Over at VegSource.com, the debate among the “I’m more vegan than you are” crowd has become so intense that Jeff and Sabrina Nelson saw fit to try to coin a new term — vegitan. According to the Nelsons,
A vegan diet is always a vegitan diet, but a vegitan diet may not always be vegan, because a vegitan diet may or may not include honey.
Just when watching these folks debate back and forth over eating honey was getting so fascinating, the Nelsons go and try to change the terms of the debate. The new terminology is also supposed to be free of the political implications that supposedly come with “vegan”,
The key is that the word “vegitan” in and of itself connotes no political, ideological or philosophical ideals. It’s simply a word that describes a diet.
. . . Vegitan simply refers to what you eat, and does not signify any “whys” which may motivate someone to eat meat.”
And why would anyone possibly want to escape the political implications of “vegan”? Again, according to the Nelsons,
In our years of experience with running the largest and most popular vegetarian/vegan website in the world, we have seen some in the vegan community who resent another person calling herself “vegan” when she eats a “vegan diet” but does not embrace all the values, philosophies and precepts of veganism.
Vegans who are vocally intolerant of the dietary choices of others? Say it ain’t so, Jeff and Sabrina. That’s just really hard for this writer to image.
With the creation of the word “vegitan,” vegans no longer need be uncomfortable as such individuals can now refer to their “vegitan diet” and be totally clear what they mean.
Oh yeah, they really cleared that up. That will certainly placate the vegan food police.
Source:
Introducing the Vegitan Diet. Jeff and Sabrina Nelson, VegSource.Com, July 29, 2002.