I guess I'm really misinformed here. I always thought they were the same group. And that they shun and stay away from any and all animal derived food. This includes fish, eggs, dairy products, and such. And that they all avoid eating vitamin B-12 because they see it as the “animal vitamin”. Well, that's what I've heard the 2 1/2 or so PETA guys living here say…

So vegetarians will eat no meat from cows/sheep/pigs/chicken or other fowl while vegans will eat NO MEAT at all?

vegans won't eat animal byproducts meaning cheese, milk, and other dairy products, and etc.

vegetarians will eat animal byproducts.

that's the difference that I know so far. I'm not sure about eggs. and then sometimes they get picky one what byproducts they won't eat like b-12 and gelatin.

I have a friend who decided to go vegan, but almost died, because he wasn't getting enough energy, and basically starving himself, so he decided to go vegetarian instead.

i've seen him eat cheese, but he won't eat gummi-bears. (or gummi-vites!)

it was something along those lines. i'd have to ask him to double check.

there's also pescatarians and poultretarians too.
people who will only eat fish or chicken/birds

I must admit, it all seems very fussy to be vegan. I mean, the animals are going to get milked and lay eggs regardless of what a small group of people eat. I mean, vegans eat only fruits and veges? Who does that? It'd be terrible.

JoeL_CQB
there's also pescatarians and poultretarians too.
people who will only eat fish or chicken/birds

And Fruitarians who only eat fruit because it's given freely by the plant and doesn't harm it- unlike vegetables which involve the harvesting of the plant…

Breathairians too, but they tend to die. -_-
Seriously.

I can see the logic behind veganism if it's some sort of activism thing like how the animals are caged and ‘harvested’. If it's not that then….what the hell, i don't se the big deal in eating animal byproducts.

Some people just find eating animal byproducts gross. I mean, if you really think about it, it kinda is.

I think this is an instance when google/wikipedia may be very helpful in its dearth of information on basic subjects :]

JoeL_CQB coined it pretty well.

I first heard of the term (ad the word) Vegan while living in London. By then I had never EVER been introduced to this idea. This concept is so foreign to an Icelander that we don't even have a word for it. If I try to explain this concept to many of my fellow countrymen I'm normally met with a blank stare and the question: “then what do they eat?”

A vegan who tries to move to Iceland would starve to death, simply put. Meat eating is so much part of our culture that it's considered weird enough to be a vegetarian. Our climate is very poor for vegetable harvest and the animal that basically kept us alive all this time was the sheep. It provided us with enough food to keep us alive over the winter and wool to make warm clothing from. Therefore we respect that animal very much. It's only recently that we've started to use greenhouse technology to create a wide variety of vegetables and fruits but that production is still somewhat limited. Most of our greens is still imported.

There have been few improvements over the years to help those who go green. There's now a specialty store in the capital that offers green choice food like soy milk and rye bread and there's now a single restaurant in the down town capital that offers solely vegetarian meals. A vegan would still have to be careful, going through their menu for some of their meals might contain an animal product. Again that's only the capital, it's become metropolitan enough to offer vegan dishes in a limited supply. Good luck for a vegan finding anything else to eat outside of the capital apart from lettuce heads, potatoes, carrots and apples.

I remember a few years ago we were talking about vegetarians here in the forums, and I bought up my old crappy crude joke about all Lesbians being vegetarian… And Ronson and Spang and a whole lot of other people took it seriously and stared talking about probability and surveys. T_T
Well at least my lesbian friends found it funny.

@PP- there's always imports ^^

ozoneocean
@PP- there's always imports ^^

Product Placement
Most of our greens is still imported.

As I stated we do import vegetables but it's normally some frozen low grade stuff that's past the “farmers market” quality. The only greens that are produced in quantities that can sustain the entire populous are tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces and an occasional odd fruit.

Other stuff is made but not nearly enough to go around. If some serious effort would be put towards improving the greenhouse cultivation around here, the selection of fresh green produce would undoubtedly improve but I don't think there's a market for it.

There's this silly tourist gimmick at this nearby town that specializes in greenhouse farming, that sells Icelandic grown bananas. They're production is still way too small to even sustain the town itself, they're just growing them so that tourist can take a picture of them holding the most unlikely fruit to be grown around here.

And let's also take into account that less then 50 years ago, none of this production existed. Around that time our vegetable selection was limited to potatoes, iceberg salad and rhubarb.

Wow… Surely there's a market for the stuff? My city is one of the furtherest places from anywhere (for a capital city) and yet we have fruit shipped from all over the world in addition to what's grown locally- which is quite a bit.

Perhaps there really isn't a market for it though? Maybe Icelanders just don't tend to buy fruits and veggies that much even when it is available?

Skullbie
I can see the logic behind veganism if it's some sort of activism thing like how the animals are caged and ‘harvested’. If it's not that then….what the hell, i don't se the big deal in eating animal byproducts.

Yeah, that's my deal…I won't eat eggs from chickens that they keep in those teeny little cages, but I have no problem with eating eggs from free run chickens.
The eggs are way better anyways.

i've never noticed a difference between my aunts chicken eggs, and store bought mass produced chicken eggs.

i tried to do vegitarian once, because i was convinced that it was better for me. but whenever i would smell meat, i'd be instantly hungry, regardless of how much i just ate, or when i ate. it lasted about 2 weeks.

wasnt long enough to notice any weight loss, or other “healthy” things. plus i was like 140lbs at the time, so if i had lost weight, i might have died.(jk) (kinda)

Organicist: Will only eat animal food if animals led a nice life in the wild et cetera

Vegetarian: won't eat animals.

Veganist: Won't eat animal products at all due to ideological reasons

Macrobiotics: People that don't eat replacement pills and shits either because they think eating animal products is unhealthy, look at their skin and see that they're wrong. Apparently they think you can't get cancer or some thing if you don't get any animal proteins in.

Fruitarians: People that only eat fruit that has fallen of a tree on its own, I kid thee not.

I have two friends that are vegetarians and one that's a vegan. They make a point to tell me at least once a week that I'm gonna die an early death. :D

I think vegans are just stricter vegetarians with a side dish of activism. My vegetarian friends tend to forget their convictions when a chicken sandwich is present, but the vegan got mad at the guy who landed the plane in the Hudson last January because he “killed the geese with his plane.”

They're such teenage girls. They give a bad name to vegans/vegetarians everywhere, me thinks.

Aren't vegetables living things as well?

AQua_ng
Aren't vegetables living things as well?

They have not been proven to feel pain, just as animals in fact, you can just say it's an automation in animals and not true self awareness, in fact, you can say that of every human except yourself so it's okay to chainsaw people to death I guess.

Solipsism, it solves moral guilt.

ozoneocean
Perhaps there really isn't a market for it though? Maybe Icelanders just don't tend to buy fruits and veggies that much even when it is available?

Our whole mentality is that a meal is not a meal unless it contains meat. The vegetables exists though but is usually only considered to be a side dish of some sort. Most farms specialize in dairy farming and or sheep breeding. The few vegetable farmers that exist now try their best to promote the philosophy that all plates should be at least third covered with vegetables but many consider potatoes to be all they need. As I stated, the capital is metropolitan enough to contain few odd stores that are more suited for specific dietary needs and a vegetarian can live a pretty easy life there while it would be tough for a vegan. I sincerely doubt that many vegetarians exist outside the capital.

There's an alarming increase of “freegans” in my city - people that will only eat free food. Mostly this means digging in the dumpsters behind restaurants. Now, while I admit that most places are extremely wasteful with their food, it's still freaking disgusting to think about eating from the garbage cans.

Another addition to the vegan definition is that they won't wear animal hides of any kind. You can imagine how difficult it would be to find shoes, heh.

amanda
There's an alarming increase of “freegans” in my city - people that will only eat free food. Mostly this means digging in the dumpsters behind restaurants. Now, while I admit that most places are extremely wasteful with their food, it's still freaking disgusting to think about eating from the garbage cans.

Like raccoons, only they listen to an excessive amount of indie music and wear too many layers of puke colored clothing! :)

I'm still waiting for Ozone to break out with a “HAHA just kidding about the airitarian thing”.

ozoneocean
]And Fruitarians who only eat fruit because it's given freely by the plant and doesn't harm it- unlike vegetables which involve the harvesting of the plant…

Breathairians too, but they tend to die. -_-
Seriously.

Aren't you taking and eating a plant's ovaries by doing that?

I have to admit that I'm mostly a carnivore, but vegetarian menus could be tolerable and even quite good (avocado creme, salad with goat cheese, vegetarian omellettes, spaghetti with pesto or plain tomato sauce and rice with lentil are very tasty).

However, I found vegan meals quite…boring…

Dark Pascual
Aren't you taking and eating a plant's ovaries by doing that?

No, not at all lol! It's more like the placenta.
With the seed as the foetus- that you don't eat. ;)

ozoneocean

Dark Pascual
Aren't you taking and eating a plant's ovaries by doing that?

No, not at all lol! It's more like the placenta.
With the seed as the foetus- that you don't eat. ;)

OMG…I LOVE PUMPKIN SEEDS!!! AND I DO EAT TANGERINES AND GRAPES SEEDS!!!

IM A MONSTER!!!!

Dark Pascual
OMG…I LOVE PUMPKIN SEEDS!!! AND I DO EAT TANGERINES AND GRAPES SEEDS!!!

IM A MONSTER!!!!

That's true.

Foetus eater :gem:

Dark Pascal
I have to admit that I'm mostly a carnivore, but vegetarian menus could be tolerable and even quite good.

I agree! Meat is a beautiful thing, but I could live without it for a while if I needed to. I'm known as my family's garage disposal because I'll pretty much eat anything.

bah !!, we should all be omnivorous, we have canines !!, teeth never lie.
we sure have been losing them with time, but that's not because we are supposed to be vegetarians, that's because the food nowadays is easier to chew, hence we don't need canine teeth as much as before.

Pandafilando
that's because the food nowadays is easier to chew, hence we don't need canine teeth as much as before.

I'm no expert on teeth, but I'm pretty sure the canines aren't for chewing. I'm pretty sure what they're for is for ripping and tearing into food so that you can bite bits off and then chew them.
Buuut we have knives and forks for that now.
We still use them that way for raw fruit though :)

I'm a corncan.

That means I'll only eat corn that comes from a can, or at least corn that looks like it came from a can, even if it's still on the cob.

Isn't that a dance where the women show everyone they're not wearing panties?