Vegan Schmegan!

You know, I never would have thought I'd been vegetarian (let alone vegan) long enough to say I'd heard a lot of funny reactions to my dietary and lifestyle choices, but I've heard more than I would think I should in such a short amount of time.  I'm already sick to death of being asked how I get my protein!  But I realize most people are trying to be respectful and are geniunely curious, so I answer them respectfully as well.  A lot of people don't know exactly what vegan is, though, so I'll cover here the range of vegetarian eating, for those who wonder exactly what vegan means. All of the eaters I describe below are considered "vegetarian":

1. A lacto-vegetarian is one who excludes meat from her diet but includes dairy (such as milk and cheese).
2. An ovo-vegetarian is one who excludes meat from her diet but includes eggs.
3. An ovo-lacto-vegetarian is one who excludes meat from his diet but includes eggs and dairy products.
4. A pesco-vegetarian is a vegetarian who eats fish (just like a pollo-vegetarian eats chicken) .  I never quite understood this one, but there it is anyway.  There are also other weird variations on this theme, but I gotta tell ya...my opinion is that a vegetarian eats no meat, be it fish, fowl, or other!  If a person is lactose intolerant and excludes milk products from his diet, he doesn't all of a sudden become a bovine-pollo-pesco-ovo-vegetarian.  Where do we draw the line?  There's a new term for these people which I find less objectionable, and that is semi-vegetarian.  That term, to me, implies a person who is vegetarian some of the time, and I think that's okay.  I don't want to judge someone else's eating choices, but I don't think they should call themselves vegetarian when they really aren't.  There. I've said it.  Yes, I think I feel better.
5. A vegan is a person who excludes all animal products from her diet.  This includes not only all animal flesh but also foods harvested from animals (by this, I mean cheese, eggs, and the like).  This even includes products like honey.  Even though the formal definition of vegan refers simply to the act and not the spirit, many vegans take the vegan act past the diet.  In other words, lots of vegans (yes, that includes myself) choose to use products that are vegan (make-up and cleaning supplies, for example) and avoid wearing anything made from animals (for example, things made with leather, wool, or angora).

I started out by simply excluding meat from my diet.  I was convinced that I would never want to give up cheese.  But my journey has brought me there.  After a while, it was also easy to exclude eggs.  And now I have shunned all dairy.  I realize that not everyone wants to be this "extreme," but I've done it for multiple reasons: my health, the environment, and my conscience.  And I really do feel better all the way around for it.