veganism, the theory or practice of abstaining from the consumption and use of animal products. While some vegans avoid only animal-derived food, many others also exclude any items that use animals as ingredients or for testing. These prohibited products can range from clothing (e.g., leather) to makeup. Dietary veganism differs from vegetarianism in that vegetarians may choose to consume some animal-derived foods such as milk, eggs, and honey on the grounds that animals do not need to be slaughtered to obtain these products. Veganism is motivated by a variety of reasons, including personal health, animal rights, environmentalism, and ethics. It is generally practiced less as a dietary preference and more as a lifestyle choice and form of activism.
English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, oil painting by Amelia Curran, 1819; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.(more)
Records of individuals following a vegetarian, or mostly vegetarian, diet go back thousands of years and include such notable figures in history as Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, and the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. The 19th-century English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the first prominent Europeans to eschew dairy and eggs, in addition to meat, for ethical reasons. In Shelley’s time those who did not eat meat were referred to as “Pythagoreans.” Shelley wrote A Vindication of Natural Diet in 1813, in which he blamed societal problems on the consumption of meat. The term vegan, a derivative of vegetarian, was proposed in 1944 by British animal rights advocate Donald Watson. That year he and other vegetarians who abstained from dairy formed the Vegan Society and launched a nascent movement that sought to stop the exploitation of living creatures for human consumption and use (including hunting and medical experiments) and to find nonanimal alternatives for food, clothing, and other human uses.