56 Fun Facts About Vegan

In what year was the word 'vegan' coined?

Vegan was coined in 1944, when the Vegan Society formed in England and launched a newsletter for members who also shunned dairy and eggs.

The word 'vegan' was formed by contracting which longer word?

Vegetarian: the coiner kept its first three and last two letters, saying veganism marked the point where vegetarianism should logically end up.

Who coined the word 'vegan'?

Donald Watson, a Yorkshire-born woodwork teacher, coined 'vegan' and co-founded the Vegan Society, editing its first newsletter himself.

World Vegan Day is celebrated on which date each year?

1 November is World Vegan Day, begun in 1994 by Vegan Society chair Louise Wallis to mark the society's 50th anniversary; November is World Vegan Month.

What was the Vegan Society's first newsletter, a quarterly launched with the society, called?

The Vegan News was the quarterly newsletter the society's founder produced himself; it was later retitled simply The Vegan.

Which reference work was the first to publish the word 'vegan' independently, in 1962?

The Oxford Illustrated Dictionary added 'vegan' in 1962, defining it as someone who eats no butter, eggs, cheese or milk.

The first vegan society in the United States was founded in 1948 in which state?

California: Catherine Nimmo and Rubin Abramowitz founded the first US vegan society at Oceano in 1948, twelve years before a national society followed.

Who founded the American Vegan Society in 1960?

Dinshah ran the society from Malaga, New Jersey, for four decades and promoted the term 'ahimsa' as its guiding principle.

Which Romantic poet published 'A Vindication of Natural Diet' in 1813?

Shelley's wife Mary made the creature in Frankenstein shun meat too, five years later.

Who wrote 'Kitchen Philosophy for Vegetarians' (1849), regarded as the first vegan cookbook?

Nicholson was an American reformer who is better remembered for her eyewitness accounts of the Irish famine.

Which organisation did Leslie Cross found in 1956 to develop a dairy-free milk?

The Plantmilk Society, founded by Leslie Cross in 1956, became Plantmilk Ltd in 1965 and made one of Britain's first widely sold soy milks; it later traded as Plamil.

The Economist declared which year 'the year of the vegan'?

2019: The Economist's 'The World in 2019' issue called it the year of the vegan; that year Beyond Meat went public and Burger King took the Impossible Whopper nationwide.

The Herbivorous Butcher, described as America's first vegan butcher shop, opened in 2016 in which city?

Minneapolis: siblings Aubry and Kale Walch opened The Herbivorous Butcher there in January 2016, selling plant-based meats and cheeses from a storefront.

Europe's first vegan supermarkets, Veganz and Vegilicious, opened in 2011 in which country?

Germany: Veganz opened in Berlin and Vegilicious in Dortmund in 2011, the first all-vegan supermarkets in Europe.

Which festival offered vegan dishes for the first time in its 200-year history in 2013?

Oktoberfest, the Munich beer festival famous for pork knuckle, sausages and roast meats, put vegan dishes on its menus for the first time in 2013.

In what year did the first Veganuary challenge take place?

2014: Veganuary ran its first January pledge that year, founded by Jane Land and Matthew Glover; the 2021 campaign alone drew more than 580,000 sign-ups.

Veganuary, the pledge to eat vegan for January, was founded in which English city?

York: Veganuary was founded in the northern English city by Jane Land and Matthew Glover, who ran the first campaign from there.

In January 2021, which restaurant became the first vegan restaurant in France to receive a Michelin star?

ONA, short for Origine Non Animale, is Claire Vallée's restaurant at Arès near Bordeaux; the 2021 Michelin Guide gave it France's first star for a vegan kitchen.

The name 'aquafaba' was coined in 2015 from Latin words meaning what?

Water and bean: aqua plus faba, the Latin for broad bean; Goose Wohlt coined the name in 2015, and it echoes the legume family Fabaceae.

Impossible Foods was founded in 2011 by which Stanford biochemistry professor?

Brown took a sabbatical to work out how to replace animals in the food system and never went back.

The heme protein that makes an Impossible Burger 'bleed' is modelled on a molecule found naturally where?

In soybean roots: Impossible's heme is soy leghemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein of soybean root nodules, made at scale by genetically engineered yeast rather than harvested from plants.

Which New York restaurant, owned by David Chang, was the first to serve the Impossible Burger in July 2016?

Momofuku Nishi, David Chang's Chelsea restaurant, put the Impossible Burger on its menu in July 2016, the first public sale of the product.

The primary protein in Beyond Meat products comes from which plant?

Peas: Beyond Meat builds its burgers and sausages on pea protein isolate, with beet juice for colour and coconut oil for fat; France's Roquette became a major pea-protein supplier in 2020.

By roughly how much did Beyond Meat's share price rise on its first day of trading?

163%: Beyond Meat priced its IPO at $25 and closed its first day at $65.75, the best debut by a major US company since 2000.

Beyond Meat's first product, sold at Whole Foods in 2012, imitated which meat?

The 'Chicken-Free Strips' came four years before the Beyond Burger patty in 2016.

Tempeh is a traditional fermented soybean food from which country?

Indonesia: tempeh originated on the island of Java, where it is a staple protein; the flavour grows earthier as the cake ages.

What kind of organism binds soybeans into a cake of tempeh?

A mould: Rhizopus oligosporus (or R. oryzae) sends white mycelial threads through the cooked soybeans and knits them into a firm cake.

Seitan, the chewy meat substitute, is made from what?

Wheat gluten: seitan is the elastic protein left when wheat dough is rinsed of its starch; its earliest description is in the Qimin Yaoshu, a Chinese agricultural text of 535.

The word 'seitan' was coined in 1961 by George Ohsawa, an advocate of which diet?

Macrobiotic: Japanese writer George Ohsawa, founder of the macrobiotic movement, named the food seitan in 1961; in China it had long been called mianjin.

What is the informal nickname for nutritional yeast?

Nooch: the nickname for nutritional yeast, a deactivated strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae sold as yellow flakes with a nutty, cheesy flavour.

When nutritional yeast contains vitamin B12, where does the vitamin come from?

It is added separately: yeast cannot synthesise B12, so fortified brands blend the vitamin in after the yeast is grown and deactivated.

Isinglass, long used to clarify beer and wine, is made from what part of an animal?

Fish swim bladders: isinglass is dried swim-bladder membrane, mostly from sturgeon or cod, and its use as a fining agent meant many traditional cask ales were not vegan.

The red food colouring carmine (E120) is made from which creature?

Cochineal insects: carmine is extracted from the dried bodies of the scale insect Dactylopius coccus, which feeds on prickly-pear cactus; the dye turns up in yogurts, candy and lipstick.

Which insect secretes the resin sold as food glaze E904 and as a wood finish?

The lac bug: the glaze is shellac, resin secreted by female Kerria lacca insects onto tree branches in South and Southeast Asia; it also makes a classic wood finish.

Gelatin, found in most gummy candy and marshmallows, is derived from what?

Animal collagen: gelatin is made by boiling the skin, bones and connective tissue of livestock and fish; agar and pectin are the usual plant-based swaps.

What is the traditional coagulant used to set Chinese-style tofu?

Calcium sulfate, better known as gypsum, is the traditional Chinese tofu coagulant; Japanese makers classically use nigari, magnesium chloride from seawater.

Chinese legend credits the invention of tofu to which ancient prince?

Liu An, prince of Huainan (179–122 BC), is the legendary inventor; the earliest surviving written mention of tofu is Tao Gu's Qingyilu of about AD 965.

Jackfruit, the vegan stand-in for pulled pork, is the national fruit of which country?

Bangladesh: jackfruit is its national fruit; the largest tree-borne fruit can reach 55 kg, and unripe green jackfruit is sold as a pulled-pork substitute.

Oat-milk brand Oatly was founded in 1994 in which country?

Sweden: brothers Rickard and Björn Öste founded Oatly in 1994 on oat-enzyme research from Lund University; it listed on the Nasdaq as OTLY in 2021.

In 2025, which English city was home to the Vegan Society, the world's oldest vegan group?

Birmingham: the Vegan Society moved its headquarters there in 2007 and, as a registered charity, runs the Vegan Trademark, registered in 1990, on certified products.

JUST Egg, the pourable scrambled-egg substitute, is made from which legume?

Mung beans: JUST Egg is built on mung-bean protein isolate, which gels when heated much like egg white, with turmeric for colour.

Which country was first to approve the sale of cultivated (lab-grown) meat, in December 2020?

Singapore: its Food Agency approved Eat Just's cell-cultured GOOD Meat in December 2020, the first regulatory sign-off anywhere for meat grown from animal cells.

Animal-rights group PETA, founded in 1980, is headquartered in which US city?

Norfolk, Virginia: PETA moved its headquarters there from the Washington area in 1996; its founding slogan holds that animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on or use for entertainment.

The earliest record of soy milk is on a stone slab unearthed in China from which dynasty?

Eastern Han: the slab, dated to AD 25–220, depicts soy milk being made; the West's first soy dairy, Li Yuying's Caséo-Sojaïne, opened at Colombes near Paris in 1910.

Strict Jain vegetarians avoid potatoes, onions and garlic for what reason?

Jain doctrine holds root vegetables contain infinite nigoda organisms, so uprooting one causes far more harm than picking a fruit; honey is banned for the harm to bees.

Ital, the Rastafari plant-based diet, takes its name from which English word?

Vital: Rastafari dropped the first letter to give 'I-tal', echoing the emphasis on 'I' as a marker of unity with the divine; ital food is natural and unprocessed.

The 2011 documentary Forks Over Knives pairs nutrition researcher T. Colin Campbell with which surgeon?

Caldwell Esselstyn, a Cleveland Clinic surgeon, appears alongside Campbell in Lee Fulkerson's film, which argues a whole-food, plant-based diet can prevent or reverse chronic disease.

Which actor executive-produced the 2015 Netflix cut of the documentary Cowspiracy?

Leonardo DiCaprio executive-produced the 2015 Netflix re-cut; the original film was crowdfunded on Indiegogo by 1,449 backers who gave $117,092.

James Wilks, who fronts the 2018 vegan-athlete documentary The Game Changers, competed in which sport?

Mixed martial arts: Wilks won The Ultimate Fighter season 9 and fought in the UFC before fronting the film, whose executive producers include James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan.

Vitamin B12, which vegans are most often told to supplement, is made naturally only by which organisms?

Bacteria and archaea: only these microbes synthesise B12; plants and animals cannot, and livestock get it from gut microbes or fortified feed.

Which metal sits at the centre of the vitamin B12 molecule?

Cobalt: a single cobalt ion sits in the corrin ring of B12, which is why the chemical name is cobalamin; iron plays the same role in haemoglobin.

The man who coined 'vegan' gave up meat at 14 after watching which animal slaughtered on his uncle's farm?

A pig: the future coiner, born in Mexborough, Yorkshire, in 1910, gave up meat at 14 after seeing a pig killed on his uncle's farm; he lived to 95 as a lifelong pacifist.

Which 11th-century Arab poet who wrote 'I No Longer Steal From Nature' is among the earliest known vegans?

Al-Ma'arri (973–1057), the blind Syrian poet, renounced meat, eggs, milk and honey; the Irish 'Linen Cook' Robert Cook (1646–1726) later refused wool and leather too.

The Vegetarian Butcher, the first known vegetarian butcher shop, opened in 2010 in which country?

Netherlands: farmer Jaap Korteweg opened De Vegetarische Slager in The Hague in October 2010, selling plant-based meats from a butcher's-style counter.

What flower appears on the British Vegan Society's certification logo?

A sunflower: the Vegan Society's Vegan Trademark, registered in 1990, shows a stylised sunflower; PETA's bunny mark also certifies vegan, while the Leaping Bunny only signals no animal testing.

A 2018 study found plant-only diets worldwide would cut agricultural land use by how much?

76%: Poore and Nemecek's 2018 Science study found a plant-only world diet would free 3.1 billion hectares, an area the size of Africa, and roughly halve food's greenhouse gas emissions.