Veganism

• 1. Introduction

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  Veganism was given its name in November 1944 when Donald Watson, secretary of the Leicester branch of the Vegetarian Society, launched a small newsletter called The Vegan News. He and Dorothy Morgan, a schoolteacher he later married, invented the word by taking "the first three and last two letters of 'vegetarian'" -- because, as Watson put it, veganism marked "the beginning and end of vegetarian." Readers wrote back with alternatives: allvega, neo-vegetarian, dairyban, vitan, benevore, sanivores, beaumangeur. None of them stuck.

  That founding moment was not the beginning of the idea -- people had been living without animal products for centuries before Watson typed a single page. What Watson gave the world was a word, and with it, a movement distinct from vegetarianism. The questions that follow are ones the movement has never stopped arguing over: What counts as veganism? Who gets to define it? Can it ever be truly absolute? And what happens when a personal dietary choice collides with economics, politics, ecology, and the law?

• 2. Roots Before the Word

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  Vegetarianism itself can be traced to the Indus Valley civilization as far back as 3300 BCE in the Indian subcontinent, particularly in northern and western ancient India. Among its early practitioners were Indian philosophers including Parshavnatha, Mahavira, and the emperors Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka.

  The Arab poet al-Ma'arri, born around 973 CE, is one of the earliest known figures who went further and avoided all animal products. He is famous for the poem "I No Longer Steal From Nature." The Irish farmer Robert Cook, who lived from 1646 to 1726, ate no animal products and wore neither wool nor leather, grounding his choices in a Protestant interpretation of biblical verses. English philosopher Lewis Gompertz also preceded the term by living without animal products.

  Ancient arguments for this way of living rested on health, the transmigration of souls, animal welfare, and the philosophical position -- set out by Porphyry in De Abstinentia ab Esu Animalium around 268 CE -- that if humans deserve justice, then so do animals. That argument has not changed much in almost two thousand years.

  By the 19th century, a small but vocal minority within the vegetarian movement in Britain and the United States was pushing the logic further. In 1813, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley published A Vindication of Natural Diet, calling for "abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors." In 1815, London physician William Lambe declared his "water and vegetable diet" could cure anything from tuberculosis to acne and called animal food a "habitual irritation", arguing that "milk eating and flesh-eating are but branches of a common system and they must stand or fall together." Sylvester Graham's fruit-and-vegetable diet, built around bread made with stoneground flour, became popular as a health remedy in the United States during the 1830s. The first known vegan cookbook -- Asenath Nicholson's Kitchen Philosophy for Vegetarians -- appeared in 1849.

• 3. Founding a Society

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  In August 1944, several members of the Vegetarian Society asked that a section of its newsletter be devoted to non-dairy vegetarianism. The request was refused. Watson responded by launching The Vegan News independently that November, and the first edition drew more than 100 letters -- among them a note from George Bernard Shaw, who resolved to give up eggs and dairy.

  The Vegan Society held its first meeting in early November at the Attic Club, 144 High Holborn, London. Present were Donald Watson, Elsie B. Shrigley, Fay K. Henderson, Alfred Hy Haffenden, Paul Spencer and Bernard Drake. Barbara Moore -- a Russian-British engineer who also went by Mme Pataleewa -- attended as an observer. World Vegan Day is now held every the 1st of November to mark that gathering.

  By November 1945, The Vegan News had renamed itself The Vegan and reached 500 subscribers. It published recipes and a "vegan trade list" covering animal-free toothpastes, shoe polishes, stationery, and glue. Books followed: Fay K. Henderson's Vegan Recipes in 1946, and Aids to a Vegan Diet for Children by Kathleen V. Mayo in 1948.

  The Society moved quickly to establish that its rejection of animal use was total, not merely dietary. In 1947, Watson wrote that "the vegan renounces it as superstitious that human life depends upon the exploitation of these creatures whose feelings are much the same as our own." From 1948, the front page of The Vegan read: "Advocating living without exploitation." In 1951, the Society published a formal definition: veganism is "the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals." Five years later, in 1956, vice-president Leslie Cross founded the Plantmilk Society, which later became Plamil Foods and began producing one of the first widely distributed soy milks in the Western world in 1965.

• 4. Philosophy in Conflict

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  Gary Francione, a law professor and abolitionist, argues that all sentient beings should have the right not to be treated as property, and that veganism must be the baseline for anyone who believes non-humans have intrinsic moral value. Philosopher Tom Regan, also a rights theorist, holds that animals possess value as "subjects-of-a-life" because they have beliefs, desires, memory, and the ability to initiate action in pursuit of goals.

  Philosopher Peter Singer takes a different angle. A utilitarian and protectionist, Singer argues there is no moral justification for failing to count animal suffering when making decisions. He also writes, however, that "ethical thinking can be sensitive to circumstances" and that he is "not too concerned about trivial infractions" -- a position that puts him at odds with abolitionists.

  The disagreement between these camps is sharp. Bruce Friedrich, also a protectionist, holds that strict veganism harms animals because it prioritizes personal purity over encouraging broader reductions in animal product consumption. For Francione, this resembles arguing that because human-rights abuses can never be eliminated, we should not defend human rights in the situations we do control.

  Philosopher Val Plumwood offered a different critique entirely. She maintained that ethical veganism is "subtly human-centred" because it views humanity as separate from the rest of nature rather than recognizing the "ecological embeddedness" of all living things. She strongly opposed factory farming but argued that for anyone relying on a small local ecosystem, veganism is very difficult or impossible.

  Bioethicist Ben Mepham, reviewing Gary Francione and Robert Garner's The Animal Rights Debate, quoted Simon Fairlie's observation that "to conclude that veganism is the 'only ethical response' is to take a big leap into a very muddy pond." Mepham pointed to the adverse wildlife effects of agricultural practices required to sustain most vegan diets and the ethical imbalance between resources devoted to animal welfare and those directed at alleviating the suffering of roughly one billion humans experiencing malnutrition and exploitation.

  A growing political philosophy called veganarchism pushes further still, seeking "total abolition" or "total liberation" for all animals, including humans, and advocates for veganism within a stateless society. The term was popularized in 1995 by Brian A. Dominick's pamphlet Animal Liberation and Social Revolution, described as "a vegan perspective on anarchism or an anarchist perspective on veganism." Steven Best, professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at El Paso, has criticized what he sees as the apolitical "Go Vegan" message as directed mainly at wealthy Western audiences while ignoring people of colour, the working class, and the poor -- noting that "for every person who becomes vegan, a thousand flesh eaters arise in China, India and Indonesia."

• 5. The Environmental Case

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  A 2006 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, Livestock's Long Shadow, found that around 26% of the planet's terrestrial surface is devoted to livestock grazing. Livestock consumed 1,174 million tonnes of food in 2002, including 7.6 million tonnes of fishmeal and 670 million tonnes of cereals -- one-third of the global cereal harvest. Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society called pigs and chickens "major aquatic predators" because livestock eat 40 percent of the fish that are caught.

  A 2017 World Wildlife Fund study attributed 60% of biodiversity loss to the vast scale of feed crop cultivation needed to rear tens of billions of farm animals. That same year, 15,364 world scientists signed a warning to humanity that called for, among other things, "promoting dietary shifts towards mostly plant-based foods."

  A 2018 study found that global adoption of plant-exclusive diets would reduce agricultural land use by 76% -- an area of 3.1 billion hectares, roughly the size of Africa -- and cut total global greenhouse gas emissions by 28%. Half of that reduction came from avoided emissions from animal production, including methane and nitrous oxide; the other half came from trees re-growing on abandoned farmland and absorbing carbon dioxide. The authors concluded that avoiding meat and dairy is the "single biggest way" to reduce one's impact on Earth.

  A 2023 study published in Nature Food found that a vegan diet reduces emissions, water pollution, and land use by 75%, reduces the destruction of wildlife by 66%, and cuts water use by 54%. A 2022 study focused on high-income nations alone found that 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide could be removed from the air by the end of the century through a shift to plant-exclusive diets and re-wilding of farmlands -- a combination the researchers called the double climate dividend.

• 6. Nutrition and Health

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  Vegan diets tend to be higher in dietary fibre, magnesium, folic acid, vitamins C and E, iron, and phytochemicals, and lower in saturated fat, cholesterol, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D, calcium, zinc, and vitamin B12. The gap that receives the most medical attention is B12. Its deficiency can cause blood disorders and potentially irreversible neurological damage, and in some Asian countries B12 deficiency has been found in up to 80% of all vegans.

  The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and Dietitians of Canada hold that properly planned vegan diets are appropriate for all life stages, including pregnancy and lactation. The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, the British Dietetic Association, the British National Health Service, and the Canadian Pediatric Society share this position. The German Society for Nutrition (DGE), as of 2024, states that a vegan diet can be healthful for healthy adults when B12 is supplemented, but it does not recommend vegan diets for children, the elderly, or pregnant or breastfeeding women without professional guidance, on the grounds that irreversible consequences cannot be ruled out when the diet is not well planned.

  Scientific reviews have found moderate evidence that sticking to a vegan diet for at least 12 weeks may meaningfully reduce body weight and improve blood sugar control in people with overweight or type 2 diabetes. A meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies found that vegan diets are associated with reduced risk of ischemic heart disease. Vegans may, however, be at risk of lower bone mineral density. A Cochrane review concluded that there is currently insufficient information to draw conclusions about the effects of vegan dietary interventions on cardiovascular disease risk factors more broadly.

  The DGE also notes that a vegan diet is exceptionally environmentally friendly and can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 70-80%.

• 7. Market Growth and Everyday Life

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  The Economist declared 2019 "the year of the vegan." By that point the global mock-meat market had grown 18% between 2005 and 2010, and in the U.S. by 8% between 2012 and 2015, reaching $553 million a year. Plant-derived meat sales in the U.S. grew a further 37% between 2017 and 2019. Since 2017, more than 12,500 chain restaurant locations have begun offering Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods products, including Carl's Jr. outlets with Beyond Burgers and Burger King outlets serving Impossible Whoppers.

  The Vegetarian Butcher -- De Vegetarische Slager -- became the first known vegetarian butcher shop when it opened in the Netherlands in 2010. America's first vegan butcher, the Herbivorous Butcher, opened in Minneapolis in 2016. In 2011, two of Europe's first vegan supermarkets appeared in Germany: Veganz in Berlin and Vegilicious in Dortmund. In 2013, Oktoberfest in Munich -- traditionally a meat-heavy event with a history stretching back more than 200 years -- offered vegan dishes for the first time.

  By 2016-49% of Americans were drinking plant milk while 91% still drank dairy milk. In the United Kingdom, the plant milk market grew 155% in just two years, from 36 million litres in 2011 to 92 million litres in 2013. The U.S. market for vegan food was valued at $3.9 billion in 2017 and rose to $8.1 billion by 2023.

  In January 2021, 582,538 people from 209 countries and territories signed up for Veganuary, breaking the previous year's record of 400,000. That same month, ONA in France became the first vegan restaurant in the country to receive a Michelin star, and by the end of the year 79 more vegan restaurants around the world had received Michelin stars. A poll that year found that a new high of 36% of the British public were interested in veganism.

  A 2016 study estimated that if everyone in the United States switched to a vegan diet, the country would save $289.1 billion in total by 2050, combining direct and indirect health-care savings with environmental savings. Applied globally, the same model projected total savings of $1.63 trillion by 2050.

• 8. Law, Identity, and Ongoing Debate

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  In 2020, a United Kingdom employment tribunal ruled that the Equality Act 2010 protects "ethical veganism" as a philosophical belief extending beyond diet to all areas of life. The ruling has practical consequences: prisoners who are vegan must receive nutritionally adequate vegan meals and appropriate clothing, and must not be required to perform work that violates their vegan beliefs.

  In Portugal, starting in 2017, public administration canteens and cafeterias -- including schools, prisons, and social services -- must offer at least one vegan option at every meal. In Ontario, Canada, a court ruled in 2023 that veganism is not a protected belief, overturning earlier guidance from the Ontario Human Rights Commission. In six European Union countries, vegan plant milk is taxed at a higher rate than cow's milk, a disparity that pro-vegan activists have called discriminatory.

  Within academic and activist circles, feminist veganism has drawn its own line of analysis. Carol J. Adams's 1990 book The Sexual Politics of Meat drew a direct connection between feminism and meat consumption. In a 2009 speech adapted from an address at the "Minding Animals" conference in Newcastle, Australia, Adams said "the idea that there was a connection between feminism and vegetarianism came to her in October 1974." The argument has since been extended by scholars including Angella Duvnjak and Carrie Hamilton.

  Melanie Joy, a vegan social psychologist, coined the term carnism to describe the ideology in which people support the use and consumption of animal products -- positioning it as a mirror image of veganism as a conscious set of beliefs rather than a default. In media, vegans are frequently depicted through stereotypes, a hostility some have named vegaphobia. In 2019, journalist Farhad Manjoo argued that "preachy vegans are something of a myth" and that in popular culture it "is still widely acceptable to make fun of vegans."

  The Vegan Society's own definition, in place since 1988, remains the most widely accepted among self-identified vegans according to a 2021 study -- more so than diet-only definitions, which were ranked last by most vegans but chosen far more frequently by non-vegans when asked to define the term. Philosopher Gary Steiner has noted that it may not be possible to be entirely vegan, because animal use and products are "deeply and imperceptibly woven into the fabric of human society" -- a complexity that Donald Watson himself acknowledged when he wrote that veganism applies only "as far as is possible and practicable."