What Diet

Overview of the vegetarian diet    

A vegetarian diet encompasses a plant-based diet(fruits, vegetables, etc.), with or without the inclusion of dairy products or eggs. Meat (red meat, poultry, and seafood) is excluded. Abstention from by products of animal slaughter, such as rennet and gelatin, may also be practiced is vegetarianism is strictly adhered to.

Reasons are various for adopting a vegetarian diet including for ethical reasons, for health, religious, political, environmental, cultural, aesthetic or economic reasons.

There are varieties of the vegetarian diet: an ovo-vegetarian diet includes eggs but not dairy products, a lacto-vegetarian diet includes dairy but not eggs, and an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet includes eggs and dairy products. A vegan diet excludes all animal products, including eggs, dairy and honey.

Be aware that various foods, such as cake, chocolate and marshmallows often contain animal ingredients. Rennet for example is used in the production of cheese. Gelatin is often used in jellies and gelatin type products such as marshmallows and gums. Depending on how strict an interpretation of vegetarianism you take some vegetarians may consume more animal products than others.

Semi-vegetarian diets consist mainly of vegetarian foods but include fish, poultry or meat occassionally. Those with diets that include fish or poultry may define “meat” as mammalian flesh and may identify with vegetarianism.  A pescetarian diet includes fish but no meat and is usually confused for a full vegetarian diet. Such confusion has led vegetarian groups such as the Vegetarian Society to define such diets containing poultry and fish as not vegetarian due to fish and birds being animals.

To summarise the types of vegetarianism:

• Ovo vegetarianism: includes eggs; no dairy.
• Lacto vegetarianism: includes dairy; no eggs.
• Ovo-lacto vegetarianism (or lacto-ovo vegetarianism): includes animal/dairy such as eggs, milk and honey.
• Vegan: excludes all animal flesh and animal products including milk, honey and eggs. May also exclude products tested on animals or any clothing from animals.
• Raw veganism: includes only fresh and uncooked fruit, nuts, seeds and vegetables. Vegetables can be cooked up to a certain temperature though.
• Fruitarianism: permits only fruit, nuts, seeds and other plant matter that can be gathered without harming the plant.
• Buddhist vegetarianism (also known as su vegetarianism): excludes all animal products and vegetables in the allium family which include onion, garlic, scallions, leeks or shallots.
• Jain vegetarianism: includes dairy; excludes eggs, honey and root vegetables.
• Macrobiotic diet: mostly whole grains and beans.

Some vegetarians avoid foods that may use animal ingredients which are not actually listed in their food labels or which use animal products in manufacturing. For example, some sugars are whitened with bone char, some cheeses use animal rennet (enzymes from animal stomach lining), gelatin (derived from the collagen inside animals’ skin, bones and connective tissue) and apple juice/alcohol clarified with gelatin or crushed shellfish and sturgeon. Many vegetarians are unaware of such ingredients.

Individuals may describe themselves as “vegetarian” but actually only practice a semi-vegetarian diet. Some people may call themselves “flexitarian” when they consume a mainly vegetarian diet and only minimal animal products. Semi-vegetarian diets include:

• pescetarianism which includes fish and seafood
• pollotarianism which includes poultry
• “pollo-pescetarian”, which includes poultry and fish or white meat only
• macrobiotic diets consisting mostly of whole grains and beans and some fish

Semi-vegetarianism is however contested by vegetarian groups on the basis that vegetarianism excludes all animal flesh and you are either vegetarian or not.

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