Difference Between Vegans and Vegetarians
The words vegan and vegetarian often get used interchangeably, even though they have very different meanings. What’s the difference between vegans and vegetarians?
First of, let’s start with the official definitions of them.
veg·e·tar·i·an
noun
noun: vegetarian; plural noun: vegetarians
- a person who does not eat meat, and sometimes other animal products, especially for moral, religious, or health reasons.
veg·an
noun
noun: vegan; plural noun: vegans
- a person who does not eat or use animal products.
The major difference between vegans and vegetarians is that vegetarians simply follow a diet. The only thing that they change in their life is the food that they eat. They just take out the meat, and replace it with mock meats or more veggies or legumes or grains.
Vegans, on the other hand, don’t just change their diet. They change their entire lifestyle. They change their diet by removing not only meat, but also every single other animal product- dairy, eggs and honey as well.
Vegans believe that animals were not put on this earth for us to use, and that we have no right to enslave them just so we can eat them and their byproducts for the fun of it. Another difference between the two is that vegans also do not wear animals, or use products that were tested on them.
Vegans do not wear or buy fur, leather, or silk. There are many vegan alternative for those items though! Vegans also buy cruelty free cosmetics, which there are many available today.
Something else is that vegans do not support the use of animals for entertainment. They do not support zoos, circuses, or aquariums.
Are vegans better than vegetarians? No, of course not! However, vegans do lead a lifestyle that causes the least amount of harm to animals, while vegetarians do not.
Many vegans start out as vegetarians, and then once they find out about the dairy and egg industries they go vegan afterwards. Many people are simply unaware and uneducated about the horrors that occur in the animal agriculture industry every single day.
Eating no meat is better than eating meat though, so vegetarians are still making a change in this world by refusing to eat animals.
