What Vegans Cannot Eat

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People are making the big switch to vegetarian and vegan diets in record numbers these days, and we can see why: a plant-based diet offers a wide range of health benefits for our bodies and the environment as well. If you have been following me on this website, you probably know by now what a vegan diet consists of. Today, we will cover what vegans cannot eat.

Generally, the rules of being vegan involve avoiding all animal products and opting instead for plant-based food. Once you've learned the ins and outs of what non-vegan foods to avoid, you can begin to reframe and build yourself a new diet full of all the delicious foods vegans can eat, like colourful, sweet fruit, amazing vegetables, and crunchy nuts and seeds, to name a few!

What Is Vegan?

Veganism refers to a diet of whole food plants with no animal products or byproducts. You can choose vegan foods that come from plants, including a wide range of fruits and vegetables, legumes, nuts, grains, seeds, and even some vegan dairy products. Of course, every diet is personal, and each person will have a different combination of vegan and vegan foods, which are similar to the omnivore diet.

But the first step toward a healthier lifestyle is simply deciding to change. Plant-based foods are a much more effective choice for our bodies, which is why experts like Dr. Michael Greger, author of The Plant-Powered Diet: The Low-Carb, High-Protein, Healthy Way to Lose Weight and Other Belly Fat, and bestselling author of The Kind Diet, have raved about the benefits.

It's a term that's actually pretty imprecise but essentially means no animal products, no eggs, no dairy, no honey and no fish. Even though honey is a plant product. Honey is the honey bee's food they store for the winter! There is a wide array of foods that are OK for a vegan to eat. They are raw nuts (unsalted), seeds, hemp protein, whole grains, peanuts and peanut products, organic fruits and vegetables, legumes, seitan (contains gluten), cauliflower, leafy greens, and coconut milk.

Veganism offers a wealth of other health benefits, such as the ability to help reduce your cholesterol levels, lower your risk of heart disease, and even boost your immune system. You'll get more energy, lose weight, have a healthier heart, and of course, eat much healthier!

What Is A Vegan Diet?

There is no one correct definition for a vegan diet. While we encourage people to find their own diet preferences that are right for them, here's a short definition that may help you understand the philosophy of a plant-based diet:

“Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practical, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing, cosmetics, cleaning, or any other purpose.
And by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment.” – Vegan Society.

What's Going On With the Decline of Chickens? To understand the impact of being a vegan on our environment, we first need to understand the history of animals on our planet. This topic will be covered in another blog post.

A vegan diet is where you get your protein and calcium from nuts, beans, or lentils rather than from animals. You can also include lots of fruits and vegetables in your diet. The main aim is to take a highly vegetarian lifestyle and eat plant-based foods only. The vegan diet excludes all meats, red meat or other meat types like chicken, fish, and seafood. Some vegans take supplements and add some olive oil to their salads. I make my salad dressing with lemon juice, herbs, and pepper. I am not too keen on eating oily salads.

A vegan diet includes various vegetables, fruits, and beans eaten as a healthy, animal-free meal. Protein-rich legumes, nuts, and whole grains are excellent protein sources and can be easily eaten as snacks throughout the day. In my opinion, our bodies don't need high amounts of protein. You can read the book “The 80/10/10 Diet by Dr. Douglas N. Graham“. This is the best book I ever read on the raw vegan diet.

Benefits Of Being Vegan

So, what are some of the health benefits of being vegan? Let's take a look at some of the reasons people may make this big decision. The first benefit is improved health. A vegan diet is a plant-based diet, which means you avoid all animal-based foods which contain a lot of saturated fats. Vegan foods contain the vitamins and minerals we would be deficient in by eating a meat diet.

Many research studies have proven that a vegan diet is much healthier for our bodies. Then any other diet! The healthiest vegan diets are high in raw vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds and low in processed foods and saturated fats.

Here are just a few of the top vegan health benefits to keep in mind:

Easy on the joints: Some plant-based foods can benefit the health of your joints. When we get enough calcium and vitamin D in our diets, we protect our joints against arthritis and help keep our tendons and ligaments from getting stiff.
Lowering cholesterol and improving heart health by omitting all animal-derived products.
Avoiding fast food: Fast food doesn't offer any nutrients or vitamins our bodies need. You'll find many of these foods aren't vegan. Consider creating a grocery list, and avoid some of the worst offenders like beef, pork, poultry, fish, egg and dairy.
Does the environment care? Animals contribute up to 40% of greenhouse gas emissions, and animal agriculture is responsible for 70% of human antibiotic use. Make a switch, and you'll be helping the planet and your health.

Why Are Vegans Not Allowed To Eat Animal Products?

Even though our bodies need protein, people are often surprised to learn that vegans don't eat animal products. According to some animal rights advocates, animal products contain cholesterol and other unhealthy chemicals that vegans are committed to eliminating. We can get all our proteins from plants. Some fruits contain protein, too, like kiwi, dragon fruit, apples, etc.

Being vegan is a lifestyle. We don't eat meat, fish, seafood, dairy, eggs, and honey because of several reasons:

We want to put an end to useless animal cruelty and suffering. We have to stop abusing and killing animals.
We want to protect the environment: Animal farms, the meat industry, the fashion industries, and the dairy industry are the main causes of the most greenhouse gases in the world.
We want to stop world hunger by reducing meat consumption: By lowering the dairy and meat farms, we can use the crops for people instead of feeding millions of animals used for our enjoyment only.
We want to stop the extensive water consumption by the dairy, meat, and fashion industries.

Living the vegan lifestyle means we eat plant-based foods only. We also avoid wearing animal-based fashion. We use cruelty-free and vegan cosmetics and cleaning products.

Vegans completely avoid eating animal products like meat: fish, seafood, dairy, eggs, honey and other animal-derived foods. Many people are allergic to dairy, eggs, seafood or gluten. The vegan diet is perfect for them. It avoids all of these products. In my opinion, no food is more delicious and colourful than a wide variety of fruit and vegetables.

Dairy

People who follow a vegan diet avoid all dairy products. This includes milk, cheese, and yogurt. Generally, vegans avoid any products containing the word “milk,” even when milk alternatives are used in the product's description. However, cow's milk isn't the only dairy product that's “non-vegan” or unsafe for vegans.

Other dairy products, such as goat's milk or yogurt, are non-vegan. Vegans are advised not to eat dairy-derived products like butter, cheese, yogurt, cream, and sour cream. You may be disappointed if you eat anything with milk, such as cheese, ice cream, sour cream, or sourdough bread. While drinking milk is available, it's typically not a wise choice to consume dairy. Most dairy, whether or not it's in the form of milk, comes from animals.

Almost all dairy cows live in barns, producing milk in only four weeks. This is very stressful on the cow. Studies have shown that dairy causes an increase in heart disease. While most people can likely still stomach a little dairy now and then, dairy-free choices are available all around the grocery store! Just as many foods are vegan-friendly as they are for dairy-eating people, there are vegan-friendly dairy-free options.

Honey

Bees pollinate plants by collecting nectar from flowers and transporting it back to their hives. As a result, honey is often made from pollen, but it's not an animal product. Honey is technically not vegan. Bees produce honey, and bees get their food from the nectar of plants like clover, dandelions, and other flowers. Honey is loaded with pollen from those flowers, and it's considered to be inedible to all bees (and to some extent, to people as well) since the pollen that bees and people find to be tastiest is usually different.

Vegans try to avoid or minimize all forms of animal exploitation, including that of bees. As a result, most vegans exclude honey from their diets. Some vegans also avoid honey to take a stand against beekeeping practices that can harm bee health. For some vegans, this extends to honey because it is produced from the labour of bees. …

Honey-avoiding vegans believe that exploiting the labour of bees and then harvesting their energy source is immoral — and they point out that large-scale beekeeping operations can harm or kill bees. Please also note that the bees produce honey to have something to eat during the winter.

Fish

This is because the production of these ingredients is considered unethical, exploitative, or harmful to the health of animals. Vegans abstain from eating meat, poultry, fish, and animal-derived products like honey, dairy, and gelatin. Do vegans eat seafood? No, vegans don’t eat fish. Veganism is defined as a diet that is entirely free of any animal-derived products. At its core, veganism was created in 1944 and is a lifestyle void of animal products to limit animal exploitation.

Fish are bred on large farms where they cannot enjoy their lives. They are crowded and just kept to be killed and eaten by humans. The same for lobster. Did you ever see how cruelly the lobsters are kept in a grocery store? They vegetated in a small aquarium crowded and tied up. They want to be free and enjoy the wide oceans. Have you ever heard how they scream when thrown alive into a pot of boiling water? I think this is so very cruel.

Eggs

Vegans do not eat eggs because their production requires the exploitation of female chickens and the murder of male chicks within 15 minutes of hatching. Veganism, by definition, is a way of living that seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose. For this reason, consuming eggs can never be vegan.

Vegans can't eat eggs because to be vegan, a person must avoid all forms of animal exploitation, and the egg industry exploits the reproductive system of hens. Most eggs come from farmed chickens. Farmed chickens are often kept in poor condition whilst of egg-laying age before they're sent to slaughter when their egg production slows down. I know that many egg farmers keep the hens for one year and then kill them and replace them with a new flock.

Chickens do not produce eggs for humans to eat. They produce them as part of their natural reproductive cycle. To take eggs from chickens for profit or sustenance is exploitation, which is not permissible for those following a vegan lifestyle. The eggs will not go to waste. If left with their eggs, chickens will often eat unfertilized eggs themselves.

Eggs are full of nutrients essential for chicken health. Many vegan chicken parents take eggs from their chickens to prepare them through cooking and feed them back to their hens to help them stay healthy. Eggs are not essential for human health. To take them to consume when they do not belong to us is unethical and not vegan. In fact, many studies suggest that eggs are actually awful for humans and should not be consumed at all. I recently saw a study that eggs were used to produce viruses. These viruses are still in the eggs we eat today.

How To Avoid Meat And Animal Products

Vegans avoid eating all animal products, including meat, eggs, and dairy. They also don’t eat food that has an animal source, like gelatin and honey. For many, veganism is about more than food choices. People choose to be vegan for health, ethical, and/or environmental reasons.

Like anyone else, vegan or not, you're bound to have a vegan burger or a vegan mac-n-cheese on the regular. You're not necessarily missing out on all that meaty goodness; with a few subtle tricks, you can get by on mostly plant-based food. Some examples of great “meat-substitutes” include beans, tofu, tempeh, seitan, vegetables, leafy greens and lentils.

Some whole foods, such as beans, lentils, chickpeas, and mushrooms, contain protein or have a meaty texture and can work well as meat substitutes. Food manufacturers often include these types of food in their vegetarian and vegan products. All well-known supermarkets now offer a wide range of plant-based burgers, sausages, and other meat substitutes. They are based on legumes, vegetables, cereals, and other ingredients. Meat alternatives offer several advantages compared to meat. Vegan versions of burgers, for example, are free of cholesterol and usually contain fewer calories and less fat than similar burgers made with meat.

Conclusion

There is a wide variety of delicious vegan dishes, including frozen pizzas, breakfast foods, fresh vegetables, soups, and even gluten-free vegan treats. If you are looking for a delicious and easy way to get your meal on for a quick lunch or dinner, vegan food can be a great way to add a new delicious item to your menu. Don't give up on trying something new just because it doesn't taste like meat. Every meal that is full of variety and food for the body is the better choice.

I trust you enjoyed reading the article about What Vegans Cannot Eat. Would you please stay tuned? There are more blog posts to come very shortly.

JeannetteZ

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