VEGETARIANISM

theory or practice of living solely upon vegetables, fruits, grains, and nuts, generally for ethical, ascetic, or nutritional reasons. Meat, fowl, and fish are excluded from all vegetarian diets, but some vegetarians use milk and milk products; those in the modern West usually eat eggs also, but most vegetarians in India exclude them, as did those in the classical Mediterranean lands. Vegetarians who exclude animal products altogether have taken the name vegans, and those who use milk products are sometimes called lactovegetarians. Among some agricultural peoples the eating of flesh has been infrequent except among the privileged classes; such people have rather misleadingly been called vegetarians.