A vegetarian is a person who does not eat anything that ever had a heartbeat, a face or a mother. In other words, no animal flesh in the least. Someone who claims to be a vegetarian but eats fish or fowl, for example, is not a vegetarian but an omnivore with a qualified diet. Omnivores eat plant life and flesh. 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 one who eats no animal products at all. This includes abstention from eggs, egg whites and all dairy products. ‘Vegans’ comprise the strictest type of vegetarians. “Lacto” references those vegetarians who include dairy in their diet but no eggs or egg whites. “Ovo-lacto” is that group which 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 with beef or chicken bases and foods containing gelatin which is made by boiling animal remains.
Vegetarians are growing in number. Because of the many salutary benefits of this dietary regimen, it is not inconceivable to consider that eventually more people will 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 strange and weird, is now quite accepted. With the relative abundance of non-meat foods and products on the market today, a number that is growing rapidly, it is easy to make the switch. All one has to do is overcome the inertia of his conditioning — not a difficult task when one considers the trade-off and benefits of the transaction.
Copyright by Richard Andrew King
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Source by Richard Andrew King
