Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals.[c] A person who practices veganism is known as a vegan.
The foundations of veganism include ethical, moral, environmental, health and humanitarian arguments. Veganism excludes all animal use, for example in food (meat, fish, eggs, milk and dairy products, honey), in clothing and industry (leather, wool, fur and some cosmetics), entertainment (zoos, exotic pets, circuses), or services (guide dogs, police dogs, hunting dogs, working animals, or animal testing, including medical experimentation).
A person who practices veganism may do so for personal health benefits or to reduce animal deaths, minimize animal suffering, or minimize their ecological footprint.
Fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, grains and mushrooms are the basic elements of vegan food. Since ancient times individuals have been renouncing the consumption of products of animal origin, but the term "veganism" is modern: it was coined in 1944 by Donald Watson with the aim of differentiating it from vegetarianism, which rejects the consumption of meat but accepts the consumption of other products of animal origin, such as milk, dairy products and eggs.[3][15] Interest in veganism increased significantly in the 2010s.
Vegetarianism can be traced back to the Indus Valley civilization in 3300–1300 BCE in the Indian subcontinent,[16][17][18] particularly in northern and western ancient India.[19] Early vegetarians included Indian philosophers such as Parshavnatha, Mahavira, Acharya Kundakunda, Umaswati, Samantabhadra, and Valluvar; the Indian emperors Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka; Greek philosophers such as Empedocles, Theophrastus, Plutarch, Plotinus, and Porphyry; and the Roman poet Ovid and the playwright Seneca the Younger.[20][21] The Greek sage Pythagoras may have advocated an early form of strict vegetarianism,[22][23] but his life is so obscure that it is disputed whether he ever advocated any form of vegetarianism.[24] He almost certainly prohibited his followers from eating beans[24] and wearing woolen garments.[24] Eudoxus of Cnidus, a student of Archytas and Plato, writes, "Pythagoras was distinguished by such purity and so avoided killing and killers that he not only abstained from animal foods, but even kept his distance from cooks and hunters".[24] One of the earliest known vegans was the Arab poet al-Maʿarri, famous for his poem "I No Longer Steal From Nature". (c. 973 – c. 1057).[25][b] Their arguments were based on health, the transmigration of souls, animal welfare, and the view—espoused by Porphyry in De Abstinentia ab Esu Animalium ("On Abstinence from Animal Food", c. 268 – c. 270)—that if humans deserve justice, then so do animals.[20]
Vegetarianism established itself as a significant movement in 19th-century Britain and the United States.[27] A minority of vegetarians avoided animal food entirely.[28] In 1813, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley published A Vindication of Natural Diet, advocating "abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors", and in 1815, William Lambe, a London physician, said that his "water and vegetable diet" could cure anything from tuberculosis to acne.[29] Lambe called animal food a "habitual irritation" and argued that "milk eating and flesh-eating are but branches of a common system and they must stand or fall together".[30] Sylvester Graham's meatless Graham diet—mostly fruit, vegetables, water, and bread made at home with stoneground flour—became popular as a health remedy in the 1830s in the United States.[31] The first known vegan cookbook was Asenath Nicholson's Kitchen Philosophy for Vegetarians, published in 1849.[32]
Several vegan communities were established around this time. In Massachusetts, Amos Bronson Alcott, father of the novelist Louisa May Alcott, opened the Temple School in 1834 and Fruitlands in 1844,[33][d] and in England, James Pierrepont Greaves founded the Concordium, a vegan community at Alcott House on Ham Common, in 1838.[8][35]
The term "vegetarian" has been in use since around 1839 to refer to what was previously called a vegetable regimen or diet.[36] Its origin is an irregular compound of vegetable and the suffix -arian (in the sense of "supporter, believer" as in humanitarian).[37][38] The earliest known written use is attributed to actress, writer and abolitionist Fanny Kemble, in her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian plantation in 1838–1839.[e]
In 1843, members of Alcott House created the British and Foreign Society for the Promotion of Humanity and Abstinence from Animal Food,[41] led by Sophia Chichester, a wealthy benefactor of Alcott House.[42] Alcott House also helped to establish the British Vegetarian Society, which held its first meeting in 1847 in Ramsgate, Kent.[43] The Medical Times and Gazette in London reported in 1884:
There are two kinds of Vegetarians—one an extreme form, the members of which eat no animal food products what-so-ever; and a less extreme sect, who do not object to eggs, milk, or fish. The Vegetarian Society ... belongs to the latter more moderate division.[28]
An article in the Society's magazine, the Vegetarian Messenger, in 1851 discussed alternatives to shoe leather, which suggests the presence of vegans within the membership who rejected animal use entirely, not only in diet.[44] Henry S. Salt's 1886 A Plea for Vegetarianism and Other Essays asserts, "It is quite true that most—not all—Food Reformers admit into their diet such animal food as milk, butter, cheese, and eggs..."[45] Salt also argued that the primary objective of the vegetarian movement should be to eliminate meat, while contending that dairy and eggs are also unnecessary and could be phased out over time.[46]
C. W. Daniel published an early vegan cookbook, Rupert H. Wheldon's No Animal Food: Two Essays and 100 Recipes, in 1910.[48] The consumption of milk and eggs became a battleground over the following decades. There were regular discussions about it in the Vegetarian Messenger; it appears from the correspondence pages that many opponents of veganism were vegetarians.[48][49]
During a visit to London in 1931, Mahatma Gandhi—who had joined the London Vegetarian Society's executive committee when he lived in London from 1888 to 1891—gave a speech to the Society arguing that it ought to promote a meat-free diet as a matter of morality, not health.[47][50] Lacto-vegetarians acknowledged the ethical consistency of the vegan position but regarded a vegan diet as impracticable and were concerned that it might be an impediment to spreading vegetarianism if vegans found themselves unable to participate in social circles where no non-animal food was available. This became the predominant view of the Vegetarian Society, which in 1935 stated: "The lacto-vegetarians, on the whole, do not defend the practice of consuming the dairy products except on the ground of expediency."[48]