Vegan diets are entirely plant-based, with no meat or other products from animals, such as eggs or cheese. Some people claim that this diet is more energy efficient than diets that include meat and animal products. Do you agree with this claim? Furthermore, explain your answer
Answers
Explanation:
The term “vegan” was created in 1944 by Donald Watson — an English animal rights advocate and founder of The Vegan Society — to describe a person who avoids using animals for ethical reasons. Veganism refers to the practice of being vegan (1Trusted Source).
Veganism expanded to include a diet that excluded animal-derived foods, such as eggs, meat, fish, poultry, cheese, and other dairy products. Instead, a vegan diet includes plant foods like fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, and legumes.
Over time, veganism grew into a movement based not only on ethics and animal welfare but also environmental and health concerns, which have been validated by research (2Trusted Source, 3Trusted Source).
People have become more aware of the negative effects of modern animal agriculture on the planet, as well as the potential negative health effects of eating a diet high in processed meat and choosing saturated over unsaturated fats (4Trusted Source, 5Trusted Source, 6Trusted Source).
In the 1980s, Dr. T. Colin Campbell introduced the world of nutrition science to the term “plant-based diet” to define a low fat, high fiber, vegetable-based diet that focused on health and not ethics.
Today, surveys indicate that approximately 2% of Americans consider themselves vegan, the majority of whom fall into the Millennial generation (7Trusted Source).
What’s more, many people don’t label themselves as being plant-based or vegan but are interested in reducing their animal consumption and trying foods that are popular on a plant-based or vegan diet.