Veganuary - the history of plant-based diets as month of veganism is encouraged

As the new year begins, many will get involved with the challenge to eat a vegan diet throughout January - known as Veganuary. Vegan diets are plant-based diets that have become increasingly popular and in 2020, around 400,000 people attempted the diet.

Being vegan means only eating foods like vegetables, grains, nuts and fruits. Vegans also do not eat food derived from animals such as dairy products and eggs. It represents a major change in how many people eat day-to-day.

But despite being a diet associated with the new world and recent decades, vegan diets have actually been around for much longer and the foundations have been laid over millennia. Although some differences occur, the principles of plant-based diets have remained intact for countless years.

NationalWorld explores the history of vegan diets as Veganuary gets in full swing this month.

Ancient times and Pythagoras

One of the most prominently practised religions in the world, Buddhism, has followed plant-based diets for nearly 2,500 years as part of religious and cultural practices.

The belief in reincarnation plays a part in these dietary choices, as well as the doctrine of ahimsa. Ahimsa literally means ‘non-injury’, and includes refraining from any type of violence to people, animals, and plants.

This includes not using cloth made from animal-based materials (such as silk or leather), cutting down trees, and also extends to eating and/or trading meat, honey, or eggs, and holding animals in captivity.

Centuries after the birth of Buddhism, plant-based diets began gaining popularity from the teachings of Pythagoras of Samos, the Greek philosopher who lived from 570 BCE to 490 BCE. He is well known for his geometric rule still taught in schools today, but he also has links to vegan-thinking.

Pythagoras believed that souls were immortal, and reincarnated into other animated bodies after death, and that that all living beings, including animals, were related and should be considered part of one family in a ‘kinship of all life.’ Through this belief, Pythagoras abstained from eating animal-based food and urged his followers to do so as well.

Pythagoras found that new-growing beans were shaped like human foetuses, and therefore were also part of the cycle of being reborn. Eating them was akin to cannibalism in his eyes.

Pythagoras and his brotherhood maintained a diet of bread, honey, and vegetables (excluding beans). Abstaining from eating meat and prohibiting the harm of innocent creatures (including plants and trees) was a personal and moral decision for Pythagoras and many of his ideas still resonate with modern animal ethics. The name for his followers, Pythagoreans, even became synonymous with ‘vegetarian’ up until the 1840s.

More recent UK history

Fast-forward to the UK in the 1800s and we begin to see the promotion of plant-based diets for the health benefits it as believed to bring. George Cheyne, a Scottish physician put himself on a diet of only 'seeds, breads and tender roots (potatoes, turnips and carrots)' as he began to feel lethargic after moving to London.

On discovering that this so-called “vegetable diet” improved not only his bodily health but also his mood, Cheyne began to recommend it to his patients and also wrote about it in his Essay of Health and Long Life (1724).