{"id":14039,"date":"2015-09-09T08:22:15","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T15:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.happycow.net\/blog\/?p=14039"},"modified":"2016-08-31T18:47:49","modified_gmt":"2016-09-01T01:47:49","slug":"vegan-without-being-vegetarian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.happycow.net\/blog\/vegan-without-being-vegetarian\/","title":{"rendered":"Vegan Without Being Vegetarian?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Waiter<\/strong> – \u201cHello sir, how are you?\u201d<\/em>
\nCustomer<\/strong>\u00a0– \u201cHello, I’m very well, thank you.\u201d<\/em>
\nWaiter<\/strong> – \u201cAre you ready to order sir?\u201d<\/em>
\nCustomer<\/strong> – \u201cYes please. What do you recommend that is vegan friendly?\u201d<\/em>
\nWaiter<\/strong> – \u201cHow about chicken?\u201d<\/em>
\nCustomer<\/strong> (confused) – \u201cExcuse me please??\u201d<\/em>
\nWaiter<\/strong> – \u201cHow about chicken?\u201d<\/em>
\nCustomer<\/strong> (still confused) – \u201cBut I don’t eat meat??\u201d<\/em>
\nWaiter<\/strong> – \u201cAh, you’re vegetarian as well.\u201d<\/em>
\nCustomer<\/strong> (even more confused) – \u201cHow can someone be vegan without being vegetarian???\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Does the above conversation have any ring of familiarity? Regrettable as it is to say so, the above is a first hand account from being the customer in that conversation a few years ago. This is of course far from an isolated example. The more common scourge of so many a vegetarian is being in an omnivorous restaurant and on asking for vegetarian food, being offered fish.<\/p>\n

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(Fish. Eaten by pescetarians, not eaten by vegetarians.)<\/em><\/p>\n

The point being made is that different people have different levels of understanding of different concepts within vegetarianism. Only going by personal experience rather than having any statistical evidence to back this up, in North America the understanding of the word vegan<\/em> for example appears quite widely understood. Elsewhere vegan as a word appears much less understood among people who don’t mix with any sort of regularity in vegetarian circles. Even the word vegetarian<\/em> itself appears hugely misunderstood by huge proportions of the earth’s population.<\/p>\n

To try to help things along a little, here are some very basic terms and explanations associated with vegetarianism. Firstly to borrow some info from vegsoc.org\/faqs<\/a><\/p>\n

Vegetarian<\/strong><\/span> – The Vegetarian Society defines a vegetarian as: “Someone who lives on a diet of grains, pulses, nuts, seeds, vegetables and fruits with, or without, the use of dairy products and eggs. A vegetarian does not eat any meat, poultry, game, fish, shellfish* or by-products of slaughter.”<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

*Shellfish are typically \u2018a sea animal covered with a shell\u2019. We take shellfish to mean:<\/span><\/p>\n