"Digger" > wrote in message
...
> >Vegetarian comes from the Latin "vegetus"
> >(vigorous, energetic), which doesn't mean "vegetable".
>
> Then, to regard or announce oneself as a vegetarian,
> all one need do is equivocate on the term and hope
> no one realises they aren't trying to fool others when
> inwardly referring to a definition of vegetarianism

The word "vegetarian" doesn't come from the word "vegetable", although
both words have similar origins in Latin. Just because a food is not a
vegetable, doesn't mean it isn't necessarily vegetarian. Vegetarianism is
the US, and to a certain extent, in Britain, was started mostly as a health
movement, by such people as Kellog and early Seventh Day Adventists. They
believed that meat was polluting to the body, and hence, was not really a
life-giving food. So they chose the name "vegetarian" to reffer to the
life-giving, energy producing properties of their diet. They could have
well called themselves holerians (from Latin holus - herb, vegetable) if
they wanted to emphasize their depedence on greens, but they did not.

Some people before then did not eat meat out of conscience (Pythagoras,
Ovid, Tolstoy, etc.), but they did not call themselves vegetarians. As
years passed, and the influence of Indian/Buddhist vegetarianism and
religious beliefs and the animal welfare and animal rights movement,
vegetarianism became assosciated more with an ethical choice not to eat
animals. But even today many vgetarians find the health or environmental
rationale for their diet the most compelling.

The name "vegan" is truely a synthetic name and was created in England in
1944 by a group of vegetarians who did not eat eggs or dairy products and
wanted to avoid the consumption of (nonhuman) animal products.