Veganism (/ˈviːgənɪzəm/) is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products, particularly in diet, as well as an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of sentient animals. A follower of veganism is known as avegan.
Distinctions are sometimes made between different types of vegans and veganism. Dietary vegans (or strict vegetarians) eliminate animal products from their diet (not only meat and fish, but also dairy products, eggs and often honey, as well as other animal-derived substances). The term ethical vegan is often applied to those who not only follow a vegan diet, but extend the vegan philosophy into other areas of their lives. Another term used is environmental veganism, which refers to the rejection of animal products on the premise that industrial farming of animals is environmentally damaging and unsustainable.[1]
The term vegan was coined in England in 1944 by Donald Watson, co-founder of the British Vegan Society, to mean "non-dairy vegetarian"; the society also opposed the consumption of eggs. In 1951 the society extended the definition ofveganism to mean "the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals," and in 1960 H. Jay Dinshah started the American Vegan Society, linking veganism to the Jain concept of ahimsa, the avoidance of violence against living things.[2]
Veganism is a small but growing movement. In many countries the number of vegan restaurants is increasing, and some of the top athletes in certain endurance sports—for instance, the Ironman triathlon and the ultramarathon—practise veganism, including raw veganism.[3] Well-planned vegan diets have been found to offer protection against certain degenerative conditions, including heart disease,[4] and are regarded by the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada as appropriate for all stages of the life-cycle.[5] Vegan diets tend to be higher in dietary fibre, magnesium, folic acid, vitamin C, vitamin E, iron, and phytochemicals, and lower in calories, saturated fat, cholesterol, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12.[6] Because uncontaminated plant foods do not provide vitamin B12 (which is produced by microorganisms such as bacteria), researchers agree that vegans should eat foods fortified with B12 or take a daily supplement (see below).[7]
Vegetarianism is defined by the International Vegetarian Union (IVU) as "a diet of foods derived from plants, with or without eggs, dairy products, and/or honey"; the British Vegetarian Society adds that vegetarians avoid the "by-products of slaughter."[8] The word "vegetarian" seems to have come into use in the early 19th century to refer to those who avoided meat; those who also avoided fish, eggs and dairy products were known as strict or total vegetarians.[9] The Oxford English Dictionaryattributes the earliest use of the word to the English actress Fanny Kemble (1809–1893) writing in Georgia in the United States in 1839.[10] It is clear from these early references that the word was in sufficiently widespread use as to be easily understood.[11]
In 1834 Amos Bronson Alcott, the American Transcendentalist and strict vegetarian (father of Louisa May Alcott), opened the Temple School in Boston to promote his ideas, and in 1838 James Pierrepont Greaves opened Alcott House in Surrey, England, a cooperative community and boarding school that followed a strict-vegetarian diet.[12] In 1844 Alcott founded Fruitlands, a strict-vegetarian community in Harvard, Massachusetts, though it lasted only seven months.[13]
Members of Alcott House – along with the ovo-lacto vegetarian Bible Christian Church and readers of the Truth-Tester temperance journal – were involved in 1847 in forming the British Vegetarian Society. The Society held its first meeting, chaired by Salford MPJoseph Brotherton (1783–1857), in September that year at Northwood Villa in Ramsgate.[14] In 1886 the Society published the influential A Plea for Vegetarianism by the English campaigner Henry Salt (1851–1939), one of the first writers to make the paradigm shift from animal welfare to animal rights.[15] In it, Salt acknowledged that he was a vegetarian, writing that this was a "formidable admission" to make, because "a Vegetarian is still regarded, in ordinary society, as little better than a madman."[16] In 1851 an article appeared in the Vegetarian Society's magazine about alternatives to using leather for shoes, which the IVU cites as evidence of the existence in England of another group that wanted to avoid using animal products entirely.[17]
The first known vegan cookbook, No Animal Food by Rupert H. Wheldon, was published in England by C.W. Daniel in 1910.[19] Leah Leneman writes that in 1912 the editor of TVMHR, the journal of the Vegetarian Society's Manchester branch, started a debate among readers as to whether vegetarians ought to avoid eggs and dairy. He summarized the views of the 24 vegetarians who responded, writing: "The defence of the use of eggs and milk by vegetarians, so far as it has been offered here, is not satisfactory. The only true way is to live on cereals, pulse, fruit, nuts and vegetables." The journal wrote in 1923 that the "ideal position for vegetarians is abstinence from animal products," and that most of the society's members were in a transitional stage. In 1935 it wrote that the issue was becoming more pressing with every year.[19]
In 1931 Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) addressed a meeting in London of the Vegetarian Society—attended by Henry Salt—arguing that it ought to promote a meat-free diet as a moral issue, not as an issue of human health. Norm Phelps writes that this was a rebuke to members of the Society who had focused on the health benefits of vegetarianism. Gandhi argued that "vegetarians had a habit of talking of nothing but food and nothing but disease. I feel that this is the worst way of going about the business. ... I discovered that for remaining staunch to vegetarianism a man requires a moral basis." He became friends with other leading vegetarian campaigners, including Salt and the English physician Anna Kingsford (1846–1888), author of The Perfect Way in Diet(1881).[18] Although Gandhi continued to drink cow's milk—calling it the tragedy of his life that he could not give it up—Phelps argues that his speech was a call for the Society to align itself with Salt's views on animal rights, and a precursor to the ideas of Donald Watson in 1944.[18]
In July 1943 Leslie Cross, a member of the Leicester Vegetarian Society, expressed concern in its newsletter, The Vegetarian Messenger, that vegetarians were still eating dairy products. A year later, in August 1944, two of the society's members, Donald Watson (1910–2005) and Elsie "Sally" Shrigley (died 1978), suggested forming a subgroup of non-dairy vegetarians. When the executive committee rejected the idea, they and five others met at the Attic Club in Holborn, London, on November 1 to discuss setting up a separate organization, which they called the Vegan Society.[20]
Other suggestions for a concise term to replace "non-dairy vegetarian" included dairyban, vitan, benevore, sanivore, and beaumangeur, but Watson decided on "vegan" – pronounced "veegun" (/ˈviːɡən/), with the stress on the first syllable – the first three and last two letters of vegetarian and, as Watson put it in 2004, "the beginning and end of vegetarian."[21] The word was first independently published in the Oxford Illustrated Dictionary in 1962, defined as "a vegetarian who eats no butter, eggs, cheese or milk."[20] Fay K. Henderson published Vegan Recipes the following year; it was the first recipe book with the word "vegan" in the title.[19]
The first vegan society in the United States was founded in 1948 by Dr. Catherine Nimmo of Oceano, California, and Rubin Abramowitz of Los Angeles. Nimmo had been a vegan since 1931, and began distributing the British Vegan Society's Vegannewsletter to her mailing list within the United States.[22] In 1951 the British Vegan Society broadened its definition of veganism to "the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals." Leslie Cross, the society's vice-president wrote that veganism is a principle, that it is "not so much about welfare [of animals] as liberation." The society pledged to "seek to end the use of animals by man for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection and all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by man." Members were expected to declare themselves in agreement and to live as closely to the ideal as they could.[23]
In 1957 H. Jay Dinshah (1933–2000), the son of a Parsi from Mumbai, visited a slaughterhouse and read some of Watson's literature. He gave up all animal products and, on February 8, 1960, he founded the American Vegan Society (AVS) in Malaga, New Jersey. He incorporated Nimmo's society and explicitly linked veganism to the concept of ahimsa, a Sanskrit word meaning "non-harming." The AVS called the idea "dynamic harmlessness," and named its magazine Ahimsa.[24] Two key books explained the philosophy: Dinshah's Out of the Jungle: The Way of Dynamic Harmlessness (1965), and Victoria Moran's Compassion, the Ultimate Ethic: An Exploration of Veganism (1985), the latter first published as a series of essays in Ahimsa.[25] Today the word "veganism" is still used to refer either to the plant-based diet or to a lifestyle that seeks to eliminate animal use entirely.[1] Since 1994 World Vegan Day has been held every November 1, the founding date of the British Vegan Society in 1944.[26]
Surveys in the United States suggest that between 0.5 and three percent there are vegan. In 1997 three percent said they had not used animals for any purpose in the previous two years.[27] In 2006 a poll by Harris Interactive suggested that 1.4 percent were dietary vegans, a 2008 survey for the Vegetarian Resource Group reported 0.5 percent, or one million, and a July 2012 Gallup poll found 2 percent report being vegan, 91 percent "not vegan," and 7 percent reported "no opinion."[28] In the UK The Times estimated in 2005 that there were 250,000 vegans there, in 2006 The Independent estimated 600,000, and in a 2007 British government survey two percent identified as vegan.[29] The Netherlands Association for Veganism estimated there were 16,000 vegans in the Netherlands as of 2007, around 0.1 percent of the population.[30]
Ethical vegans entirely reject the commodification of animals. The Vegan Society in the UK will only certify a product as vegan if it is free of animal involvement as far as possible and practical.[31]
An animal product is any material derived from animals, including meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy products, honey, fur, leather, wool, and silk. Other commonly used, but perhaps less well known, animal products are beeswax, bone char, bone china, carmine, casein, cochineal, gelatin, isinglass, lanolin, lard, rennet, shellac, tallow, whey, and yellow grease. Many of these may not be identified in the list of ingredients in the finished product.[32] The detailed reasons vegans may not use a specific animal product are varied. In the case of wool for example, Merino sheep have been bred to have unusually wrinkly skin, which can lead to heat exhaustion in summer and the practice of mulesing to counter flystrike.[33]
Ethical vegans will not use animal products for clothing, toiletries, or any other reason, and will try to avoid ingredients that have been tested on animals. They will not buy fur coats, cars with leather in them, leather shoes, belts, bags, wallets, woollen jumpers, silk scarves, camera film, and certain vaccines, etc. Depending on their economic circumstances, they may donate such items to charity when they become vegan, or use them until they wear out. Clothing made without animal products is widely available in stores and online. Alternatives to wool include cotton, hemp, rayon, and polyester. Some vegan clothes, in particular shoes, are made of petroleum-based products, which has triggered criticism because of the environmental damage associated with production.[34]
One of the main differences between a vegan and a typical vegetarian diet is the avoidance of eggs and dairy products such as milk, cheese, butter and yogurt. Ethical vegans state that the production of eggs and dairy causes animal suffering and/or premature death. In battery cage and free-range egg production, unwanted male chicks are culled or discarded at birth during the process of securing a further generation of egg-laying hens.[35] To produce milk from dairy cattle female calves are separated from their mothers soon after birth and fed milk replacer, so that the cow's milk is retained for human consumption. Vegans say that this breaks the natural mother-calf bond. Unwanted male calves are either slaughtered at birth or sent for veal production. To prolong lactation, dairy cows are kept almost permanently pregnant through artificial insemination.[36] After about five years, once the cow's milk production has dropped, they are considered "spent" and sent to slaughter for hamburger meat and their hides. A dairy cow's natural life expectancy is about twenty years.[37]
There is disagreement among vegan groups about the extent to which products from insects must be avoided. Some vegans view the consumption of honey as cruel and exploitative with modern beekeeping a form of enslavement.[38] Once the honey is harvested, it is common practice to substitute the bees natural food store (honey) with sugar or corn syrup to maintain the colony over winter. Neither the Vegan Society nor the American Vegan Society considers the use of honey, silk, or other insect products to be suitable for vegans, while Vegan Action and Vegan Outreach regard it as a matter of personal choice.[39]
Any plant-based dish may be vegan. Common vegan dishes prepared without animal ingredients include ratatouille, falafel, hummus, veggie burritos, rice and beans, veggie stir-fry, and pasta primavera. Ingredients such as tofu, tempeh, and seitanare widely used in vegan cuisine. Plant cream and plant milk—such as almond milk, grain milk, or soy milk—are used instead of cows' or goats' milk. Vegan recipes use apple sauce, ground flax seeds, mashed potatoes, soft or silken tofu, or commercial starch-based egg-substitute products, instead of chickens' eggs.[40]
Meat analogues, or "mock meats," made of soy or gluten—including vegetarian sausage, vegetarian mince, and veggie burgers—are widely available, and are often vegan. Cheese analogues made from soy, nuts and tapioca are commonly used. Vegan cheeses like Chreese, Daiya, Teese and Tofutti can replace the taste and meltability of dairy cheese in various dishes.[41] Joanne Stepaniak writes that cheese substitutes can be made at home, using recipes from Vegan Vittles, The Nutritional Yeast Cookbook, and The Uncheese Cookbook.[42]
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recommends what they call the "Four New Food Groups." They suggest that vegans and vegetarians eat at least three servings of vegetables a day, including dark-green, leafy vegetables such as broccoli, and dark-yellow and orange such as carrots, five servings of whole grains (bread, rice, pasta), three servings of fruit, and two of legumes (beans, peas, lentils).[43]
There is a growing scientific consensus that a plant-based diet reduces the risk of a number of degenerative diseases, particularly coronary artery disease and diabetes.[44] Winston Craig, chair of the department of nutrition atAndrews University, writes that vegan diets tend to be higher in dietary fibre, magnesium, folic acid, vitamin C, vitamin E, iron, and phytochemicals, and lower in calories, saturated fat, cholesterol, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids,vitamin D, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12. He writes that vegans tend to be thinner, with lower serum cholesterol and lower blood pressure. He adds that eliminating all animal products increases the risk of nutritional deficiencies; of particular concern are vitamins B12 and D, calcium, and long-chain n–3 (omega-3) fatty acids. He advises vegans to eat foods fortified with these nutrients or to take supplements, and writes that iron and zinc may also be problematic because of limited bioavailability.[6]
According to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a report issued by the US Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture, a vegetarian diet is associated with lower levels of obesity and reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.[45] The American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada said in 2003 that properly planned vegan diets were nutritionally adequate for all stages of life, including pregnancy and lactation, and provided health benefits in the treatment and prevention of certain diseases.[5] People avoiding meat are reported to have lower body mass index; from this follows lower death rates from ischemic heart disease, lower blood cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and fewer incidences of type 2 diabetes, prostate and colon cancers.[46] The Swiss Federal Nutrition Commission and the German Society for Nutrition do not recommend a vegan diet, and caution against it for children, the pregnant and the elderly.[47
A group of prominent physicians in the United States – John A. McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, Neal D. Barnard, Dean Ornish, and Michael Greger – together with nutritional biochemist T. Colin Campbell, have argued that diets based on animal fat and animal protein, such as the standard American diet, are detrimental to health, and that a low-fat vegan diet can not only prevent, but may also reverse, certain diseases.[4] A 2006 study by Barnard found that in people with type 2 diabetes, a low-fat vegan diet reduced weight, total cholesterol, and LDL cholesterol, and did so to a greater extent than the diet prescribed by the American Diabetes Association.[48]
The Oxford Vegetarian Study recruited 11,000 subjects between 1980 and 1984 (6000 vegetarians and a control group of 5000 non-vegetarians) and followed up after 12 years. The study indicated that vegans had lower total- and LDL-cholesterol concentrations than meat-eaters. Death rates were lower in non-meat eaters. The authors wrote that mortality from ischemic heart disease was positively associated with higher dietary cholesterol levels and the consumption of animal fat. They also wrote that non-meat-eaters had half the risk of meat eaters of requiring an emergency appendectomy, and that vegans in the UK may be prone to iodine deficiency.[49]
A 1999 meta-analysis of five studies comparing mortality rates in Western countries found that mortality from ischemic heart disease was 26 percent lower in vegans than in regular meat-eaters. This was compared to 20 percent lower in occasional meat eaters, 34 percent lower in pescetarians (those who ate fish but no other meat), and 34 percent lower in ovo-lacto vegetarians (those who ate no meat, but did consume animal milk and eggs). The lower rate of protection for vegans compared to pescetarians or ovo-lacto vegetarians is believed to be linked to higher levels of homocysteine, caused by insufficient vitamin B12; it is believed that vegans who consume sufficient B12 should show even lower risk of ischemic heart disease than lacto-ovo vegetarians. No significant difference in mortality was found from other causes.[50] A 15-year survey that investigated the association between diet and age-related cataract risk in the UK found a progressive decrease in cataracts in high meat eaters to low meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians, and vegans; vegans had a 40 percent lower risk than the biggest meat eaters.[51]
The American Dietetic Association indicated in 2003 that vegetarian diets may be more common among adolescents with eating disorders, but that the evidence suggests the adoption of a vegetarian diet may serve to camouflage an existing disorder, rather than causing one.[46] Other studies support this conclusion.[52]
Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegan_diet
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