The History Behind Veganism

A common misconception is that veganism and vegetarianism are modern inventions, but in fact, meat-free diets have existed worldwide for thousands of years. For example, the gluten-based meat substitute seitan originated in Buddhist China around 400 CE. The soy product tofu, now found in almost every grocery store, can also be traced back to prehistoric China nearly 2,000 years ago. In this article, "vegetarianism" is used as an umbrella term for all meat-free diets. When the text specifically discusses veganism or similar diets, it is explicitly stated.

Hunter-Gatherer Societies

When imagining our ancestors, early humans, many mistakenly picture cavemen with large meat clubs in their hands. These cavemen, scientifically known as Neanderthals or Paleolithic humans, lived in small hunter-gatherer groups hundreds of thousands of years ago and subsisted largely on plant-based foods. In these groups, men and women had different roles: men were hunters risking their lives to catch meat for the tribe, while women gathered plants and other food. Despite men’s efforts, hunts often failed. It was rather the women’s gathering of plants that made up the largest part of the diet. This division also contributed to the idea that meat symbolizes masculinity, while plant-based diets are associated with femininity. The tribes mainly lived on berries, nuts, herbs, roots, fruits, vegetables, fish, shellfish, and meat when hunts were successful. The structure of hunter-gatherer society changed during the Neolithic Revolution 5,000–9,000 years ago when agricultural societies developed (Gålmark 2005: 20). Humans began domesticating animals, both as labor and as a food source.

Although hunter-gatherers were not perfect vegetarians, their lifestyle shows that humans have eaten plant-based foods for a very long time. Today, eating meat is taken for granted by many, but since meat was scarce before the welfare society era, questions about ethical vegetarianism or veganism may have seemed a luxury from a Western perspective. However, this perspective is limited: in many cultures, including among indigenous peoples, there has been deep respect for animals and a worldview where animals are seen as kin to humans. Such cosmologies have given rise to limited or no animal exploitation, not because of abundance or time, but due to ethics, spirituality, and a different understanding of humanity’s place in the world.

The Philosophers

The oldest written sources on vegetarianism in Europe come from followers of Orphicism in the 5th century BCE. This mystical Greek religion forbade both animal sacrifice and all consumption of animal food (Leitzmann 2014). The father of ethical vegetarianism, the philosopher Pythagoras, simultaneously developed his ideas about reincarnation (Leitzmann 2014). He and his followers believed that the soul could be reborn in various living beings, including animals, and thus consuming animals was equivalent to eating a soul that had once been human or another creature. Besides his famous theorem on right triangles, he also founded a community of people who abstained from eating meat. The motives for a vegetarian diet have changed very little over the last 2,500 years. Ancient Greeks advocating vegetarianism argued that animals are thinking beings related to humans, and humans therefore have a moral responsibility towards animals, making killing them an unjust act. The Pythagorean meat prohibition saw a revival in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE when pagan philosophers sought soul purification for life after death. Interest remained at least until the early 19th century, when European vegetarians were still called "Pythagoreans" (Shapin 2007). However, Pythagoras was far from alone in these ideologies. Porphyry wrote an extensive work on vegetarianism, On Abstinence from Eating Animals. Ancient Greek philosophers like Epicurus and Plutarch, as well as Roman Seneca, also advocated a meat-free lifestyle.

Religion and the Significance of Ahimsā

The intellectual history of vegetarianism can be traced via Pythagoras to India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt (Stuart 1995). In older texts, vegetarian ideas are mainly associated with religious practice or purification rituals. Many belief systems have taboos against certain types of food, leading many religious and spiritual leaders to be vegetarians or vegans.

Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, and movements such as Hare Krishna and Rastafari’s Ital diet (which emphasizes eating raw, plant-based food) advocate wholly or partially vegetarian diets (Wright 2015). In Hinduism, vegetarianism gained its strongest impact through the Krishna cult, where reverence for the sacred cow became central (Davidson 2003: 115). Hinduism and Buddhism both share the ethical doctrine of ahimsā, based on the belief that violence against living beings is wrong and has negative consequences for the karmic cycle. Jainism shares this belief but takes it further. In this religion, the entire universe is considered alive, meaning one should avoid violence against all living beings (Davidson 2003: 117). The oldest traces of the ahimsā doctrine can be traced to the Indus Valley Civilization around 2600 BCE. Thanks to vegetarianism being encouraged within these religions, millions of vegetarians live today in large countries such as India and China.

Islam and Judaism have clear rules about which types of meat are allowed. For Muslims, this meat is called halal, and for Jews kosher, meaning the meat must come from "clean" animals slaughtered according to specific regulations. Many kosher laws also prohibit mixing meat and milk in the same dish, resulting in many Jewish dishes being practically vegan or vegetarian. These strict and comprehensive dietary rules differ markedly from the Protestant tradition, which has no such regulations. Despite these restrictions, neither Islam nor Judaism is inherently vegetarian, but both emphasize that animals must be slaughtered without unnecessary suffering. The Christian tradition has its roots in Judaism but generally has less regulated dietary practices and is not as ascetic as Buddhism or Hinduism. Nevertheless, Christian groups such as the Seventh-day Adventists recommend vegetarianism, with almost half of their members abstaining from meat entirely (Davidson 2003: 127).

The Enlightenment to Modern Times

When Christianity distanced itself from Gnostic ascetics, interest in vegetarianism decreased, although monasteries still avoided meat during fasting. Despite the near disappearance of the vegetarian tradition in medieval Europe, it revived during the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Humanists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Leonardo da Vinci practiced plant-based diets. Da Vinci was convinced that “the time will come when we condemn eating animals, just as today we condemn eating our own species, eating humans” (Leitzmann 2014).

In the 18th century, vegetarianism began to be increasingly linked to animal rights. Physician George Cheyne, who early on advocated vegetarian diets for both health and ethical reasons, argued that the habit of killing animals and eating meat made people emotionally cold. The number of vegetarians during the Enlightenment was enormous, and vegetarianism became a leading idea during the 18th and 19th centuries (Shapin 2007). Famous authors such as Leo Tolstoy, Mary Shelley, and Franz Kafka were also animal rights advocates and vegetarians. Kafka, who became vegetarian for ethical and health reasons, is said to have said in front of an aquarium: “Now I can look at you in peace; I no longer eat you” (Djurens rätt).

The increased compassion for animals in the 19th century has often been attributed to urbanization, when people moved from rural areas to cities and lost direct contact with animal husbandry and slaughter. But a more nuanced picture emerges from research by Taija Kaarlenkaski on the history of animal husbandry in the Nordic countries. She shows that it was often the upper class and cultural elite who drove animal welfare issues, while these groups consumed the most meat (Kaarlenkaski 2019). Much of the dominant historical narrative on animal kindness reflects their perspective, and peasants and rural folk have sometimes been portrayed as less empathetic—a simplification that hides the emotional bonds that existed, especially between women and animals. Kaarlenkaski emphasizes that women caring for cows often developed deep emotional relationships with the animals. The same pattern appears in a 2024 article from a Turkish context, where women caring for cows could not imagine eating their meat. This shows that empathetic relationships with animals were not a consequence of urbanization, but often part of agricultural and caregiving cultures, especially among women (Kıyak, 2024).

Environmentally motivated vegetarianism is relatively new in its current form, but its original idea can be traced back to the late 18th century. This began with the English priest William Paley, who believed that a country’s leaders should strive for the greatest possible population. He calculated that a field cultivated with grains, root vegetables, and milk could feed twice as many people as a field intended for meat production (Shapin 2007).

The modern, organized vegetarian movement began in 1847 in England when The Vegetarian Society was founded. The term “vegetarian” was also coined here. The movement spread quickly and led to the founding of the International Vegetarian Union (IVU) in 1908. In 1944, Donald Watson left The Vegetarian Society and established The Vegan Society, which excluded all animal products, including milk and eggs (Leitzmann 2014). This development was driven by people like Sylvester Graham, John Harvey Kellogg, George Bernard Shaw, Mahatma Gandhi, and Albert Einstein. By the turn of the 21st century, prejudices that vegetarianism leads to malnutrition were replaced by research showing that a plant-based diet reduces the risk of many modern diseases. Today, vegetarianism is motivated by a combination of ethical, religious, environmental, and health reasons.

Sources

Davidson, Jo Ann (2003) World Religions and the Vegetarian Diet. Journal of the Adventist Theological Society, 14/2: 114–130.

Djurens rätt. Vego i historien. https://www.valjvego.se/vego-i-historien

Gålmark, Lisa (2005) Skönheter och odjur: en feministisk kritik av djur-människa-relationen. Göteborg: Makadam.

Kaarlenkaski, Taija (2019) Living Machines with Gentle Looks: Materiality and Animal Body in Modernizing Finnish Animal Husbandry. Humanimalia 11 (1): 30-63. https://doi.org/10.52537/humanimalia.9477

Kıyak, E. B. (2024). Eating with a cow: Feminist multispecies ethnography in the kitchens of the Black Sea high pastures of Turkey. I K. Aavik, K. Irni & M.‑M. Joki (Red.), Feminist animal and multispecies studies: Critical perspectives on food and eating (s. 70–93). Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004679375_004

Leitzmann, Claus (2014) Vegetarian nutrition: past, present, future. American Society for Nutrition.

Shapin, Steven (2007) Vegetable love. The history of vegetarianism. The New Yorker.

Spencer, Colin (1995) The Heretic's Feast: A History of Vegetarianism. 

Stuart, Tristram (2006) The Bloodless Revolution. WW Norton Co.

Wright, Laura (2015) The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror. Athens: University of Georgia Press.