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Your Guide to Animal Rights.
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Ask a dozen people what being vegetarian means to them, and you’ll likely come up with a dozen different answers. Depending on people’s personal beliefs and preferences, there are many variations. To understand this lifestyle choice, it’s helpful to bring the definition of “vegetarian” back to the basics.

What is Vegetarianism?

A vegetarian does not eat the flesh of animals. Although it is common for some people to exclude fish and birds from the “meat” category, vegetarians do not eat any type of animals. However, some vegetarians do eat animal products such as dairy and eggs (sometimes referred to as “lacto-ovo vegetarians”).

What is Veganism?

A vegan does not eat animal flesh and also does not eat or use any type of animal product. Some people call this “strict vegetarianism.” Animal products include:

• Dairy, eggs and honey
• Fur, leather, silk, wool and down
• Animal-derived ingredients, such as gelatin, whey, beeswax and lanolin

Reasons for Vegetarianism

The reasons behind vegetarianism are just as the varied as the ways in which people practice it. Religious, health and environmental concerns are major motivations for people to choose a vegetarian lifestyle. From an animal rights perspective, vegetarians and vegans are concerned about the ethical issues of killing animals for food and the cruelty associated with factory farming methods.

Factory Farms

Conditions in animal slaughterhouses have been documented as early as Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle and as recently as Gail A. Eisnitz’s exposé Slaughterhouse. One of the most influential books on the issue of animal rights and vegetarianism is Animal Liberation by Peter Singer.

Trying Vegetarianism

You could go “cold tofu,” but many people find it easier to transition into vegetarianism more gradually. Since research shows the average American family rotates the same dinners throughout the month, the Physicians Committee on Responsible Medicine recommends the three-step method to trying vegetarian:

1. Continue Vegetarian Meals You Already Eat:
   List all the dinners you currently eat, and identify at least three meals that you currently eat that are already vegetarian. This could include fettuccine alfredo, spaghetti with marinara sauce or vegetable stir-fry.
   
   
2. Adapt Meals to Be Vegetarian:
   Identify at least three meals you already eat that could easily be adapted to become vegetarian. This includes bean instead of beef burritos at the drive-through, vegetable broth instead of chicken broth in recipes or veggie burgers instead of hamburgers at your next cookout.
   
   
3. Explore New Vegetarian Options:
   Browse cookbooks and the Internet for vegetarian recipes, and ask vegetarian friends to share their favorites. There are many ethnic cuisines that have many vegetarian options, such as Indian and Ethiopian, so eating out is always an alternative to cooking at home.

Now you have at least nine dinners and can repeat the same method for creating vegetarian lunch and breakfast menus.

Helpful Tips

• Join a local vegetarian society for friendship and support.
• Read John Robbins’ Diet for a New America to learn more about food choices affect human health.