Vegetarianism

• 1. Introduction

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  Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat, and it is one of the oldest recorded dietary philosophies on Earth. A study published in Science in 2025 found that Australopithecus, one of humanity's ancient ancestors, was almost entirely vegetarian. That finding pushed the story of plant-based eating back millions of years before anyone gave it a name. So the question is not simply what vegetarianism is. The deeper questions are: where did it come from, who shaped it, what have people been willing to sacrifice for it, and why does a choice about food carry so much moral, spiritual, and political weight? From a Jain prince in ancient Junagadh who walked away from his own wedding feast, to a cartoon girl named Lisa Simpson who changed television history, vegetarianism has never been just about what is on the plate.

• 2. Ancient Roots and Sacred Mandates

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  The earliest record of vegetarianism as a formal moral principle dates to the 9th century BCE, embedded in the teachings that would become Jainism. Pārśvanātha and Mahavira, the 23rd and 24th tirthankaras of the Jain tradition, revived and advocated the doctrine of ahimsa, or nonviolence, between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE. But the story that scholars identify as the real turning point is older and more intimate. According to Jain tradition, a prince named Neminatha, destined to become the twenty-second tirthankara, arrived at his own wedding in Junagadh and heard the cries of animals being held captive for slaughter at the wedding feast. He refused. He abandoned the celebration entirely, renounced his royal life, and ultimately meditated at Mount Girnar. Historians and sociologists note that this narrative functioned as a founding charter myth. It did not merely encourage vegetarianism among monks; it established animal welfare as a universal ethical baseline for every member of the Jain community, lay and ascetic alike.

  The Ācārāṅga Sūtra from the 5th century BCE formalized this into specific behavioral codes, instructing monks not even to walk on grass so as to avoid harming the small creatures within it. Across the same centuries, Greek teacher Pythagoras promoted what he called metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, and may himself have practiced vegetarianism. Prior to the coinage of the word 'vegetarian' in the 19th century, English-speaking plant-eaters were simply called Pythagoreans. A fictionalized version of Pythagoras appears in Ovid's Metamorphoses, advocating strict vegetarianism. That literary portrait was how most English readers encountered the idea for centuries.

  In Japan, the Emperor Tenmu in 675 prohibited the killing and eating of meat during the farming season between April and September, though wild birds and wild animals were excluded. These bans endured for over a millennium before being overturned during the Meiji Restoration in the 19th century. The ancient Indian text the Tirukkuṟaḷ, dated before the 5th century CE, went further still. Chapter 26, covering couplets 251 through 260, dealt exclusively with moral vegetarianism, framing the refusal of meat not as a religious obligation but as a common man's virtue.

• 3. Political Victories and Imperial Edicts

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  Hemachandra, a 12th-century Jain scholar and monk, achieved something remarkable: he converted a king. King Kumarapala of the Chaulukya dynasty, who ruled what is now Gujarat and surrounding areas, embraced Jainism under Hemachandra's guidance and issued sweeping imperial edicts known as amari-ghoshana. These edicts legally banned the slaughter of animals across the entire kingdom. Historians trace to this political alliance the reason Gujarat became, and remains, the geographic center of strict vegetarian cuisine in India.

  Four centuries later, in the 16th century, the Jain monk Hiravijaya Suri was invited to the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar. Through sustained philosophical discussion on the principle of nonviolence, the monk persuaded the emperor to issue farmans, imperial decrees, that temporarily banned animal slaughter for several months of each year, prohibited fishing in specific sacred lakes, and ordered the release of thousands of caged birds. Scholars describe this as one of the earliest recorded instances of state-enforced animal welfare and dietary restriction at an imperial scale anywhere in the world.

  In 1893, Virchand Gandhi served as the official Jain delegate at the first World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago. He systematically challenged the then-prevalent Western assumption that a vegetarian diet caused physical weakness. His arguments framed Jain dietary practice as scientifically grounded and rationally defensible, making him one of the first people to defend vegetarianism on a global stage to a Western audience. Decades later, in 1956, the Indian city of Rishikesh banned the sale of meat, fish, and eggs outright. Haridwar followed in 2002 with a similar ban, upheld by India's Supreme Court in 2004.

• 4. The Word and Its Origins

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  The term 'vegetarian' is surprisingly young. Its first written appearance is attributed to actress, writer, and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, in her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation, written in 1838 to 1839. The word's earliest cluster of appearances traces to Alcott House, a school on the north side of Ham Common in London, opened in July 1838 by James Pierrepont Greaves. From 1841, the institution published its own pamphlet, The Healthian, which provides some of the most documented early uses of the term.

  The word is an irregular compound of the adjective 'vegetable,' which historically could refer to any edible plant matter, and the suffix '-arian,' used in the sense of 'supporter' or 'believer,' as in 'humanitarian.' The Vegetarian Society, founded in Manchester in 1847, gave the word its wide circulation. One of the philosophical forerunners of that society was Reverend William Cowherd, who founded the Bible Christian Church in 1809 and encouraged his congregation to abstain from meat as a form of temperance.

  By the late 19th century the International Vegetarian Union had formed, in 1908, to connect the various national societies. And in 1886, a vegetarian colony named Nueva Germania was founded in Paraguay, though its vegetarian character proved short-lived. The formal institutional scaffolding of vegetarianism was built in less than a century, even as the underlying moral and spiritual impulses behind it stretched back thousands of years.

• 5. A Spectrum of Diets

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  Lacto-ovo vegetarianism, which includes dairy, eggs, and honey, is the most widely practiced form in the Western world. Lacto vegetarianism includes dairy and honey but not eggs. Ovo vegetarianism includes eggs and honey but not dairy. Veganism excludes all animal flesh and by-products, including dairy, eggs, and honey, and extends to items such as leather shoes and silk clothes for those who accompany the diet with broader lifestyle choices.

  Jain vegetarianism reaches beyond any of these categories. It excludes root and underground vegetables entirely, including potatoes, onions, and garlic, because harvesting them kills the whole plant and destroys the massive clusters of microscopic lifeforms, called nigoda, that live in root systems and soil. Ancient Jain botanical classification identified these underground vegetables as hosts for dense colonies of such organisms. Figs are excluded due to their symbiotic relationship with pollinating wasps that often die inside the fruit. Mushrooms are excluded because, as non-photosynthetic organisms growing on decaying matter, they were classified outside the protection of plant life in classical Jain biology. The Jain prohibition against consuming products from already-dead animals rests on the same logic: classical Jain biology held that decaying tissue instantly becomes a host for rapidly multiplying decomposing microorganisms.

  Sattvic diet, also known as yogic diet, is a plant-based framework that permits dairy and honey but excludes eggs, red lentils, mushrooms, alliums, fermented foods, and alcoholic drinks, with some practitioners also excluding coffee, chocolate, and pungent spices. Taiwan's su vegetarianism excludes not only all animal products but also the entire allium family, including onion, garlic, scallions, leeks, chives, and shallots. Raw veganism permits only fresh and uncooked plant matter, stipulating that food must not be heated above 118 degrees Fahrenheit. Fruitarianism restricts intake to fruit, nuts, seeds, and plant matter that can be gathered without harming the plant itself. The variations reflect not dietary preference alone but entire cosmologies of harm, purity, and the boundaries of life.

• 6. Health, Nutrients, and Trade-offs

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  The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has stated that at all stages of life, a properly planned vegetarian diet can be healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may be beneficial in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Meta-analyses have reported a reduced risk of death from ischemic heart disease and from cerebrovascular disease among vegetarians. A 2012 study found a reduced risk in all-cause mortality in vegetarians, with a significantly lower ischemic heart disease mortality of 29% and overall cancer incidence of 18% compared to nonvegetarians.

  Research funded by the US National Institutes of Health found that the average Seventh-day Adventist in California lives 4 to 10 years longer than the average Californian. The November 2005 cover story of National Geographic cited that research, attributing Adventist longevity to not smoking, not drinking alcohol, maintaining a weekly day of rest, eating a low-fat vegetarian diet rich in nuts and beans, and having a cohesive social network. Dan Buettner's subsequent book, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest, named Loma Linda, California a 'blue zone' because of its large Seventh-day Adventist population.

  Vitamin B12 is where the picture complicates. B12 is not generally present in plants. The human body requires it only in microgram amounts, with the recommended daily intake in the United States and Canada reaching 2.4 micrograms for adults 14 and older and 2.8 micrograms for lactating women. But deficiency through strict plant-based eating without supplementation can increase the risk of anemia, neurological deficits, gastrointestinal problems, platelet disorders, and cardiovascular disease. Vegans can obtain B12 from manufactured fortified foods and dietary supplements. Studies at Harvard University and others conducted across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and various European countries confirmed that vegetarian diets provide sufficient protein as long as a variety of plant sources are consumed. The related finding on iron is nuanced: vegetarian diets typically contain similar levels of iron to non-vegetarian diets, but the iron from plant sources has lower bioavailability and its absorption can be inhibited by other dietary components.

• 7. Religion, Television, and Culture

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  Seventh-day Adventist history contributed something unexpected to the modern world's breakfast table. John Harvey Kellogg was an early founder of Adventist health work, and his development of breakfast cereals as a health food led his brother William to found the Kellogg's company. The church-owned Sanitarium Health and Wellbeing Company operates in Australia and New Zealand and produces Weet-Bix. An estimated 35% of Adventists practice vegetarianism or veganism, according to a 2002 worldwide survey of church leaders.

  In 2016, Israel was described as the most vegan country on Earth, with five percent of its population excluding all animal products. Jewish vegetarian advocates frequently cite the traditional prohibition on causing unnecessary pain to living creatures, known as tza'ar ba'alei hayyim, as a foundation for their dietary choices. Sri Lankan Sufi master Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, who established the Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship of North America in Philadelphia, represents the Muslim vegetarian tradition, and in January 1996 the International Vegetarian Union announced the formation of a Muslim Vegetarian/Vegan Society.

  On television, The Simpsons episode 'Lisa the Vegetarian' aired in 1995 and altered the landscape of how vegetarians were depicted on screen. Showrunner David Mirkin, who had recently stopped consuming meat, gave Linda and Paul McCartney a container of his favorite turkey substitute before recording the episode, in which both voiced characters. The McCartneys agreed to participate on one condition: that Lisa remain a vegetarian permanently. Critics noted the episode was among the first times on American television that vegetarians saw an honest depiction of themselves and of people's reactions to their choices. In an August 2020 interview, Paul McCartney said he had been worried that Lisa 'would be a vegetarian for a week, then Homer would persuade her to eat a hot dog,' and that he was delighted the producers kept their word. The character Casey Kasem, voice actor for Shaggy on the Scooby-Doo franchise, similarly insisted the character be made vegetarian in What's New, Scooby Doo?, saying he would refuse to voice Shaggy unless the change was made, citing his own veganism and opposition to factory farming.

• 8. Environment, Economics, and the Present

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  A 2006 United Nations initiative concluded that the livestock sector is one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems at every scale from local to global. That same report estimated that animal agriculture was responsible for 18% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, measured in 100-year carbon dioxide equivalents. Livestock sources in the United States alone account for roughly 3.1% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.

  In May 2009, Ghent, Belgium, was reported to be the first city in the world to go vegetarian at least once a week for environmental reasons, with local authorities implementing a weekly meatless day. Civil servants ate vegetarian meals one day per week. The city printed what were called 'veggie street maps' highlighting vegetarian restaurants, and schools in Ghent were due to follow with a weekly 'veggiedag' starting in September 2009. In 2022, sales of vegetarian food in the United Kingdom were estimated at £1.16 billion. The US-based Plant Based Food Association found that sales of plant-based foods in the United States amount to $13.7 billion annually.

  Research suggests that in the United States, vegetarianism has a high turnover rate, with less than 20% of people who adopt it persisting for more than a year. A 2019 analysis found that adhering to any kind of restricted diet was associated with feelings of loneliness and increased social isolation. The rate of vegetarianism by country varies from roughly 5% in the Netherlands to an estimated 20-40% in India, which has the highest percentage of vegetarian residents. In 2014, Palitana in Gujarat became the most recent major example of a city banning meat sales outright, placing it alongside Rishikesh, Haridwar, and Pushkar as communities where the choice made by a prince named Neminatha in Junagadh more than two thousand years ago has hardened into civic law.