Varieties Of Vegetarianism

Vegetarianism is the practice of following a plant-based diet including fruits, vegetables, cereal grains, nuts, and seeds, mushrooms, with or without dairy products and eggs. A vegetarian does not eat meat, including red meat, game, poultry, fish, crustacea, and shellfish, and may also abstain from by-products of animal slaughter such as animal-derived rennet, found in some cheeses, and gelatin. Vegetarians may consume these or other unfamiliar animal ingredients unknowingly, however.

Vegetarianism may be adopted for ethical, health, environmental, religious, political, cultural, aesthetic, economic, or other reasons, and there are a number of vegetarian diets. A lacto-vegetarian diet includes dairy products but not eggs, an ovo-vegetarian diet includes eggs but not dairy products, and an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet includes both eggs and dairy products. A vegan diet excludes all animal products, such as dairy products, eggs, and usually honey.

Semi-vegetarian diets consist largely of vegetarian foods, but may include fish or poultry, or other meats on an infrequent basis. Those with diets containing fish or poultry may define "meat" only as mammalian flesh and may identify with vegetarianism. A pescetarian diet, for example, includes "fish but no meat". The common use association between such diets and vegetarianism has led vegetarian groups such as the Vegetarian Society to state diets containing these ingredients are not vegetarian, because fish and birds are animals.

Varieties of vegetarianism

There are a number of types of vegetarianism, which exclude or include various foods.
Ovo-lacto vegetarianism includes animal products such as eggs, milk, and honey.
Lacto vegetarianism includes milk but not eggs.
Ovo vegetarianism includes eggs but not milk.
Veganism excludes all animal flesh and animal products, including milk, honey, eggs.
Raw veganism includes only fresh and uncooked fruit, nuts, seeds, and vegetables.
Fruitarianism permits only fruit, nuts, seeds, and other plant matter that can be gathered without harming the plant.
Su vegetarianism (such as in Buddhism), excludes all animal products as well as vegetables in the allium family (which have the characteristic aroma of onion and garlic): onion, garlic, scallions, leeks, or shallots.
Macrobiotic diets consist mostly of whole grains and beans.
Strict vegetarians also avoid products that may use animal ingredients not included in their labels or which use animal products in their manufacturing e.g. cheeses that use animal rennet (enzymes from animal stomach lining), gelatin (from animal skin, bones, and connective tissue), some sugars that are whitened with bone char (e.g. cane sugar, but not beet sugar) and alcohol clarified with gelatin or crushed shellfish and sturgeon.
Individuals may describe themselves as "vegetarian" while practicing a semi-vegetarian diet. In other cases, they may simply describe themselves as "flexitarians". These diets may be followed by those who reduce animal flesh consumed as a way of transitioning to a vegetarian diet or for health, environmental, or other reasons. The term "semi-vegetarian" is contested by most vegetarian groups, which state that vegetarians must exclude all animal flesh. Semi-vegetarian diets include pescetarianism, which includes fish and sometimes other seafood; pollotarianism, which includes poultry; and macrobiotic diets consisting mostly of whole grains and beans, but at times may include fish.

Source : Wikipedia