What are the types of vegetarians?

A vegetarian is a person who does not eat anything that has had a heartbeat, a face, or a mother. In other words, no animal flesh at all. Someone who claims to be a vegetarian but eats fish or poultry, for example, is not a vegetarian but an omnivore with a qualified diet. Omnivores eat plant life and meat. For carnivores, meat is the mainstay of their diet. There are three general types of vegetarians: 1. Vegan 2. Lacto 3. Ovo-lacto.

“Vegan” (pronounced “vee-gun”) describes someone who doesn’t eat any animal products. This includes abstaining from eggs, egg whites, and all dairy products. ‘Vegans’ includes the strictest type of vegetarians. “Lacto” refers to those vegetarians who include dairy in their diet but not eggs or egg whites. “Ovo-lacto” is that group that includes eggs and dairy. They comprise the largest class of vegetarians. However, no vegetarian consumes any product whose ingredients are derived from the flesh of living creatures. Cautious vegetarians even avoid soups and broths made from beef or chicken and foods that contain gelatin made by boiling animal remains.

Vegetarians are growing in number. Due to the many health benefits of this dietary regimen, it is not inconceivable that more people will eventually be ‘vege-heads’ than ‘flesh-heads’. It is simply a process of education and experience and wanting to live a healthy and spiritually whole life. Being a vegetarian, once heralded as weird and weird, is now quite accepted. With the relative abundance of foods and non-meat products on the market today, a number that is growing rapidly, it’s easy to make the switch. All one has to do is overcome the inertia of their conditioning, which is not a difficult task considering the tradeoffs and benefits of the transaction.

Copyright Richard Andrew King
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