Vegan or vegetarian – what would you prefer?

STORY BY SATYARTH MISHRA

Vegan or vegetarian: what’s the difference?

Sumeet Kapila, a 29-year-old animation student at Sheridan explained what the distinction means to him.

“I am vegetarian not a vegan because I consume milk and dairy products,” he said.

Kapila abstains from meat and animal by-products for religious reasons.

“Hindus are supposed to be vegetarians essentially. I was raised in a Hindu family so I never ate meat and eggs,” said Kapila.

Kapila explains the reason behind being a vegetarian.

“Hindu culture has always opposed the idea of killing animals for food,” said Kapila. “I would definitely consider being a vegan or vegetarian because it’s less of load on digestive system and lesser toxins in your body.”

Eshwar Prasad, 23, a visual and creative arts students at Sheridan, shared his experience of turning into vegan.

“I stopped eating meat five years back. It was hard, but after six months, I never felt like eating meat again. I haven’t touched it till now,” said Prasad. “Honestly, I miss the taste, but that doesn’t bother me. I feel much better now”

Prasad wanted to experiment with his diet at first, but soon realized that he feels healthier since making the switch.

“I just wanted to see, if I could survive without meat, but then it turned out to be much better.” he said.

Prasad found many tasty options to replace meat and eggs from his diet.

“I make vegetable curry with cauliflower, cabbage and chickpeas,” said Prasad.

“I tried raw banana because I thought it serves as a close replacement to meat, then I started making curry with banana, garlic, ginger and some spices.”

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Prasad later realized that despite the rising cost of meat, being a vegan was more expensive.

“Most vegetarian and vegan items are expensive and they won’t fill your stomach like the non-veg counterparts. You also need to spend more in terms of money, time and effort to stay as a vegan,” said Prasad.

“For example, if I go out to eat, I get two chicken sandwiches for $5, but one veg burger costs me around $4.”

Sarah Chojnacki, a Mississauga resident decided to be a vegan almost two and half years ago with her fiancé and hasn’t looked back.

“We were vegetarian for couple of months then we just started reading more about nutrition and animal agriculture and then we wanted go vegan, said Chojnacki. “

Chojnacki discovered all sort of vegan options later while looking into different culture menus.

“At the beginning it was little difficult. Then the moment we realized that lot of different vegetarian options are provided,” she said. “So we just started looking into different cultures and started seeing what kind of food they have.”

Vegan diet also helped Chojnacki and her fiancé to drop some pounds.

“We lost a lot of weight, but we look good and very slim,” said Chojnacki. “My fiancé is reading about vegan body building now-a-days, so we are always trying to work on our health.”

Chojnacki adopted a gamut of foods to fulfill the requirement of vitamins, proteins and other nutrition contains in non-vegetarian diet.

 

“I get most proteins from beans, spinach and broccoli a lot of green vegetables actually do carry protein,” she said.

“I think the problem is, our society is so obsessed with protein, vitamins and calcium. Any time you watch a commercial right now that has something to with food, it always keep saying about protein and calcium, and people think they need to get calcium from milk and protein from animal product,” she said.

According to vegancafe.ca an estimated 872,000 Canadians are vegan.