Some members choose to label themselves as “plant-based,” while others use the term “vegan” to describe their lifestyle and while these lifestyles sound like they would be similar, there are some key differences.
A growing number of people are choosing to reduce or eliminate animal products in their diet for a variety of reasons such as health, the environment, and animal welfare. As a result, the food industry has been booming with plant-based products and clubs are offering members more vegan and plant-based options on their menus.
Dr. T. Colin Campbell, an American biochemist, coined the phrase “plant-based diet” in the 1980s to describe a low-fat, high-fiber, vegetable-based diet that focused on health and not ethics. A plant-based diet is focused on eating whole ingredients like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, whole grains, legumes and avoiding anything heavily refined. A plant-based diet does not entirely avoid eating meat or other animal products, but the vast majority of food comes from plants. There are various ways to approach plant-based eating and people who eat a plant-based diet may exclude all animal foods or eat limited amounts of these foods.
Donald Watson coined the term “vegan” in 1944 to describe someone who fully abstains from all animal products for ethical reasons. It followed that a vegan diet completely eliminated animal-derived foods of all kinds, 100 percent of the time. Over time, veganism grew into a movement based not only on ethics and animal welfare but also on environmental and health concerns. A vegan diet includes plant foods like fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes while excluding animal-derived foods, such as eggs, meat, fish, poultry, honey, cheese, and other dairy products.
While there are some similarities between vegan and plant-based diets, the primary difference is that a vegan diet is not always a healthy diet since many processed and harmful foods may be consumed on a vegan diet. Many processed and junk foods are acceptable for vegans – animal rights, not necessarily health, are at the core of veganism.
Plant-based diets place a greater emphasis on the health advantages of eliminating animal products from a diet than they do on the ethical and moral considerations that motivate vegan diets. While veganism is a philosophy based on avoiding animal cruelty, someone chooses a plant-based diet for other reasons such as their health or the environment.
