46 Fun Facts About Vegetarianism

Which of these foods is off the menu on a lacto-vegetarian diet?

Eggs are out and dairy stays, because 'lacto' comes from the Latin for milk. In India, where this is the everyday meaning of vegetarian, eggs are classed as non-vegetarian food.

Which word did Donald Watson's new society choose in 1944 over rivals such as 'dairyban', 'vitan' and 'benevore'?

Vegan won because, as Watson put it, the first three and last two letters of 'vegetarian' marked the beginning and end of vegetarian.

The world's first Vegetarian Society was founded in 1847 in which country?

England: the society formed at Ramsgate is credited with bringing the word 'vegetarian' into general use, and two of the diet's early English champions bore the ironic names Cowherd and Lambe.

Which technology company was named by a co-founder who was on a fruitarian diet and just back from an orchard?

Apple: Steve Jobs said he was on 'one of my fruitarian diets', had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded 'fun, spirited and not intimidating'.

Which ingredient makes most marshmallows and jelly sweets unsuitable for vegetarians?

Gelatine is collagen from animal skin and bones, and because it also thickens some yoghurts and forms many capsule shells, vegetarians end up checking labels far beyond the sweet aisle.

The red food colouring carmine, which vegetarians avoid, is made by crushing what?

Insects: carmine comes from cochineal bugs that live on cacti, so a yoghurt or sweet coloured with 'natural red 4', also labelled E120, is not vegetarian.

Which diet word did the American Dialect Society vote the most useful word of 2003?

Flexitarian, in the society's words 'a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat', is a label vegetarian groups dispute: the Vegetarian Society's own rule is simply not to eat animals or fish.

A 2025 study of nitrogen isotopes in fossil teeth found which early human ancestor ate an almost wholly plant-based diet?

Australopithecus teeth from the Sterkfontein caves showed no sign of regular meat-eating, so the meat often credited with fuelling bigger brains seems to have joined the menu later.

Which Indian religion made strict vegetarianism mandatory for ascetics and laity alike?

Jainism goes further still: many followers also avoid root vegetables, because pulling one up kills the whole plant and the tiny creatures living around it.

What is the Indian principle of nonviolence towards all living beings called?

Ahimsa is taken so far by some monks that they sweep the ground ahead of them and cover their mouths with cloth, so as not to harm even the smallest creature.

Which Indian pilgrimage town banned the sale of meat, fish and eggs in 1956?

Several other Indian pilgrimage towns have since followed with bans of their own.

Which Indian holy town, known for its annual camel fair, allows no meat or alcohol to be sold?

Pushkar is crowded with temples around a lake sacred to Brahma, the reason its kitchens serve neither meat nor alcohol, even to the crowds who come for the camel fair.

A 2014 Indian government survey found which state had the highest share of vegetarians, at about three in four?

Rajasthan came top, but the surprise was Punjab: a state whose cooking is famed for butter chicken turned out to be about two-thirds vegetarian.

Indian packaged food carries a green mark if vegetarian and what colour if non-vegetarian?

Brown marks non-vegetarian food, and its dot has since been redrawn as a triangle so that colour-blind shoppers can tell it from the green one.

Which giant tropical fruit is shredded as a plant-based stand-in for pulled pork?

Jackfruit, the largest fruit that grows on a tree at up to 50 kg, earns the role because its flesh can mimic the texture of meat, and it is now tinned and sold as a meat alternative.

Which philosopher made the ethical case against eating animals in the 1975 book Animal Liberation?

Peter Singer argued that an animal's capacity to suffer, not its species, is what counts, and he popularised the word 'speciesism' for ignoring it.

In antiquity, abstaining from meat was a hallmark of the way of life named after which Greek philosopher?

Pythagoras lent his name to the diet itself: until the word 'vegetarian' caught on in the 1840s, people who gave up meat were known as Pythagoreans.

In the 17th century the Bishop of Quebec won a Church ruling that which animal counted as fish during Lent?

Beaver passed because it swims, a sign of how little the old meatless days had to do with vegetarianism, which had all but vanished from Europe once Rome turned Christian.

Which Renaissance painter is counted among the first to back the meat-free diet's revival in Europe?

Leonardo da Vinci, his biographer Vasari wrote, would pay bird-sellers their asking price simply to open the cages and let the birds fly away.

Which Romantic poet published the essay A Vindication of Natural Diet in 1813?

Percy Bysshe Shelley first wrote it as a note to his poem Queen Mab, arguing that meat was unnatural food for humans and the root of both disease and vice.

Which Russian novelist was one of the most prominent advocates of vegetarianism in his country?

Leo Tolstoy held that a moral life had to begin with giving up meat, and said so in an essay he called The First Step, written to introduce a history of vegetarian thought.

Which Irish playwright gave up meat in 1881 and lived to the age of 94?

George Bernard Shaw became the cause's showpiece: vegetarian papers held him up as living proof that brain work needs no meat, and the Vegetarian Society was still saluting him on his 90th birthday.

Which future independence leader sat on a vegetarian society's committee while a young law student?

Mahatma Gandhi had sworn to his mother that he would not touch meat abroad and went hungry keeping the vow, until Henry Salt's writing turned a promise into a conviction.

Nueva Germania, a vegetarian colony in 1880s Paraguay, was co-founded by which philosopher's sister?

Friedrich Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth and her husband Bernhard Förster planned a meat-free settlement for 'pure' Germans, but the venture was near bankruptcy by the decade's end.

Which American Founding Father took up a 'vegetable diet' at 16 and spent the money he saved on books?

Benjamin Franklin lapsed on a sea voyage when frying cod smelt too good: seeing small fish inside the catch, he decided that if fish ate one another, he might as well eat them.

Which Indian emperor announced that the animals killed daily for his kitchen had been cut to two peacocks and a deer?

Ashoka had the pledge carved in stone for his subjects to read, admitting that hundreds of thousands of animals were once killed there for curry and promising that even these three would be spared.

What is the free communal kitchen of a Sikh gurdwara, which serves only vegetarian food to all comers, called?

Langar stays meat-free even though Sikhs are not required to be vegetarian, which lets visitors of every faith and background sit down together to the same simple meal.

Bronson Alcott, founder of the short-lived meat-free commune Fruitlands, was the father of which novel's author?

Little Women's author, Louisa May Alcott, lived through it as a child: the commune shunned animal food and even animal labour, lasted seven months, and became her sketch Transcendental Wild Oats.

In the Bible, which exile at Nebuchadnezzar's court asked to be tested for ten days on only vegetables and water?

Daniel and his three friends ended the ten days looking healthier than the youths fed from the king's table, and the passage now gives its name to a fast kept by some churches.

The meat substitute Quorn is made from what kind of organism?

A microfungus named Fusarium venenatum, found living in soil, is grown by the same fermentation that gives us beer and bread; most Quorn is then bound with egg white, so it suits vegetarians but not those who avoid every animal product.

Quorn was launched in 1985 by a joint venture between Rank Hovis McDougall and which chemicals giant?

ICI had the know-how: it had built one of the world's largest fermenters to grow Pruteen, a single-cell protein for animal feed, and when that failed to pay, the expertise went into making food for people.

Protose, an early meat substitute made from peanuts, was created at a Michigan sanitarium by which cereal pioneer?

John Harvey Kellogg ran his sanitarium without meat, so he invented dishes to fill the gap on the plate: Protose became his most popular product, and an early peanut butter came out of the same kitchen.

Which Christian denomination has long urged its members towards a vegetarian diet?

Seventh-day Adventists made Loma Linda, California, one of the world's 'Blue Zones': members there live up to a decade longer than other Americans, an edge credited largely to diet and exercise.

Tofu, or bean curd, originated in which country?

China gave the world tofu, but the word reached us by way of Japan: 'tofu' is the Japanese form of the Chinese doufu, a food thought to have crossed the sea with Buddhist monks.

Tempeh, a cake of fermented soybeans, comes from which country?

Indonesia's island of Java is tempeh's home, where a white mould grown through the cooked beans knits them into a cake firm enough to slice.

Seitan, a meat substitute known in Japan as fu, is made from what?

Wheat gluten is what remains when a flour dough is rinsed until the starch washes away, a trick that has fed meat-shunning Buddhist diners in East Asia for centuries.

Which photographer and musician put her own name on a range of vegetarian sausages and burgers in 1991?

Linda McCartney's meat-free range became big enough business to be bought by food giants including McVitie's and Heinz, and it long outlived its founder, who died in 1998.

Which future US president ran the wartime Food Administration that asked Americans to keep weekly meatless days in 1917-18?

Herbert Hoover cut the nation's eating by persuasion instead of rationing, and so visibly that 'to Hooverize' became a household word for economising on food.

The word 'pescetarian' is thought to blend 'vegetarian' with the word for fish in which language?

Italian 'pesce' is the likely root, dictionaries say, yet the spelling that shows it is losing ground: 'pescatarian', with an a, is now the commoner form and the one they list first.

People who eat no animal foods at all risk a deficiency of which vitamin in particular?

B12 is made by bacteria, not by plants, so a diet with no animal foods at all has to supply it through fortified foods or a supplement.

Buddhist monks across East Asia follow a vegetarian diet that also rules out which vegetable?

Onions sit with garlic, leeks and shallots among the 'five pungent vegetables' the monks avoid, not to spare a life but because strong flavours are held to excite the senses.

Which fish makes traditional Worcestershire sauce unsuitable for vegetarians?

Anchovies are fermented into the sauce and aged in barrels, so a vegetarian has to look out for it in a Bloody Mary or a Caesar salad as well as in the bottle.

Which famous monster of fiction claims to live on acorns and berries and vows not to 'destroy the lamb and the kid'?

Frankenstein's creature makes the vow while begging his maker for a mate, promising to vanish with her into the wilds of South America, where his food 'is not that of man'.

True Parmesan can never be vegetarian, because its recipe requires which ingredient taken from calves' stomachs?

Rennet's enzymes curdle the milk, and the rules for Parmigiano Reggiano insist on the calf kind, so vegetarian look-alikes have to be sold under another name.

Isinglass, which stops some beers and wines being vegetarian, is made from which part of a fish?

Swim bladder collagen, dried and traditionally taken from sturgeon, is added as a 'fining' that helps clear the drink, which is why a pint or a glass of wine can fail the vegetarian test.

Which animal fat makes a traditional British Christmas pudding unsuitable for vegetarians?

Suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys of cattle and sheep, and the pudding is easily rescued: a vegetable version made from refined oil now stands in for it.