Vegetarianism is a diet that echews meat from one's diet but also includes animal products diary products,honey, and eggs. Veganism eschews both meat and animal products. Ronin who is writing this article is a lacto-evo vegetarian. Vegetarians can be subdivided into lacto-evo vegetarians (people who include eggs and diary into their diet), lact vegetarians(people whose only animal product they consume is diary), and evo vegetarians(people whose only animal product they consume is eggs).
Many people become vegetarians for ethical or religious reasons. Eastern religious such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism encourage or require people not to engage in meat consumption which relates to the philosphy of ahimsa of non violence. When you go to many Indian restraunts, it is quite easy to find vegetarian food. In 675, Emperor Temmu banned the consumption of meat in Japan. There are a few cities in India where meat consumption is banned entirely. Even with Christians, there are some who decide to become vegetarian. Leo Tolosky who was an Anarchist Christian pacifist became a vegetarian to avoid harming sentient beings. There is a quote from the bible which is Isaiah 11:6-9 which effectively says that wolves will live next to lambs and the cows will feed with the bear.
Ethical reasons to become a vegetarian include not having to kill animals in order to obtain food. An animal like a pig could live a happy life but if you want to eat something pork, then the life of that pig is gone. In the modern developed countries where food is abundant, there is little reasons to go out and hunt animals to go eat food. Many people who do this are rednecks who do this as a hobby. There are massive farms factories where chickens are put into small cages and pigs are put into small cubicles. Baby pigs at birth have their testicals ripped out and teeth removed without any anesthesia. The reason why they remove the pigs teeth is that they get high anxiety and depression by being in farm factories and the other pigs start biting the other pigs. These animals are put onto conveyor belts when they are killed and then processed into food. There is a website called animalclock.org that estimates how many animals are killed per year for food, and about ~50 billion animals have been killed in the US as of late November 2025.
There are environmental reasons to become a vegetarian or vegan. Feeding and giving water to livestock animals uses up a lot of resources, a lot of land area is used to raise livestock, and a lot of C02 emissions and trees are being cutdown due to raising livestock. There is also a lot of overfishing that goes on in the ocean which leads to decline wildlife and degraded ecosystems.
Is vegetarianism or veganism healthy?
Humans did evolve to be omnivores which means that people are naturally supposed to eat both plant food and meat. Veganism is worse for your health than vegetarianism due to not getting enough calcium and vitamin B12. It is easier to be healhier on a vegetarian diet than a vegan one since you can get calcium and vitamin b12 from eggs and diary products. I have had blood tests from the doctor and they say that I am healhy and I do not take any supplements. I have also been vegetarian(I was a vegan for a few years) for about 14 years and I am still alive. Soy products like tofu can be a good replacement for meat. It is better to choose vegetarianism or veganism for ethical reasons rather than health. Eating too much meat is probably more unhealthy than not eating meat at all. If you eat too much meat, it can raise blood pressure, raise cholesteral, and create issues with colon cancer and kidneys. I know some relatives that eat a lot of meat in every meal and they are fat but they do also happen to consume a lot of soda and regularly eat sweets and junk food.
Can being a vegetarian or vegan be inconvient?
It probably depends on what culture or country that you are brought up in. In the US at least, there is a big tradition of eating meat when it comes to eating with steaks, hamburgers, and turkey on Thanksgiving. If you go out with family or friends to some seafood or steakhouse restraunt, you basically cannot eat too many other things other than fries, colesaw, or any deserts if they have it. When going to many Indian, Sandwich shops, East Asian food like Vietnamese and non seafood Japanese restraunts, and Mexican restraunts it is quite easy to find some type of vegetarian option. If you have grown up in India or maybe a few different buddhist communities, it would be quite easy to be vegetarian.
veganism christianity hinduism buddhism religion ahimsa pacifism
No rights reserved. Powered by nothing. All content available under CC0 1.0 (public domain).