Last Updated on April 12, 2024 by Fasting Planet
You’ve given up all meat products, and surprisingly, you don’t miss beef or ham all that much. You wonder if now that you’ve started eating differently if that makes you a vegan or a vegetarian? Is there really a difference?
Yes, there is a difference between veganism and vegetarianism. Vegetarians eschew meat and poultry but not necessarily dairy or animal byproducts like eggs and honey. Vegans don’t eat any animal products and byproducts, only plant-based foods.
The diets of vegetarians versus vegans are more nuanced than that, especially when you consider the various types of vegetarians out there. In this article, we’ll first discuss those vegetarian diets, then delve deeper into the differences between vegetarianism and veganism. Keep reading!
The Types of Vegetarians
The vegan diet, as restrictive as it is, is rather straightforward compared to vegetarianism. Although lots of people who try vegetarianism will be standard vegetarians, smaller subsets will eat more specific diets.
Here’s what you need to know.
Standard Vegetarian
When people talk about vegetarianism, this is usually what they mean. The standard vegetarian diet omits at least poultry, fish, and meat. This means that foods like fried chicken, beef cheeseburgers, sushi, seared scallops, and steak are all off the table.
Some vegetarians may take it a step further, looking to remove other animal products from their diet. If so, then the next foods these vegetarians would cut out would be dairy. At this point, their diet veers closer to veganism.
Vegetarians may be discerning about the animal byproducts they eat and use as well, although this isn’t the case with all vegetarians, of course.
Pescatarian
One subset of vegetarianism is pescatarian. While a standard vegetarian does not eat fish, a pescatarian will, and plenty of it. They still abstain from ingesting meat and poultry, but their diet is augmented with lobster, crab, salmon, mussels, shrimp, and other forms of fish, shellfish, and seafood.
Since vegetarians are supposed to be non-meat-eaters, a pescatarian is technically not a vegetarian. That said, pescatarians are often included in the list of vegetarian subsets, so we’ll add them as well.
Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian
Lacto-ovo-vegetarians, sometimes also referred to as ovo-lacto-vegetarians, consume eggs as well as dairy. Since eggs are an animal product, even technically an animal byproduct, some could say this goes against the vegetarian diet, but a surprising amount of vegetarians are lacto-ovo.
Even with their allowance for eggs and dairy products, lacto-ovo vegetarians never eat meat or poultry. Unlike pescatarians, they avoid fish and seafood as well.
Ovo-Vegetarian
If you follow the ovo-vegetarian diet, that means you don’t consume meat, fish, poultry, or dairy, but you will eat eggs. The reason these vegetarians are called ovo-vegetarians is that “ovo” means egg in Latin.
Lacto-Vegetarian
As the name might have told you, lacto-vegetarians consume dairy but not eggs. Like a traditional vegetarian, they also avoid meat, poultry, seafood, and fish. All dairy products are allowed on this vegetarian diet subset, including kefir, cream, ghee, butter, yogurt, cheese, and milk.
Semi-Vegetarian
Last is a group of vegetarians who call themselves semi-vegetarians or flexitarians. Their diets are primarily plant-based, but they also don’t turn down meat if they crave it or need it dietarily. The lack of restrictions as part of this diet can make it appealing to beginning vegetarians or those who aren’t sure if they can give up meat.
How Veganism and Vegetarianism Are Different
Now that you understand what the vegetarian diet can entail, let’s contrast it to the vegan diet.
Vegans Always Avoid Eggs, Vegetarians Might
All other groups of vegetarians save for lacto-vegetarians don’t have to quit eating eggs, so many will not. Even outside of breakfast foods, eggs appear in a lot of recipes that are sweet and savory alike. Rather than for taste, egg is favored more for its behavior as a binder, where it allows ingredients to stick together. That’s why you add eggs to a cake.
Lacto-vegetarians and vegans share one thing in common, their wholesale avoidance of eggs. When it comes to preparing food and using a binding ingredient, vegans might try banana or even powdered egg substitute, which doesn’t use real egg.
Vegans Never Eat Meat, Some Vegetarians Occasionally Do
If there’s one food vegetarians are known for avoiding, it’s meat. Considering that meat is a possible carcinogen as well as a cause of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, omitting red meat is a very smart idea for your health.
Yet flexitarians or semi-vegetarians will eat meat should the mood strike. Since they’re vegetarians above all else, it’s not like a semi-vegetarian’s diet is filled with meat every single day. By being able to have meat when they want it, their cravings for the stuff might not be so strong.
Vegans though, no matter their cravings for red meat (which will happen, at least at the beginning of the diet when you’re still adjusting), will never eat it. That goes for animal products as well, including an animal’s blood, organs, skin, or fat.
Vegans Never Eat Fish or Seafood, Pescatarians Do
Another large food group that vegans don’t eat is fish, shellfish, and seafood. Besides the fish-related foods we listed above, the following seafood is also not a part of a vegan’s diet:
- Tuna
- Cod
- Trout
- Caviar
- Squid
- Haddock
- Roe
- Swordfish
- Sardines
- Salmon
- Octopus
- Shrimp paste
- Mussels
- Eel
- Oysters
Pescatarians will eat all the above even though they refuse to have poultry or red meat of any kind. Fish can be a very nutritious part of one’s diet, so it’s understandable why pescatarians would want to make that concession to their vegetarianism. That said, vegans will not do it.
Vegans Always Avoid Dairy, Vegetarians Might
Outside of ovo-vegetarians, other types of vegetarians aren’t picky about dairy products. Again, it’s clear to see why dairy is a part of the average vegetarian’s diet considering that dairy products are loaded with protein, vitamin D, potassium, and calcium.
How do vegans keep up on their supply of nutrients, you ask? Well, milk and cheese aren’t the only sources of foods that are rich in vitamin D and calcium. Many plant-based foods contain these nutrients too, including oat and rice beverages, fortified unsweetened soya, okra, cabbage, fortified tofu, and broccoli.
Besides soy-based beverages like milk, vegans can also enjoy a whole assortment of milk, among them pea, hemp, cashew, banana, peanut, flax, hemp, oat, almond, and coconut milk. It’s hard to miss dairy milk with that much variety on the menu.
Vegans Don’t Eat or Use Animal Byproducts, Vegetarians Don’t Always
Vegans don’t stop at eschewing animal products, but byproducts as well. Eggs are an animal byproduct, so they’re out of a vegan’s diet. That’s also true of honey and milk. Those are the obvious sources of animal byproducts, but if you read our eBook on byproducts, you’d know how many different types there are.
This can lead to vegans cutting out some foods that might seem rather confusing to you, at least at first. For example, vegans probably won’t use store-bought cake mix because it may contain beef fat. They will not drink wine or beer that uses isinglass, as the alcohol clarifier is sourced from fish bladders. Vegans also avoid foods and beverages with pink or red food coloring from the insect cochineal.
Vegetarians may abide by the same rules, but it’s not expected of them.
Is It Easier to Be a Vegan or a Vegetarian?
If you’re undecided whether the vegan or vegetarian diet is right for you, you might make up your mind based on which diet is easier to abide by. So which is it?
That’s undoubtedly vegetarianism. You don’t have to omit nearly so many foods that might be the backbone of your diet. If you don’t want to quit milk and cheese, you can call yourself a lacto-vegetarian. Perhaps you’d rather have eggs as well, in which case you’re a lacto-ovo-vegetarian. Maybe you don’t want to go without fish, so just become a pescatarian.
The flexitarian diet is the simplest to abide by of all since it doesn’t call for the complete removal of meat from your diet. You may cut back on your meat consumption to once a week or so and you’d still fit the definition of a flexitarian.
Compare that to veganism. When you go vegan, there’s little room for error. If you eat fish on a vegan diet, then you’re not a vegan. The same goes for drinking dairy milk or having a real egg. You have to be ready to cut these foods out entirely.
You can always ease your way into veganism by practicing vegetarianism first, which is something we recommend on this blog. With so many types of vegetarianism out there, whether you want to start by removing fish from your diet or eggs, meat, or dairy, you’re still technically a vegetarian by some definition.
Please don’t get so caught up in labels though that you forget why you’ve decided to become a vegetarian or vegan in the first place. Eating a meat-free diet is better for your health and it also helps our planet, as we recently wrote about. You’re preserving the life of an animal each time you eat a plant-based meal rather than one with meat in it.
Conclusion
Vegetarians don’t eat meat, fish, and poultry unless you’re a pescatarian. Lacto-ovo vegetarians will consume dairy and eggs, ovo-vegetarians just eggs, lacto-vegetarians only milk, and flexitarians anything they want, including meat.
Veganism is different in that it removes all animal products and byproducts from the diet, including dairy, eggs, fish, meat, poultry, seafood, shellfish, and honey.
Now that you have a clearer understanding of the respective vegetarian and vegan diets, you can decide which pattern of eating matches yours.