharing this information with you today, and look forward to my next blog where I will tackle the difficult yet contraversial topic of #Is Humankind naturally born vegetarian or was it learnt and why.
I will do my utmost best to present only the facts of course but from Science and Spiritual as the Spiritual Belief overall has the most followers
Bye for now, and happy reading
#Vegetarian Lover out