Are Vegan and Vegetarian the Same?

The answer might surprise you!

Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

I’ve been vegan for around 36 years now, and sometimes it’s easy for me to forget that many of the things I take for granted about veganism are still mysteries for a lot of people.

So I was a little surprised recently when I was doing some research into the most commonly asked questions about veganism and discovered that one of the questions most frequently asked is “Are vegan and vegetarian the same?”

Since I went vegan way back in 1986 I’ve seen veganism explode in popularity, with massive increases in the range of vegan foods that are readily available in supermarkets, restaurants and takeaways. It’s like a different universe to the one we old-time vegans used to know, where we had to make our own vegan ‘cheese’ out of soya flour and marmite, where many people had never even heard the word ‘vegan’ and had no idea what it meant.

In fact, it’s a little embarrassing, but because I learned about veganism by reading, I didn’t even know how to pronounce the word until I’d been vegan for about four years! I used to pronounce it ‘vaygan’ and since I was the only vegan I knew, I had no-one to correct me until I joined the hunt sabs and met lots of other vegans personally. Needless to say, they found my pronunciation hilarious!