The four main types of vegans are ethical vegans, environmental vegans, health vegans, and religious vegans.
Level 3 vegans are those who are fairly firmly entrenched in the lifestyle. They are more experienced than level 2 vegans, and have overcome the small lifestyle adjustments that are needed in order to fully settle into their own comfortable vegan lifestyle.
Strict vegetarians, or vegans, eat plant foods and reject all animal products—meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy and sometimes honey. Those who also eat dairy products are called lacto vegetarians. Vegetarians who eat both dairy and eggs are called lacto-ovo vegetarians.
Yet one thing all vegans have in common is a plant-based diet avoiding all animal foods such as meat (including fish, shellfish and insects), dairy, eggs and honey - as well as avoiding animal-derived materials, products tested on animals and places that use animals for entertainment.
A vegan diet can be healthy as it is typically higher in fiber and lower in cholesterol than an omnivorous diet. As a result, some studies find a vegan diet lowers the risk of heart disease and premature death, helps manage type 2 diabetes and reduces the risk of cancer.
Some fruits such as oranges, lemons and limes are coated with beeswax or shellac which means many vegans will avoid them.
Honey is by definition not vegan, since it a bee product, and bees are animals. Here's a nuanced article about how the ethical issues surrounding this sweetener fit into the broader concept of vegan living.
No formal definition of a semi-vegetarian diet exists. However, being a semi-vegetarian—also known as a "flexitarian" (or "flexible vegetarian")—often means you mostly eat plant-based foods and occasionally eat chicken, fish, dairy products, and eggs, and rarely (if ever) eat red meat.
In vegan circles, what the mainstream world calls pets are almost always referred to as “companion animals”. Ultimately, there is no difference between a pet and a companion animal – they are simply different phrases for the same thing.
Based on early data from the National Nutrition Survey and other studies we estimate that about 2% of Australians are vegan. This is approximately 500,000 people.
Fruitarianism is more restrictive than veganism or raw veganism, as a subset of both. Maintaining this diet over a long period can result in dangerous deficiencies, a risk that many fruitarians try to ward off through nutritional testing and vitamin injections.
Beer and wine. Isinglass, a gelatin-based substance derived from fish, is used as a clarifying agent in some beer and wine. Other non-vegan ingredients sometimes used are casein (from milk) and egg whites.
Most dark chocolate is inherently vegan. Superior quality dark chocolate only has a handful of ingredients: cocoa, (usually listed as cocoa mass and cocoa butter), sugar, lecithin, and sometimes vanilla.
Olive oil is a completely plant-derived product that is made entirely from the fruit of the olive tree. The product does not require animals for sourcing or processing in any way. Olive oil is an excellent vegan substitute for other oils and fats that are derived from animals, namely butter.
Yes, broccoli is vegan. Broccoli is a vegetable and not an animal product or byproduct, therefore making it a vegan food.
Unfortunately for vegan American McDonald's fans, the fries there aren't plant-based. This is because one of the ingredients is “natural beef flavoring,” which contains milk. “When our suppliers partially fry our cut potatoes, they use an oil blend that contains beef flavoring,” the McDonald's website states.
Why Are Some Bananas Not Vegan? The reason that bananas might be on the vegan naughty step is because you could well be eating, or at the very least coming into contact with, chitosan. We have mentioned chitosan, sometimes called chitin, in other articles, including our feature on whether or not wine is vegan.