What’s the Difference between vegan and vegetarian?

As a vegetarian myself (in the process of becoming a vegan), I often get asked what’s the difference between vegan and vegetarian? I’ll try to clarify things out.

First, neither vegans, nor vegetarians eat meat. That’s something they have in common. But even though vegetarians don’t eat meat, they often eat other animal’s products such as dairy, honey and eggs while vegans don’t.

Some vegetarians eat fish. We call them pesco-vegetarians. Other may eat chicken or other meat once in a while. We call them flexi-tarians. They are not “pure” vegetarians.

Vegetarians also often use animal based products such as leather, fur, wool in their everyday life… While you’ll rarely see a true vegan wearing these products.

Being a vegetarian is comparable to following a non-meat diet while being a vegan is more deep… it’s more of a lifestyle and a philosophy even though some are vegan as a diet too or for religious or political reasons.

Most vegans claim that we shouldn’t exploit animals and that they should have comparable rights as what we, humans, have.

You’ll also have vegetarians claiming the same but vegans will tell them that if they want to be taken seriously, they shouldn’t eat dairy and eggs and they shouldn’t wear leather, fur and wool. These industries are in fact the worse… These animals are the one suffering the most.

How to make a cow suffer to get milk?

Did you know that in order to get milk from a cow you first need to get her pregnant (forced by insemination) and that once the new baby is born, you have to take him away from his mother to siphon her milk? We drink the calf’s milk while he doesn’t.

A dairy cow can live that kind of cruel separation up to 10 times in her life and has to stay chained most of her lifetime until she will become… a good a juicy hamburger?! What a life?

When we take her baby away, a cow can whine for days and days… she feels the loss. She knows what happened. And she’s chained while we siphon her calf’s milk.

Some pretend that she doesn’t understand what’s happening but go see it with your own eyes and you’ll realize very soon that they are wrong. Animals have emotions. Like we do. Maybe not exactly the same, maybe not as deep but they do have true emotions.

Why I’m not a complete vegan yet?

Ethically speaking, I am. I believe that we shouldn’t exploit animals the way we do. Animals are conscious of themselves, they have intelligence and emotions. They feel pain and they also have their own personality and humors.

Spend some time with a bunch of animals and you’ll see it by yourself. I have 4 cats and a hamster at home and trust me, they know what they do and how to get what they want.

Did you know that pigs are as intelligent as a 4 years old kid? Did you know that they are more intelligent than dogs?

You wouldn’t eat a dog (chineese do) but you eat pigs.

Look at this video and see by yourself :

How bacon is made?

Type pigs in Google Image and look at their eyes. They look human don’t they? Actually this animal is very close to us genetically speaking. And he is very intelligent as you could see, yet we treat him as we would treat a table or a couch. We pile them up in sheds for their entire life, letting them live in their dumps in a space that’s barely larger than themselves and we feed them until they are big enough to become fat bacon.

Bacon is good. I used to love it. But now that I know how it’s made, I don’t eat bacon anymore.

Actually, I don’t eat meat anymore. I also try to avoid all meat based products such as gelatin. I try not to eat eggs but it happens once in a while. I also try to avoid cheese but… it’s though my friends.

There is a molecule in cheese called casein which transforms itself in caseomorphin during the digestion process with is an opiate derivative. This molecule creates addiction!

But why do we drink milk and eat dairy anyways?

Your mom used to produce milk when you were a toddler. Would you have thought of transforming it into cheese? Probably not! Would you have a glass of your mom’s milk? Ewww Weird! Probably not either.

Than, did you ever wondered why you’re drinking the milk that comes out of the mammels of a cow? Isn’t weird said like that?

Actually, we are the only specie on earth who’s drinking another specie’s milk… and we’re also the only specie on earth who drink milk after the childhood.

Cow milk is created by the momma cow to grow a baby cow into a 450 kilos huge cow super fast. Why do we drink that??? It’s not for us…

There are a lot of questions like that that are left unanswered. Milk producers will say it’s good for our health while it’s not (osteoporosis). They say we need it for calcium while it’s not true either. You’ll find a lot more calcium in many vegetables.