By Erik Marcus. Last Updated: April 23, 2008
What is a vegan?
Why do people become vegan?

• Ethics
• Health
• Environment

If everyone became vegan, what would happen to all the animals?
How do I go about becoming vegan?
What nutrition issues must vegans know about?
What about eating out?
How do I know if something’s really vegan?

What is a vegan?

A vegan is someone who doesn’t eat animal products: meat, fish, milk products, eggs, or honey. Many vegans also avoid fur, leather, and wool as these products generally result in the confinement, abuse, or slaughter of animals.

Vegan may well be the most mispronounced word in the English language. The correct pronunciation is Vee-Guhn.

Why do people become vegan?

Ethics

Perhaps the most common reason that people adopt a vegan diet relates to concerns over animal cruelty. More than 10 billion farmed animals are raised each year in the United States. Worldwide, the number exceeds 55 billion. The overwhelming majority of these animals are subjected to appalling cruelties.

The conditions at animal farms merit the attention of every compassionate person. This twelve minute video offers perhaps the most accurate summary of how animals are raised.

Most meat, milk, and eggs are produced at “factory farms” — places where close confinement and unconscionably cruel living conditions are the norm. For instance, most egg-laying hens worldwide are raised in battery cages, with each bird given less floor space than a single sheet of notebook paper.

One of the main problems with animal agriculture is that meat, milk, and eggs taste about the same regardless of whether they come from animals who are well-treated or brutally abused. And it turns out that many of the most widespread practices in animal agriculture entail profound cruelty. These practices are detailed in free online publications like “Why Vegan?” and books such as my own Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, & Money.

Naturally, you can pay more in order to get free-range eggs, organic dairy products, grass-fed beef, and so forth. Although this added expense often does away with some of the worst cruelties, a surprising amount of suffering may be left unaddressed. Unfortunately, the only way to reliably discover how a given producer’s animals are treated is to pay the farm (and slaughterhouse) a visit.

For people uncomfortable with animal slaughter, it’s important to know that all farmed animals are sent to slaughter – even dairy cows and layer hens. In fact, virtually all commercially-raised animals are slaughtered before middle-age.

In short, nearly all meat, milk, and eggs come from factory farms—where outrageous crowding and constant misery is the norm. Even the best alternative farms may rely on practices that most caring people would find outrageously cruel. As just one example, many cage-free egg farms source their hens from conventional hatcheries – where the unwanted male chicks are often discarded to smother in dumpsters or are ground up alive (these male “layer-strain” chicks obviously can’t lay eggs, and they don’t grow quickly enough to be profitably raised for meat.)

As we’ve just seen, being a “conscientious omnivore” is fraught with uncertainty over the quality of care that farmed animals actually receive. It can be far easier, therefore, to simply transition to a vegan diet. It is immensely satisfying than to sit down to a delicious meal and to know that not a single animal has suffered or died to produce it.

Health

A strong case can be made that an appropriately planned vegan diet is at least as healthy as any other diet. Vegan foods contain no cholesterol and tend to be lower in both total fat and saturated fat than animal products. And while animal products contain no fiber whatsoever, most whole vegan foods are loaded with fiber. These and other differences between plant and animal-based foods can add up to some substantial health advantages for vegans.

Given that most vegan foods are lower in calories than their animal-derived counterparts, it’s hardly surprising that vegans tend to have healthier body weights than the general population. Additionally, numerous doctors have experienced great success using a vegan diet to reverse diabetes and heart disease.

A number of vegan athletes have attained remarkably high levels of fitness. Carl Lewis, winner of nine Olympic gold medals, said, “I’ve found that a person does not need protein from meat to be a successful athlete. In fact, my best year of track competition was the first year I ate a vegan diet.”

Environment

From an environmental perspective, a switch to a vegan diet can make a lot of sense. This is especially true where beef and fish are concerned, the production of which are clear-cut environmental menaces.

In the United States, federal grazing deals extended to ranchers result in the extermination of wildlife on huge swaths of land. On top of that, nearly all beef cattle spend the final months of their lives at feedlots, where they are fed a notoriously inefficient and resource-intensive corn-based diet. Due in large part to having digestive system that relies upon fermentation, cattle emit huge amounts of methane – a gas tied to global warming. The methane produced by pigs and poultry likewise accounts for a lesser but still significant amount of greenhouse gasses. The United Nations estimates that animal agriculture is responsible for 18 percent of the total global warming effect stemming from greenhouse gasses. Beef and dairy cattle probably account for about 70 percent of animal agriculture’s contribution to global warming.

The environmental case against eating fish is, if anything, even stronger than it is for beef. Worldwide, large numbers of formerly abundant fisheries are in collapse as a result of overfishing. An article published in 2006 by the New York Times reported that: “If fishing around the world continues at its present pace, more and more species will vanish, marine ecosystems will unravel and there will be “global collapse” of all species currently fished, possibly as soon as midcentury, fisheries experts and ecologists are predicting.”

If everyone became vegan, what would happen to all the animals?

There’s no doubt that if the entire world switched overnight to a vegan diet, there would be hundreds of millions of farmed animals needing life-long housing and care.

But for better or worse, this scenario could never occur, as there’s simply no way that the entire worldwide population would become vegan in an instant. It would be laughably unrealistic to think that the world would require anything less than several decades to become entirely vegan. And if there’s one thing that animal agriculture is great at, it is calibrating supply almost exactly to demand.

So if the consumption of animal products fell into steady decline, we would see fewer and fewer farmed animals being bred, and substantial tracts of land becoming available to wildlife. Over time, the world’s farmed would be displaced by countless species of wild animals.

Ultimately, cows, pigs, and chickens are domesticated animals and are no more important to biodiversity than, say, toy poodles. Decades from now there may be hobbyists who breed a relative handful of these animals, for the sake of preserving certain breeds. But the fact is that biodiversity is harmed rather than helped by the existence of animal agriculture.

How do I go about becoming vegan?

If you’ve eaten meat your entire life, the idea of becoming vegan may sound next to impossible. While the transition admittedly takes some work, the truth is that it’s far easier than you’ll expect. What’s more, you’re likely to have a great time as you incorporate more vegan foods into your diet. During your transition to a vegan diet, you’ll undoubtedly discover all sorts of wonderful foods you’ve never tried before.

Becoming vegan is not about cutting animal-based foods out of your diet, it’s about crowding them out.
The key here is to make an ongoing effort to sample unfamiliar vegan foods. Of course, you won’t like everything you try. But you’re certain to like some of it, and you’ll most definitely stumble upon foods you adore. Every time you find a healthy food that you really like, you can incorporate it into your regular diet. Over time, whenever you get hungry, you’ll find that the first foods that come to mind just happen to be vegan.

So you see, a transition to a vegan diet has nothing to do with willpower, and everything with making a conscientious and ongoing effort to discover new foods. The more new foods you sample on a regular basis, the quicker and more gracefully your transition to a vegan diet will go.

You may find it helpful to set aside thirty minutes a day to cultivating your vegan habit, with a different activity each day. One day you might browse through a vegan cookbook looking for appealing recipes. The next day you might eat out at a vegan-friendly restaurant and try an unfamiliar dish. The day after that you might read through a book on vegan nutrition before bed. On other days you might try cooking new vegan recipes, or browsing your natural foods store for vegan items you’ve not yet sampled. As you can see, there are all sorts of fun things you can do to push yourself closer to a vegan diet.

What nutrition issues must vegans know about?

First, the good news. According to the American Dietetic Association, a well-planned vegan diet is appropriate for every stage of life: infancy, adolescence, pregnancy, old age, you name it. Plus, as we’ve already seen, a vegan diet can deliver some compelling health advantages, and is also quite compatible with exceptional athletic performance.

Unfortunately, some vegans take this to mean that they can eat anything they want, so long as it’s vegan, and never give a thought to nutrition. This is an incredibly dangerous belief to have, as it can lead to nutrient deficiencies that can permanently damage your health. Luckily, it takes just a short amount of time to familiarize yourself with the main nutritional pitfalls on a vegan diet, and it’s easy to include foods and supplements in your diet that will keep deficiencies from arising.

This FAQ is not a place to offer comprehensive nutrition advice. Instead I’ll just tell you the main deficiencies to watch out for on a vegan diet, and then direct you to resources where you can learn more. The nutrients most often lacking on a vegan diet are: vitamins D and B-12, iodine, calcium, and Omega 3 fatty acids.

The VeganHealth.org website offers a background on each of these nutrients, along with recommendations to guard against deficiencies. Additionally, you may wish to read a book like Davis and Mellina’s Becoming Vegan, which will familiarize you with the essentials of constructing a healthy vegan diet.

What about eating out?

Thanks to the Internet, it’s incredibly easy to find local restaurants that are veggie-friendly. There are three different directories to veggie restaurants: VegGuide.org, HappyCow.net, and VegDining.com. Each of these online guides is wonderfully comprehensive. Best of all, these sites all feature user-created ratings and reviews, so you can know in advance which restaurants are worth a special trip, and which are worth going out of your way to avoid.

What if you’re on the road and don’t have time to search for a new restaurant? In the United States, I think your best bet is either PF Chang’s Asian Bistro or Chipotle Mexican Grill. At PF Chang’s, any item in the “Vegetarian Plates and Sides” section is either vegan, or can be made so upon request. Note that PF Chang’s uses cane sugar which may be filtered through bone char. If this is an issue to you, you can always get their Buddha’s Steamed Vegetables over rice.

Chipotle Mexican Grill offers outstanding options for vegans. Just order a “vegetarian burrito” with any of the following: black beans, rice, grilled peppers and onions, guacamole, lettuce, and a choice of four different salsas. Chipotle’s freshly-made chips are vegan as well. The only word of caution is to avoid the pinto beans, as they contain pork.

How do I know if something’s really vegan?

Admittedly, it can seem impossible to figure out the origin of the multi-syllabic ingredients that appear on a food label. Where does this stuff come from?

Unfortunately, a lot of the stranger-sounding food ingredients come from slaughterhouses or milk products. Many unfamiliar ingredients are actually in the dictionary, or you can Google them to find out where they come from. But there will always be ingredients whose origin is impossible to determine. Monodiglycerides, anyone? Probably the most frustrating aspect of seeing something chemicals like this on a food label is that they often can be derived either from vegan or animal sources, and it’s usually impossible to know which.

If you are serious about keeping even small amounts of animal-derived ingredients out of your diet, there’s an easy way to accomplish this: eat a whole-foods diet that doesn’t contain these strange and questionable ingredients. In other words, eat foods made from vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, and fruits—foods that are unadulterated by strange chemicals. If you eat in this manner, not only will you avoid any trace of animal products, but you’ll undoubtedly enjoy better and more wholesome food.

Finally, it’s worth learning the following innocuous-sounding ingredients that often show up in processed food and cosmetics. Depending on the ingredient, the following items are either often or always non-vegan:

Carmine, Cochineal, or Carminic Acid
Casein, Caseinate, or Sodium Caseinate
Collagen
Gelatin
Glycerin, Glycerol (or anything with “glyc” in its name)
Keratin
Lactose
Lard
Lanolin
Lecithin (usually made from soy but may come from eggs)
Lipids, Lipoids
Monoglycerides or Diglycerides
Palmitate, Palmitic Acid
Silk or Silk Protein
Stearic Acid (or anything with “stear” in its name)
Tallow, Sodium Tallowate
Whey