[10][11][12] The earliest occurrences of the term seem to be related to Alcott House—a school on the north side of Ham Common, London—which was opened in July 1838 by James Pierrepont Greaves.

[17][18][19] In Indian culture, vegetarianism has been closely connected with the attitude of nonviolence towards animals (called ahimsa in India) for millennia and was promoted by religious groups and philosophers.

[20] The Ācārāṅga Sūtra from 5th century BCE advocates Jain-vegetarianism; and forbids the monks from walking on grass in order to avoid inflicting pain on them and prevent small insects dwelling inside from getting killed.

[21] The ancient Indian work of the Tirukkuṟaḷ, dated before the 5th century CE, explicitly and unambiguously emphasizes shunning meat and non-killing as a common man's virtues.

[32] Vegetarianism was also practiced about six centuries later in another instance (30 BCE–50 CE) in the northern Thracian region by the Moesi tribe (who inhabited present-day Serbia and Bulgaria), feeding themselves on honey, milk, and cheese.

There are a number of vegetarian diets that exclude or include various foods: Within the "ovo-" groups, there are many who refuse to consume fertilized eggs (with balut being an extreme example); however, such distinction is typically not specifically addressed.

[72] High levels of dietary fiber, folic acid, vitamins C and E, and magnesium, and low consumption of saturated fat are all considered to be beneficial aspects of a vegetarian diet.

[77] According to the Vegetarian Resource Group, consuming food that contains vitamin C, such as citrus fruit or juices, tomatoes, or broccoli, is a good way to increase the amount of iron absorbed at a meal.

[102] By visual assessment or using a chromometer, no significant discoloration of irradiated mushrooms, as measured by the degree of "whiteness", was observed[103] making it hard to discover if they have been treated without labeling.

[112] Opponents of ethical vegetarianism argue that animals are not moral equals to humans and so consider the comparison of eating livestock with killing people to be fallacious.

[121] While there are no dietary restrictions in the Baháʼí Faith, `Abdu'l-Bahá, the son of the religion's founder, noted that a vegetarian diet consisting of fruits and grains was desirable, except for people with a weak constitution or those that are sick.

The research, as cited by the cover story of the November 2005 issue of National Geographic, asserts that Adventists live longer because they do not smoke or drink alcohol, have a day of rest every week, and maintain a healthy, low-fat vegetarian diet that is rich in nuts and beans.

The reasons stated by Jains and Vaishnavas are: the principle of nonviolence (ahimsa) applied to animals;[161] the intention to offer only "pure" (vegetarian) food to a deity and then to receive it back as prasada; and the conviction that a sattvic diet is beneficial for a healthy body.

Thus, beef is a taboo for the majority of Hindus, Jains and Sikhs[163] Some followers of Islam, or Muslims, chose to be vegetarian for health, ethical, or personal reasons.

[174] Rabbis may advocate vegetarianism or veganism primarily because of concerns about animal welfare, especially in light of the traditional prohibition on causing unnecessary "pain to living creatures" (tza'ar ba'alei hayyim).

The most orthodox eat only "Ital" or natural foods, in which the matching of herbs or spices with vegetables is the result of long tradition originating from the African ancestry and cultural heritage of Rastafari.

[198] Rearing a relatively small number of grazing animals can be beneficial, as the Food Climate Research Network at Surrey University reports: "A little bit of livestock production is probably a good thing for the environment".

As populations grow, lowering meat consumption worldwide will allow more efficient use of declining per capita land and water resources, while at the same time making grain more affordable to the world's chronically hungry.

[210] Prejudice researcher Gordon Hodson argues that vegetarians and vegans frequently face discrimination where eating meat is held as a cultural norm.

[213][214][better source needed] A 2019 analysis found that adhering to any kind of restricted diet (gluten-free, vegetarian, kosher, teetotal) was associated with feelings of loneliness and increased social isolation.

Some scholars have argued that mass media serves as a "source of information for individuals" interested in vegetarianism or veganism,[221] while there are "increasing social sanctions against eating meat".

Writer and animal rights advocate Carol J. Adams argued in her seminal book, The Sexual Politics of Meat that the unnamed creature in the novel was a vegetarian.

She also said that it connected with Vegetarianism in the Romantic Era who believed that the Garden of Eden was meatless, rewrote the myth of Prometheus, the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and feminist symbolism.

Apart from Adams, scholar Suzanne Samples pointed to "gendered spaces of eating and consumption" within Victorian England which influenced literary characters of the time.

Samples also argued that vegetarianism in the Victorian era "presented a unique lifestyle choice that avoided meat but promoted an awareness of health", which initially was seen as rebellious but later became more normalized.

[235] In Irene Clyde's 1909 feminist utopian novel, Beatrice the Sixteenth, Mary Hatherley accidentally travels through time, discovering a lost world, which is a postgender society named Armeria, with the inhabitants following a strict vegetarian diet, having ceased to slaughter animals for over a thousand years.

He also stated that the novel "historicizes and theorizes animal life and death," and that it demonstrates the ways that symbolism and materiality of meat are "co-opted within patriarchal political structures," putting it in the same space as theorists like Carol J. Adams, Donna J. Haraway, Laura Wright, and Cary Wolfe, and writers such as J. M.

"[239] In 2014, The New Yorker published a short story by Jonathan Lethem titled "Pending Vegan"[240] which follows "one family, a husband and wife and their four-year-old twin daughters" on a trip to SeaWorld in San Diego, California.

[254][255] In an August 2020 interview, McCartney said that he and is wife were worried that Lisa "would be a vegetarian for a week, then Homer would persuade her to eat a hot dog," but were assured by the producers that she would remain that way, and he was delighted that they "kept their word.

[269] She says she believes that "fruits and vegetables have feeling", meaning she opposes cooking them, only eating things that have "actually fallen off a tree or bush" and that are dead already, leading to what some describe as a negative depiction.