96 Fun Facts About Vegetarianism

Which of these foods is off the menu on a lacto-vegetarian diet?

Eggs are out and dairy stays, because 'lacto' comes from the Latin for milk. In India, where this is the everyday meaning of vegetarian, eggs are classed as non-vegetarian food.

Which word did Donald Watson's new society choose in 1944 over rivals such as 'dairyban', 'vitan' and 'benevore'?

Vegan won because, as Watson put it, the first three and last two letters of 'vegetarian' marked the beginning and end of vegetarian.

The world's first Vegetarian Society was founded in 1847 in which country?

England: the society formed at Ramsgate is credited with bringing the word 'vegetarian' into general use, and two of the diet's early English champions bore the ironic names Cowherd and Lambe.

Which technology company was named by a co-founder who was on a fruitarian diet and just back from an orchard?

Apple: Steve Jobs said he was on 'one of my fruitarian diets', had just come back from an apple farm, and thought the name sounded 'fun, spirited and not intimidating'.

Which ingredient makes most marshmallows and jelly sweets unsuitable for vegetarians?

Gelatine is collagen from animal skin and bones, and because it also thickens some yoghurts and forms many capsule shells, vegetarians end up checking labels far beyond the sweet aisle.

The red food colouring carmine, which vegetarians avoid, is made by crushing what?

Insects: carmine comes from cochineal bugs that live on cacti, so a yoghurt or sweet coloured with 'natural red 4', also labelled E120, is not vegetarian.

Which diet word did the American Dialect Society vote the most useful word of 2003?

Flexitarian, in the society's words 'a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat', is a label vegetarian groups dispute: the Vegetarian Society's own rule is simply not to eat animals or fish.

A 2025 study of nitrogen isotopes in fossil teeth found which early human ancestor ate an almost wholly plant-based diet?

Australopithecus teeth from the Sterkfontein caves showed no sign of regular meat-eating, so the meat often credited with fuelling bigger brains seems to have joined the menu later.

Which Indian religion made strict vegetarianism mandatory for ascetics and laity alike?

Jainism goes further still: many followers also avoid root vegetables, because pulling one up kills the whole plant and the tiny creatures living around it.

What is the Indian principle of nonviolence towards all living beings called?

Ahimsa is taken so far by some monks that they sweep the ground ahead of them and cover their mouths with cloth, so as not to harm even the smallest creature.

Which Indian pilgrimage town banned the sale of meat, fish and eggs in 1956?

Several other Indian pilgrimage towns have since followed with bans of their own.

Which Indian holy town, known for its annual camel fair, allows no meat or alcohol to be sold?

Pushkar is crowded with temples around a lake sacred to Brahma, the reason its kitchens serve neither meat nor alcohol, even to the crowds who come for the camel fair.

A 2014 Indian government survey found which state had the highest share of vegetarians, at about three in four?

Rajasthan came top, but the surprise was Punjab: a state whose cooking is famed for butter chicken turned out to be about two-thirds vegetarian.

Indian packaged food carries a green mark if vegetarian and what colour if non-vegetarian?

Brown marks non-vegetarian food, and its dot has since been redrawn as a triangle so that colour-blind shoppers can tell it from the green one.

Which giant tropical fruit is shredded as a plant-based stand-in for pulled pork?

Jackfruit, the largest fruit that grows on a tree at up to 50 kg, earns the role because its flesh can mimic the texture of meat, and it is now tinned and sold as a meat alternative.

Which philosopher made the ethical case against eating animals in the 1975 book Animal Liberation?

Peter Singer argued that an animal's capacity to suffer, not its species, is what counts, and he popularised the word 'speciesism' for ignoring it.

In antiquity, abstaining from meat was a hallmark of the way of life named after which Greek philosopher?

Pythagoras lent his name to the diet itself: until the word 'vegetarian' caught on in the 1840s, people who gave up meat were known as Pythagoreans.

In the 17th century the Bishop of Quebec won a Church ruling that which animal counted as fish during Lent?

Beaver passed because it swims, a sign of how little the old meatless days had to do with vegetarianism, which had all but vanished from Europe once Rome turned Christian.

Which Renaissance painter is counted among the first to back the meat-free diet's revival in Europe?

Leonardo da Vinci, his biographer Vasari wrote, would pay bird-sellers their asking price simply to open the cages and let the birds fly away.

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

Percy Bysshe Shelley first wrote it as a note to his poem Queen Mab, arguing that meat was unnatural food for humans and the root of both disease and vice.

Which Russian novelist was one of the most prominent advocates of vegetarianism in his country?

Leo Tolstoy held that a moral life had to begin with giving up meat, and said so in an essay he called The First Step, written to introduce a history of vegetarian thought.

Which Irish playwright gave up meat in 1881 and lived to the age of 94?

George Bernard Shaw became the cause's showpiece: vegetarian papers held him up as living proof that brain work needs no meat, and the Vegetarian Society was still saluting him on his 90th birthday.

Which future independence leader sat on a vegetarian society's committee while a young law student?

Mahatma Gandhi had sworn to his mother that he would not touch meat abroad and went hungry keeping the vow, until Henry Salt's writing turned a promise into a conviction.

Nueva Germania, a vegetarian colony in 1880s Paraguay, was co-founded by which philosopher's sister?

Friedrich Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth and her husband Bernhard Förster planned a meat-free settlement for 'pure' Germans, but the venture was near bankruptcy by the decade's end.

Which American Founding Father took up a 'vegetable diet' at 16 and spent the money he saved on books?

Benjamin Franklin lapsed on a sea voyage when frying cod smelt too good: seeing small fish inside the catch, he decided that if fish ate one another, he might as well eat them.

Which Indian emperor announced that the animals killed daily for his kitchen had been cut to two peacocks and a deer?

Ashoka had the pledge carved in stone for his subjects to read, admitting that hundreds of thousands of animals were once killed there for curry and promising that even these three would be spared.

What is the free communal kitchen of a Sikh gurdwara, which serves only vegetarian food to all comers, called?

Langar stays meat-free even though Sikhs are not required to be vegetarian, which lets visitors of every faith and background sit down together to the same simple meal.

Bronson Alcott, founder of the short-lived meat-free commune Fruitlands, was the father of which novel's author?

Little Women's author, Louisa May Alcott, lived through it as a child: the commune shunned animal food and even animal labour, lasted seven months, and became her sketch Transcendental Wild Oats.

In the Bible, which exile at Nebuchadnezzar's court asked to be tested for ten days on only vegetables and water?

Daniel and his three friends ended the ten days looking healthier than the youths fed from the king's table, and the passage now gives its name to a fast kept by some churches.

The meat substitute Quorn is made from what kind of organism?

A microfungus named Fusarium venenatum, found living in soil, is grown by the same fermentation that gives us beer and bread; most Quorn is then bound with egg white, so it suits vegetarians but not those who avoid every animal product.

Quorn was launched in 1985 by a joint venture between Rank Hovis McDougall and which chemicals giant?

ICI had the know-how: it had built one of the world's largest fermenters to grow Pruteen, a single-cell protein for animal feed, and when that failed to pay, the expertise went into making food for people.

Protose, an early meat substitute made from peanuts, was created at a Michigan sanitarium by which cereal pioneer?

John Harvey Kellogg ran his sanitarium without meat, so he invented dishes to fill the gap on the plate: Protose became his most popular product, and an early peanut butter came out of the same kitchen.

Which Christian denomination has long urged its members towards a vegetarian diet?

Seventh-day Adventists made Loma Linda, California, one of the world's 'Blue Zones': members there live up to a decade longer than other Americans, an edge credited largely to diet and exercise.

Tofu, or bean curd, originated in which country?

China gave the world tofu, but the word reached us by way of Japan: 'tofu' is the Japanese form of the Chinese doufu, a food thought to have crossed the sea with Buddhist monks.

Tempeh, a cake of fermented soybeans, comes from which country?

Indonesia's island of Java is tempeh's home, where a white mould grown through the cooked beans knits them into a cake firm enough to slice.

Seitan, a meat substitute known in Japan as fu, is made from what?

Wheat gluten is what remains when a flour dough is rinsed until the starch washes away, a trick that has fed meat-shunning Buddhist diners in East Asia for centuries.

Which photographer and musician put her own name on a range of vegetarian sausages and burgers in 1991?

Linda McCartney's meat-free range became big enough business to be bought by food giants including McVitie's and Heinz, and it long outlived its founder, who died in 1998.

Which future US president ran the wartime Food Administration that asked Americans to keep weekly meatless days in 1917-18?

Herbert Hoover cut the nation's eating by persuasion instead of rationing, and so visibly that 'to Hooverize' became a household word for economising on food.

The word 'pescetarian' is thought to blend 'vegetarian' with the word for fish in which language?

Italian 'pesce' is the likely root, dictionaries say, yet the spelling that shows it is losing ground: 'pescatarian', with an a, is now the commoner form and the one they list first.

People who eat no animal foods at all risk a deficiency of which vitamin in particular?

B12 is made by bacteria, not by plants, so a diet with no animal foods at all has to supply it through fortified foods or a supplement.

Buddhist monks across East Asia follow a vegetarian diet that also rules out which vegetable?

Onions sit with garlic, leeks and shallots among the 'five pungent vegetables' the monks avoid, not to spare a life but because strong flavours are held to excite the senses.

Which fish makes traditional Worcestershire sauce unsuitable for vegetarians?

Anchovies are fermented into the sauce and aged in barrels, so a vegetarian has to look out for it in a Bloody Mary or a Caesar salad as well as in the bottle.

Which famous monster of fiction claims to live on acorns and berries and vows not to 'destroy the lamb and the kid'?

Frankenstein's creature makes the vow while begging his maker for a mate, promising to vanish with her into the wilds of South America, where his food 'is not that of man'.

True Parmesan can never be vegetarian, because its recipe requires which ingredient taken from calves' stomachs?

Rennet's enzymes curdle the milk, and the rules for Parmigiano Reggiano insist on the calf kind, so vegetarian look-alikes have to be sold under another name.

Isinglass, which stops some beers and wines being vegetarian, is made from which part of a fish?

Swim bladder collagen, dried and traditionally taken from sturgeon, is added as a 'fining' that helps clear the drink, which is why a pint or a glass of wine can fail the vegetarian test.

Which animal fat makes a traditional British Christmas pudding unsuitable for vegetarians?

Suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys of cattle and sheep, and the pudding is easily rescued: a vegetable version made from refined oil now stands in for it.

Which fast-food chain paid $10 million in 2002 after vegetarians found beef flavouring in its fries?

McDonald's had said in 1990 that its fries would be cooked in pure vegetable oil, but beef flavouring was being added at the factory. The payout went to vegetarian and religious groups.

Which Irish stout became vegetarian-friendly after its brewer stopped filtering with isinglass?

Guinness dropped isinglass, a fining agent used to settle particles in the vat, when owner Diageo introduced a new filtration process in 2017. Minute traces could carry over into the beer.

Which member of the Simpson family gave up meat for good after bonding with a lamb at a petting zoo?

Lisa turned vegetarian in a 1995 episode, and the writers promised she would stay that way. It became one of the few permanent character changes the cartoon has ever made.

Which novel series calls the Cullen vampires 'vegetarians' because they drink only animal blood?

The Twilight Saga gives the label to the family of Edward Cullen, whose patriarch Carlisle started the practice of a no-human diet. Bella Swan learns the secret in the first book.

In which animated film does a great white shark named Bruce join a support group to give up fish?

Finding Nemo borrowed the name Bruce from the mechanical shark used to film Jaws, which that crew had nicknamed after a lawyer. His pledge holds until he smells blood.

Which Korean staple often isn't vegetarian because it is seasoned with jeotgal, a salted seafood?

Kimchi usually gets its savoury depth from jeotgal, yet it first became widespread under the Silla dynasty, when Buddhism was fostering a vegetarian way of life in Korea.

Sid Lerner's campaign with Johns Hopkins health experts asks people to skip meat on which day?

Monday is the day picked by Lerner's Meatless Monday initiative, which works with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The university's own hospital cafeteria joined in 2010.

Tofurky, a meat-free roast launched in Oregon in 1995, was made as a centrepiece for which holiday?

Thanksgiving was the target: Tofurky's flavourings were meant to make it comparable to the traditional turkey dinner. By 2017 the company was approaching five million holiday roasts sold.

In 2016 vegetarians protested that Britain's new plastic £5 note contained traces of which fat?

Tallow turned up in trace amounts in the polymer notes, and one vegetarian café in Cambridge refused to take them. In 2017 the central bank said future notes would keep using it.

Which American children's TV host became a co-owner of Vegetarian Times magazine in the mid-1980s?

Fred Rogers put his meat-free diet down to both ethics and health. The Mister Rogers' Neighborhood host bought into the magazine after it had profiled him in 1983.

Confectioner's glaze, the coating that makes many sweets shine, is made from a resin secreted by which creature?

Lac bug females secrete the resin, better known as shellac, onto trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is dried, broken into flakes and sold to food makers.

Cane sugar troubles some vegetarians because refineries long whitened it with which animal product?

Bone char is a porous black material made by charring cattle and pig bones, and it strips the colour from raw cane syrup. Only a small number of companies remain dependent on it.

The baking aid L-cysteine is mostly made by breaking down hog hair or which poultry by-product?

Feathers and hog hair are broken down industrially to release the amino acid, so strict vegetarians check bread labels for it.

Refried beans often aren't vegetarian because the mashed beans are traditionally fried in which fat?

Lard is the fat most often used for the dish in its homeland, where it has a large effect on the flavour. Versions fried in vegetable oil exist, so it pays to ask.

Miso soup often isn't vegetarian because its stock uses katsuobushi, shavings of which dried fish?

Skipjack tuna is simmered, smoked and fermented, then shaved into the flakes that flavour dashi stock. A dashi made from kelp or shiitake gives a vegetarian soup instead.

Vitamin D3 for supplements is typically made from lanolin, a wax secreted by which farm animal?

Sheep produce lanolin in the glands of their skin, and it is washed out of the wool after shearing. A compound extracted from it turns into vitamin D3 under ultraviolet light.

Most Thai curry pastes aren't vegetarian because they contain kapi, a fermented paste of what?

Shrimp are salted and fermented to make kapi, an essential ingredient in all traditional Thai curry pastes. A French diplomat described the paste at the royal court of Siam in 1687.

Which fresh cheese, a staple of vegetarian curries, is set with lemon juice and never melts?

Paneer is made by curdling hot milk with a food acid such as lemon juice, vinegar or yogurt. One theory credits Portuguese cooks with bringing the technique to Bengal in the 17th century.

Agar, a gelling agent that lets vegetarians make jellies, is obtained from the cell walls of what?

Red algae release agar when boiled, and the word comes from agar-agar, their Malay name. The jelly also thickens soups and ice cream and works as a clarifying agent in brewing.

Aquafaba, a liquid that whips into foam for meringues, is usually drained from cans of which legume?

Chickpeas are the usual source of aquafaba, a name coined from the Latin words for water and bean. French musician Joël Roessel found in 2014 that liquid from canned beans could form a foam.

Which yellow seasoning nicknamed 'nooch' gives dairy-free dishes a nutty, cheesy flavour?

Nutritional yeast is a deactivated yeast sold as flakes, granules or powder, and its strong flavour makes it a common cheese substitute. Some cinemas even offer it as a popcorn seasoning.

Which California company adds heme, the molecule that makes blood red, to its plant-based beef?

Impossible Foods makes its heme from leghemoglobin, a molecule found naturally in the roots of soy plants. The result is identical to the heme found in meat.

The Beyond Burger gets its red colour and its ability to 'bleed' from the juice of which vegetable?

Beet juice colours the patty, whose main ingredient is pea protein. Its maker, Beyond Meat, raised $240 million when it listed on the Nasdaq in May 2019.

In Egypt, where falafel most likely originated, the fritters are usually made from which legume?

Fava beans are the usual base in Egypt, where the fritters go by the name ta'amiya. Cooks in the Levant typically reach for a different pulse.

Kappa maki, a sushi roll named after a mythical Japanese water imp, is filled with which vegetable?

Cucumber is the filling because the kappa of legend is fond of it. The plain rolls are traditionally eaten to clear the palate between other kinds of sushi.

Glamorgan sausages, a meat-free mix of cheese, leeks and breadcrumbs, come from which Celtic nation?

Wales gave the sausage its name, and the cheese is usually Caerphilly. The meat-free recipe became popular during the Second World War, when meat was harder to come by.

Which American snack is named after a 19th-century minister who preached a meat-free diet?

The Graham cracker was created for followers of Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister and temperance campaigner. His Grahamites formed one of the first vegetarian movements in America.

Which Thai island's nine-day Vegetarian Festival is famed for firewalking and pierced cheeks?

Phuket stages the largest of the festivals, with mediums piercing their cheeks while in a trance. Shops fly red and yellow flags to show their food meets the rules.

Meat-free platters on injera are the fasting-day food of Orthodox Christians in which country?

Ethiopia has an Orthodox church that prescribes fasts on all Wednesdays and Fridays and through the whole of Lent. Animal products are off the table on those days, so cooks built a rich plant-based cuisine.

Buddha's delight, a vegetarian braise, is traditionally served on the first day of which festival?

Lunar New Year opens with the dish in many households, following an old Buddhist practice of keeping a vegetarian diet for the first five days of the year as a form of self-purification.

Which Greek author of Parallel Lives argued against meat in his essay On the Eating of Flesh?

Plutarch was a vegetarian himself, though how long and how strictly he kept to the diet is unclear. Centuries later Rousseau quoted him in support of his own case against eating meat.

Which Japanese emperor lifted a centuries-old taboo on eating meat in 1872 in a push to westernise?

Meiji lifted the taboo as his government adopted Western customs. Curbs on eating animals went back to 675, when an earlier emperor banned horse, dog, monkey and chicken meat.

Which future West German chancellor invented a soy-based sausage to help feed Cologne in the First World War?

Konrad Adenauer oversaw Cologne's food supply through the wartime shortages, and his Cologne sausage was granted a British patent in 1918. He went on to lead West Germany from 1949.

Hiltl, the world's oldest continuously open vegetarian restaurant, is in which Swiss city?

Zurich is home to the restaurant, which dates from the 1890s and takes its name from Ambrosius Hiltl, a German tailor who arrived in the city in 1898.

Which Belgian city promotes a meat-free 'Donderdag Veggiedag' each Thursday in schools and canteens?

Ghent serves vegetarian food on Thursdays in city-funded schools and in canteens for civil servants, and hands out 'veggie street maps'. It has a very high number of vegetarian restaurants per capita.

Gregory Sams launched a patty mix he called the 'VegeBurger' in 1982 in which European capital?

London may be where the veggie burger got its name: Sams and his brother had run a natural food restaurant in Paddington since the 1960s. One hypermarket sold 2,000 packets in three weeks.

Which pre-Lent festival's name comes from old words meaning 'to remove meat'?

Carnival goes back to a Latin word for flesh joined to a verb meaning to lighten or remove, marking the last feast before the fast. A folk etymology reads it as a farewell to flesh instead.

The first lab-grown burger, eaten at a press event in 2013, was funded by which tech billionaire?

Sergey Brin was revealed in 2013 as the anonymous investor behind the project at Maastricht University. The Google co-founder had stepped in after government subsidies for the research were cut.

The Vegetarian Butcher, a brand started by a ninth-generation farmer, comes from which country?

The Netherlands is where farmer Jaap Korteweg co-founded the meat-substitute company in The Hague in 2010, on World Animal Day. Unilever bought it at the end of 2018.

Which Friends character is a committed vegetarian?

Phoebe Buffay, a masseuse and part-time folk musician, is also the group's avid tree hugger. She plays acoustic guitar and has even been seen busking in the subway.

Which band topped the UK chart in 1985 with the album Meat Is Murder?

The Smiths scored their only number-one studio album with Meat Is Murder, which stayed on the chart for 13 weeks. Its songs took on vegetarianism, corporal punishment and social alienation.

Which South Korean author of the novel The Vegetarian won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2024?

Han Kang published the novel in 2007, and in 2016 it became the first book to win the new edition of the Man Booker International Prize.

Which 1971 bestseller by Frances Moore Lappé blamed meat production for worsening world hunger?

Diet for a Small Planet has sold over three million copies and argued that hunger is caused by ineffective food policy, not a lack of food. Much of it teaches readers how to combine plant proteins.

Which US novelist weighed whether his newborn son should eat meat in the 2009 book Eating Animals?

Jonathan Safran Foer made Eating Animals his third book, after two novels. It became a 2018 documentary that he narrated alongside Natalie Portman.

Which Prague-born author of The Metamorphosis was a vegetarian who also drank no alcohol?

Franz Kafka became a vegetarian around 1911, the same period in which he became a partner in the first asbestos factory in Prague.

Moosewood Restaurant, famed for its vegetarian cookbooks, opened in 1973 in which New York town?

Ithaca is where Moosewood's founders sold the restaurant to its staff in 1978, creating the Moosewood Collective. Their first cookbook was a self-published, spiral-bound booklet from 1974.

Which cartoon vampire is a vegetarian because ketchup replaced blood in his resurrection ritual?

Count Duckula owes his diet to Nanny, who accidentally swapped tomato ketchup for blood in the once-a-century ceremony. The British cartoon began in 1988 as a spin-off from Danger Mouse.

In Star Trek, which alien species is vegetarian by choice?

Vulcans were omnivores in ages past but gave up meat by choice. Spock does eat it in one original-series episode, after time travel carries him 5,000 years into the past.

Livestock's Long Shadow, a 2006 report on the environmental cost of meat, came from which UN agency?

The FAO, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, estimated that livestock caused 18% of human-made greenhouse gas emissions. It revised the figure to 14.5% in a 2013 study.

Which radio host, the voice of Scooby-Doo's Shaggy, had the character made a vegetarian?

Casey Kasem convinced the producers in 2002 that Shaggy should give up meat, as he had himself. He had voiced the character since 1969, though he had first hoped for a different role in the gang.