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As per my knowledge, a vegan is someone who consumes the plant-based diet. So I assume that milk and honey should not be the part of vegan food. However, in this case, should we call a baby vegan who had taken mother's milk at the time of birth.

I want to understand the motive of being vegan. Is it because the plant-based food is good for our health/brain? or because of some spiritual reason? (Though the plants don't live like us, they also have life.)

*Sorry if I'm rude to ask or argumentative. But I want to clear my doubts.

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    Hi Amit, welcome to the site. I suggest starting out by reading How to ask a good question. Several of your questions have already been answered on this site, so please take some time to search out answers first, then come back and edit this question so that you're only asking one thing.
    – Nic
    Feb 12, 2019 at 6:44
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    To add to Nic's suggestion, the question that you have asked is simply too broad and too basic to be a good fit for this site. There is a lot of resources online to answer this kind of question and you'd be much better off just Googling the answer to this rather than asking here and waiting for people to write answers that will say the same. The questions here should, ideally, be something that a basic Google search won't cover because they are too specialized or not really talked about. The definition of veganism is neither. Feb 12, 2019 at 9:43
  • Welcome, Amit -- as our community has noted, there's a lot being asked here :) and while we are happy to help share information, it also needs to be within the guidelines of the StackExchange format. I will close it for now; you can either ask new questions that are more focused, or trim this one down to just a single question (I'd suggest asking new ones, though). You can also stop by our Veganism & Vegetarianism Chat if you'd like to have more of a discussion!
    – Erica
    Feb 14, 2019 at 11:55
  • @Erica I've tried to make it better this time. Feb 14, 2019 at 17:31

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In the UK and the US, there is a huge variation but I think that the two most common positions are:

Eat milk (and milk products e.g. cheese), eggs, and maybe honey but no other animal products. This is sometimes called lacto-ovo vegetarian or more often just vegetarian. If you see a product or menu item labelled "vegetarian" then it might contain milk or eggs.

Eat no animal products, neither milk nor eggs. This is called vegan.

I see that you are from India where it is very common to eat milk but not eggs. This is not a common position in the UK or US (outside Indian communities) and I don't know any simple name for the position.

This is a problem for many Indians visiting these countries as the label vegetarian is not sufficient to tell that the item is suitable. Vegan items would be suitable but this is unnecessarily strict.

Vegetarians commonly eat honey but vegans don't. I think that opinions vary here.

I have not heard of a vegan objecting to breastfeeding. One important difference between a baby drinking their mother's milk and a person drinking cow's milk is that the mother consented. If we could speak with a cow and she said: "you are welcome to drink my milk", it would be very different. Also, we don't slaughter most baby boys to maximise the number of milk producing girls.

Yes, plants are alive though, as far as we know, not sentient. In fact, it is believed that all known life is related. A carrot is a very, very distant cousin of you and me. You might feel that it immoral to eat them as well but, unfortunately, if you eat no other living thing then you will die. You cannot survive on inorganic items alone.

There is a term "fruitarian" which is even stricter than vegan but it is somewhere between very difficult and impossible to be healthy.

A relatively new position that is becoming common is to eat fish and seafood but not other animals. This is sometimes called pescatarian.

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  • Thanks a lot for the simple explanation. It clears all the doubts and partially the doubt about the aim of being vegan. Feb 13, 2019 at 12:42

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