Many people practice diets that limit or eliminate meat, poultry, fish, and other animal products for many good reasons. Whether they do so for medical purposes, religious or cultural practices, ethical beliefs, or personal preferences, they often derive health benefits and possibly even a greater sense of purpose by practicing them.
Just as they have different reasons for following these diets, they also practice different kinds, such as veganism, vegetarianism, or pescatarianism. These diets feature different levels of cutting out animal-based products, lists of acceptable foods, and ways of getting necessary nutrients from the available food options. If you’re looking to adopt one of these diets, here’s an overview of each so you can more easily determine which could work best for your needs and beliefs.
The Vegetarian Diet
Vegetarianism is a broad term encompassing all plant-based diets. Generally, vegetarians don’t eat animal-based products like meat, poultry, or fish or any by-products of animal slaughter like gelatin or rennet; however, they can and do eat fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, tofu, avocados, and plant-based meat alternatives. There are many kinds of vegetarian diets: a wholly plant-based one, lacto-ovo-vegetarianism (which allows dairy and eggs), lacto-vegetarianism (which allows dairy but not eggs), ovo-vegetarianism (which allows eggs but no dairy), pescatarianism (which allows fish), and veganism (which doesn’t allow any animal-based products).
As plant-based diets are usually lower in calories and saturated fats and higher in dietary fiber than meat-based ones, a vegetarian diet can help reduce your weight, lower your blood pressure, and reduce your risk of heart disease. Compared to animal-based foods, however, many plant-based foods aren’t as effective sources of omega-3 fatty acids, vitamin D and B12, iron, calcium, and zinc; to get these nutrients, you should eat more plant-based foods or take supplements fortified with them.
You might practice or adopt this diet for various reasons. You might not want animals to be treated unethically, harmed, or killed to produce food or oppose the negative impacts meat production can have on the environment. Compared to meat-based ones, plant-based diets produce one-third the amount of carbon emissions, require less water and land usage to make the food, and avoid the exploitation of animals that often happens with large-scale farming projects. You might also be a member of a religious affiliation, such as Jainism, Seventh-Day Adventism, Hinduism, or Buddhism, whose beliefs encourage or require a vegetarian diet.
The Vegan Diet
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As a philosophy and lifestyle, veganism focuses on excluding and ending any practices that exploit or harm animals, from factory farming to animal testing to making products from parts or all of an animal’s body. Based on this, vegans eat a plant-based diet that cuts out any animal-based food; this includes meat, poultry, fish, shellfish, insects, dairy, eggs, and honey. Though this diet can seem restrictive at first, vegans still have a variety of foods, including fruits, vegetables, grains, seeds, nuts, and beans, that they can eat and use in meals.
Adopting a vegan diet can help reduce your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and BMI; by doing so, it can also reduce your risk of heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and cancer. You also tend to live longer if you eat a vegan diet instead of an omnivorous (mixed animal- and plant-based) one. If you plan to switch from omnivorous to vegan, do so gradually by eliminating certain animal products from your diet one-by-one and replacing them with vegan alternatives; furthermore, make sure you have enough sources of protein, calcium, and B vitamins in your diet.
As veganism centers around opposing animal exploitation in all forms, you might become one to highlight your opposition to unethical farming processes that exploit and harm animals to produce meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy. You might also adopt this diet since it’s more environmentally friendly. Animal agriculture contributes heavily to deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, whereas switching to a vegan diet can save one animal a day and thousands of gallons of water, pounds of grain, square feet of forest, and pounds of CO2 a month.
The Pescatarian Diet
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A pescatarian or pesco-vegetarian diet is a plant-based diet that allows fish and seafood to be eaten. Pescatarians eat plant-based foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, and nuts as well as fish and seafood like tuna, clams, haddock, lobsters, salmon, shrimp, and trout. In a sense, this diet combines the health benefits of both types of food; the fish provide lean proteins, heart-healthy fats, and omega-3 fatty acids that strictly plant-based diets can find difficult to replicate.
Although there’s been little research into its direct benefits so far, this diet may help you maintain a healthy weight, improve your heart and brain health, reduce your blood pressure, and lower your risk of Type 2 diabetes, colorectal or prostate cancer, Alzheimer’s, and age-related macular degeneration. When adopting this diet, eat seafood rich in zinc, calcium, vitamin B12, and iron or take appropriate supplements to ensure you get enough of these nutrients; also, avoid fish with high mercury levels like king mackerel, orange roughy, and swordfish.
Although pescetarianism as a specific term and practice wasn’t mainstream until the late 20th century, many people in civilizations around the world have followed similar plant-based, fish-supplemented diets for thousands of years. Like them, you might also adopt this diet due to the availability of fish in your area, your specific religious or cultural practices, or its health benefits; after all, many people who practice this diet are often among the healthiest and longest-lived people on the planet.
Final Thoughts
Whether done for religious, cultural, personal, medical, ethical, or environmental reasons, practicing a vegetarian, vegan, or pescatarian diet is a viable way to consume and enjoy food. While they all involve reducing or eliminating animal-based food consumption, they handle this differently. Vegetarianism is a wide spectrum of plant-based diets; veganism excludes animal-based products; pescatarianism supplements a plant-based diet with fish and seafood.
Despite their differences, these diets all provide numerous health benefits and can help promote better treatment of animals. If you want to shift from your current diet to any of these, you should know what each diet permits, forbids, and requires so that you know what you’re getting into and how you can effectively adjust to the change.
Disclaimer: This article is intended simply to provide information. It does not replace the medical advice of a physician. Please speak with your doctor if you have any questions or concerns.
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