Veganism

Veganism (also strict or pure vegetarianism) is a philosophy and lifestyle that seeks to exclude the use of animal derived products for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Vegans do not use or consume animal products of any kind. The most popular reasons for becoming a vegan are ethical commitment or moral convictions concerning animal rights, the environment, or human health, and spiritual or religious concerns. Of particular concern are the practices involved in factory farming and animal testing, and the intensive use of land and other resources required for animal farming.

Various polls have reported vegans to be between 0.2% and 1.3% of the U.S. population, and between 0.25% and 0.4% of the UK population. The Times estimated in 2005 that there were 250,000 vegans in Great Britain.

Vegetarian diets, which are similar to vegan diets, have been credited with lowering the risk of colon cancer, heart attack, high blood cholesterol, high blood pressure, prostate cancer, and stroke. However, vegan diets can be low in levels of calcium, iodine, and vitamins B and D. Vegans are encouraged to take dietary supplements to remedy this.

Definition
The word vegan, usually pronounced, was originally derived from "vegetarian" in 1944 when Elsie Shrigley and Donald Watson, frustrated that the term "vegetarianism" had come to include the eating of dairy products (lacto vegetarianism), founded the UK Vegan Society. They combined the first three and last two letters of vegetarian to form "vegan", which they saw as "the beginning and end of vegetarian". The British Vegan Society defines veganism in this way: "[T]he word "veganism" denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude — as far as is possible and practical — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals."

Other vegan societies use similar definitions.

In the French language a végétalien is someone who practices a vegan diet, while a vegan is someone who practices a vegan lifestyle, specifically referring to the use of animal products in a non-dietary form (i.e. leather, wool, etc.).

Demographics
Data regarding the number of vegans is available in some countries.

United States
A 2002 Time/CNN poll found that 4% of American adults consider themselves vegetarians, and 5% of self-described vegetarians consider themselves vegans, which implies that 0.2% of American adults are vegans. A 2006 poll conducted by Harris Interactive in the United States listed specific foods and asked respondents to indicate which items they never eat, rather than asking respondents to self-identify. The survey found that of the 1,000 adults polled 1.4% never eat meat, poultry, fish, seafood, dairy products, or eggs and were therefore essentially vegan in their eating habits. The survey also found that about 1.4% of men and 1.3% of women have vegan diets.

United Kingdom
In 2002, the UK Food Standards Agency reported that 5% of respondents self-identified as vegetarian or vegan. Though 29% of that 5% said they avoided "all animal products", only 5% reported avoiding dairy products. Based on these figures, approximately 0.25% of the UK population follow a vegan diet. In 2005, The Times estimated there were 250,000 vegans in Britain, which suggests around 0.4% of the UK population is vegan.

Sweden
Various polls and research conducted during the 1990s put the percentage of Swedish residents being vegan at between 0.27% and 1.6% of the entire population.

Germany
The website veganwelt.de estimates there to be between 250,000 and 460,500 vegans in Germany, or between 0.3% and 0.5% of the German population.

Netherlands
The Netherlands Association for Veganism estimates there to be approximately 16,000 vegans in the Netherlands, or around 0.1% of the Dutch population.

Animal products
The term "animal product" in a vegan context refers to any material derived from animals for human use and to any animal-derived ingredient in plastics, commodities and other items. Notable animal products include meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy products, honey, fur, leather, wool, and silk. Common animal by-products include gelatin, lanolin, rennet, whey, beeswax and shellac.

Animal ingredients can be found in countless products and are used in the production of—though not always present in the final form of—many more;  many of these ingredients are esoteric,  also have non-animal sources, and especially in non-food products may not even be identified. Although some vegans attempt to avoid all these ingredients, Vegan Outreach argues that "it can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to shun every minor or hidden animal-derived ingredient," and therefore that doing what is "best for preventing suffering" is more important than identifying and excluding every animal ingredient.

Although honey is by definition an animal product, some vegans consider its use and the use of other insect products as silk to be acceptable.

Ethical concerns


Vegan organizations maintain that animals have certain rights, and as such it is not ethical for humans to use animals in ways that infringe those rights. Practices seen as cruel to animals include factory farming, animal testing, and groups which display animals for entertainment, such as circuses, rodeos, and zoos.

Legal theorist Gary L. Francione argues that sentience in animals is sufficient to grant them moral consideration and that adopting veganism should be regarded as the "baseline" action taken by people concerned with animal rights. Utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer argues that the suffering of sentient animals is relevant to ethical decisions, and advocates both veganism and improved conditions for farm animals as a means to reduce animal suffering.

Other arguments
In the November/December 1996 issue of Nutrition & Health Forum newsletter (Prometheus Books Amherst, New York), William Jarvis, founder of the private organization The National Council Against Health Fraud, after explaining that "The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) aggressively attacks the use of animal foods and has proposed its own food-groups model, which excludes all animal products", writes: "I know that meatless diets can be healthful, even desirable, for some people...Because of the influence of my Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) environment, I practiced vegetarianism for many years. My wife and I even tried to give up consuming all animal products, but this didn't work..." Jarvis also states: "I have learned to be suspicious, and to search for hidden agendas, when I evaluate claims of the benefits of vegetarianism.... The belief that all life is sacred can lead to absurdities such as allowing mosquitoes to spread malaria, or vipers to run loose on one's premises...Inherent in the idea that all life is sacred is the supposition that all forms of life have equal value. The natural world reveals hierarchies in the food chain, the dominance of certain species over others ...I don't believe that all research done by vegetarians is untrustworthy...I gave up vegetarianism because I found that commitment thereto meant surrendering the objectivity that is essential to the personal and professional integrity of a scientist..." He ends adding that he can support pragmatic vegetarianism, but he believes that vegetarian ideologues are dangerous to themselves and to society.

Vegans like Peter Singer follow veganism for other reasons. Singer, who does not believe that all animal life is sacred, advocates veganism for utilitarian reasons, stating that the benefit caused by a good taste for the human who consumes animal products is more than negated by the pain felt by the beings who are consumed.

Steven Davis, professor of animal science at Oregon State University, argues that the number of wild animals killed in crop production is greater than those killed in ruminant-pasture production. Whenever a tractor goes through a field to plow, disc, cultivate, apply fertilizer and/or pesticide, and harvest, animals are killed. Davis gives a small sampling of U.S. field animals that are threatened by intensive crop production, including many mammals, birds and amphibians. In one small example, an alfalfa harvest caused a 50% decline in the gray-tailed vole population. According to Davis, if all the cropland in the U. S. were used to produce crops for a vegan diet, it is estimated that around 1.8 billion animals would be killed annually.

Gaverick Matheny, a Ph.D. candidate in agricultural economics at the University of Maryland, counters that Davis' reasoning contains several major flaws, including distorting the notion of "harm" to animals, and miscalculating the number of animal deaths based on areas of land rather than per consumer. For example, currently nearly 10 billion animals are killed each year in the U.S. for food, more than five times greater than Davis' estimated 1.8 billion for crop harvesting. Matheny says that "After correcting for these errors, Davis’s argument makes a strong case for, rather than against, adopting a vegetarian diet."

Health
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recommends what they call the "Four New Food Groups." They suggest that vegans and vegetarians eat at least three servings of vegetables a day, including dark green, leafy vegetables such as broccoli, and dark yellow and orange such as carrots; five servings of whole grains (bread, rice, pasta); three of fruit; and two of legumes (beans, peas, lentils).

Public Health specialists have been increasingly alerting about the importance of diet in the prevention of chronic disease. Advice obtained from the Committee On Medical Aspects of Food and Nutrition Policy (COMA) in the U.K., specifies that to increase the intake of fruits and vegetables while avoiding high intakes of red and processed meat may reduce the risk markers for chronic diseases as cancer.

Benefits


Certain widespread diets (such as the standard American diet, which is high in fat and low in fiber and green vegetables) are detrimental to health, and a vegan diet thus represents an improvement, in part because vegan diets are often high enough in fruit and vegetables to meet or exceed the recommended fruit and vegetable intakes. Conversely, studies in Japan found that increased consumption of some animal products coincided with a decrease in risk for some forms of cerebrovascular disease and stroke mortality.

Some vegans feel additional health benefits are gained by eating food with minimal levels of substances such as growth hormones and antibiotics, which are often given to intensively farmed animals in countries where this is legal. Because they are similar to human hormones, growth-promoters such as anabolic steroids that are used in cattle farming in America may affect fetal and childhood development. Due to this uncertainty, the use of such growth promoters is illegal in the European community.

Benefits of vegetarian diets might be valid also for strict vegan diets: according to the American Dietetic Association and Dietitians of Canada, diets that avoid meat tend to have lower levels of saturated fat, cholesterol, and animal protein, and higher levels of carbohydrates, fiber, magnesium, potassium, folate, and antioxidants, such as vitamins C and E, and phytochemicals. People who avoid meat are reported to have lower body mass indices than those following the average Canadian diet; from this follows lower death rates from ischemic heart disease; lower blood cholesterol levels; lower blood pressure; and lower rates of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and prostate and colon cancer.

The American Dietetic Association states that well-planned vegan diets can also be appropriate for life cycles requiring high nutritional intake such as pregnancy, lactation, childhood, and adolescence.

A pilot study at Georgetown University on 2005 suggested that a vegan diet can reduce blood cholesterol in people with type 2 diabetes, as well as significantly reduce the complications of this disease.

Athletic achievements are also used as an argument about the nutritional benefits of a vegan diet. Vegan athletes compete in a variety of sports, including powerlifting, bodybuilding, martial arts, and long distance running. Multiple Olympic gold medallist Carl Lewis has stated that he became vegan in 1990 and achieved his "best year of track competition" in 1991 when he ate a vegan diet.

Specific nutrients
The American Dietetic Association has said that "appropriately planned vegetarian diets are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases." However, vegan diets can be deficient in nutrients such as vitamin B, vitamin D, calcium, iodine and omega-3 fatty acids. These deficiencies have potential consequences, including anemia, rickets and cretinism in children, and osteomalacia and hyperthyroidism in adults.

Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 in plants varies widely depending on the type of plant and the soil in which it is grown. The Vegan Society and Vegan Outreach, and others, recommend that vegans either consistently eat foods fortified with B or take a B supplement. Deficiencies in Vitamin B, a bacterial product that cannot be reliably found in plant foods, can have serious health consequences, including anemia and neurodegenerative disease. If a person has not eaten more than the daily needed amount of B12 over a long period before becoming a vegan then they may not have built up any significant store of the vitamin. Clinical evidence of Vitamin B12 deficiency is uncommon  given to the fact that the human body preserves B12, using it without destroying the substance. Vegetarians who were previously meat eaters may preserve, up to 30 years, stores of Vit B12 in their bodies. . The recommendation of taking supplements has been recently challenged by studies indicating that exogenous B12 may actually interfere with the proper absorption of this viatmin in its natural form. The research on Vit B12 sources has increased in the latest years and researchers at Hiroshima University have developed methods for growing plants rich in vitamin B12. 

In a 2002 laboratory study, more of the strict vegan participants' B and iron levels were compromised than those of lacto- or lacto-ovo-vegetarian participants. As of 2005, no food in Europe or the U.S. had been tested for lowering MMA levels, the gold standard for determining B activity.

A study, published in the June 1 2007 issue of Cancer Research, suggests that while higher dietary intakes of B6, B9, and B12 are associated with reduced rates of pancreatic cancer for people at or below normal body weight, some people who received these nutrients from multivitamin pills had an increased risk of developing the disease.

Calcium
A 5.2 year study, released in February 2007 by Oxford, showed that vegans have an increased risk of bone fractures over both meat eaters and vegetarians, likely due to lower dietary calcium intake, and that vegans consuming more than the UK's estimated average requirements for calcium of 525 mg/day had risk of bone fractures similar to other groups.

It is recommended that vegans eat three servings per day of a high calcium food, such as fortified soy milk, and take a calcium supplement as necessary; although recent research suggests that dietary calcium is better than supplements, at least for women. Fortified soy milk can also substitute for milk's common role as a source of vitamin D (another nutrient important for bone formation, commonly added to commercial milk). Adequate amounts of vitamin D may also be obtained by spending 15 to 30 minutes every few days in the sunlight for those with light skin (darker-skinned people require more sun), but this may be difficult for vegans in areas with low levels of sunlight during winter.

Iodine
Iodine supplementation may be necessary for vegans in countries where salt is not typically iodized, where it is iodized at low levels, or where, as in Britain or Ireland, animal products are used for iodine delivery. Iodine can be obtained from most vegan multivitamins or from regular consumption of kelp.

Pregnancies and children
According to the US National Institute of Health, "with appropriate food choices, vegan diets can be adequate for children at all ages." Dr. Benjamin Spock said, "Children who grow up getting their nutrition from plant foods rather than meats have a tremendous health advantage. They are less likely to develop weight problems, diabetes, high blood pressure and some forms of cancer." The American Dietetic Association also considers well-planned vegan diets "appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy and lactation," but recommends that vegan mothers supplement for iron, vitamin D, and vitamin B. Vitamin B deficiency in lactating vegetarian mothers has been linked to deficiencies and neurological disorders in their children. Some research suggests that the essential omega-3 fatty acid α-linolenic acid and its derivatives should also be supplemented in pregnant and lactating vegan mothers, since they are very low in most vegan diets, and the metabolically related docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is essential to the developing visual system. Vegan diet has also been associated with low birth weight. A 2006 study found that vegan mothers are five times less likely to have twins than those who eat animal products.

In the last decade, a poorly planned vegan diet has been associated with several cases of severe infant malnutrition, and more rarely, with fatalities. Crown Shakur weighed just 3 1/2 pounds when he died of starvation on April 25, 2004 at an age of six weeks. A Miami-Dade medical examiner's office autopsy concluded Woyah Andreesohn died of "severe malnutrition" at the age of five months after being fed a raw food vegan diet by his parents. The subsequent criminal conviction of the parents, ranging from assault to felony murder, has resulted in criticism of vegan diets for children. Dr. Amy Lanou, an expert witness for the prosecution in the case of Crown Shakur, addressed the criticism, saying "(Crown) was not killed by a vegan diet... The real problem was that he was not given enough food of any sort."

Eating disorders
The American Dietetic Association indicates that vegetarian diets may be more common among adolescents with eating disorders but that the evidence suggests that the adoption of a vegetarian diet does not lead to eating disorders, rather that "vegetarian diets may be selected to camouflage an existing eating disorder." Other studies and statements by dietitians and counselors support this conclusion.

Resources and the environment
People who adopt veganism for environmental reasons do so on the basis that veganism consumes fewer resources and causes less environmental damage than an animal-based diet. Animal agriculture is linked to climate change, water pollution, land degradation, and a decline in biodiversity. Additionally, an animal-based diet uses more land, water, and energy than a vegan diet.

A 2006 study by Gidon Eshel and Pamela Martin, assistant professors of geophysics at the University of Chicago, found that a person switching from the average American diet to a vegan diet would reduce CO2 emissions by 1,485 kg per year.

The United Nations released a report in November 2006 linking animal agriculture to environmental damage. The report, Livestock's Long Shadow concludes that the livestock sector (primarily cows, chickens, and pigs) emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to our most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. It is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases - responsible for 18% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalents. By comparison, all transportation emits 13.5% of the CO2. It produces 65% of human-related nitrous oxide (which has 296 times the global warming potential of CO2) and 37% of all human-induced methane (which is 23 times as warming as CO2).

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis argues that while most meat production in industrialized countries uses inefficient grain feeding methods through intensive farming, meat production is not invariably a poor use of land, especially in countries like China and Brazil. Since a proportion of all grain crops produced are not suitable for human consumption, they can be fed to animals to turn into meat, thus improving efficiency. Further, greenhouse gas emissions are not limited to animal husbandry; for instance, in many countries where rice is the main cereal crop, rice cultivation is responsible for most of the methane emissions.

Similar diets and lifestyles
Diets such as raw veganism and fruitarianism are related to veganism, but have significant differences from standard veganism. There are also numerous religious groups that regularly or occasionally practice a similar diet, including some Buddhist traditions, Jains, Hindus, Rastafarians, and the Seventh-day Adventists.

Cuisine



 * Also see the Wikibooks Cookbook articles on vegan cuisine and vegan substitutions and its listing of vegan recipes. 

The cuisines of most nations contain dishes suitable for a vegan diet, including ingredients such as tofu, tempeh and the wheat product seitan in Asian diets. Many recipes that traditionally contain animal products can be adapted by substituting plant-based ingredients. For example, nut, grain or soy milks can be used to replace cow's milk and eggs can be replaced by applesauce or commercial starch-based substitute products, depending upon the recipe. Additionally, artificial "meat" products ("analogs" or "mock meats") made from non-animal derived ingredients such as soy or gluten, including imitation sausages, ground beef, burgers, and chicken nuggets are widely available.