Are Vegan and Vegetarian Diets the Same?

What are the differences and why you should care.

This is a question that I’m often asked. I’ve been eating a healthy plant-based diet for the past five years and in that time I’ve found myself explaining the differences between the two.

A Vegetarian Diet

A vegetarian diet is a diet that seeks to exclude meat of any kind. This includes beef, chicken, pork, veal and fish and even seafood. But a vegetarian diet does include products make from animal excretions such as milk, yogurt and cheese. The most common reason for people to go vegetarian is that they want to reduce the suffering of animals. Those on a vegetarian diet understand that the process of raising animals for their flesh causes a great deal of suffering and also causes a great deal of environmental damage.

Compared to those on a normal western diet, vegetarians are more compassionate and want to make a contribution to reducing the suffering on innocent animals.

A Vegan Diet

A vegan diet or plant-based diet as it also known seeks to exclude meat and any other product that is created from the excretions of animals. This includes beef, chicken, pork, veal and fish and seafood, eggs, cheese, milk, honey and cream.

The most common reasons for people to go vegan is the desire to reduce suffering for animals, to improve their health through diet and to reduce the amount of environmental damage that animal agriculture creates.

The main difference, then, is that vegans also cut out all dairy products from their diet. The sad truth is that in addition to the detrimental health effects of dairy and eggs, the industry responsible for creating all the dairy products is very cruel. People on a vegan diet do not want to contribute to the suffering and so they cut out all these products from their diet.  

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