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Vegetarianism, is the theory or practice of living solely upon vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, and nuts—with or without the addition of milk products and eggs—generally for ethical, ascetic, environmental, or nutritional reasons. All forms of flesh (meat, fowl, and seafood) are excluded from all vegetarian diets, but many vegetarians use milk and milk products; those in the West usually eat eggs also, but most vegetarians in India exclude them, as did those in the Mediterranean lands in Classical times. Vegetarians who exclude animal products altogether (and likewise avoid animal-derived products such as leather, silk, honey, and wool) are known as vegans. Those who use milk products are sometimes called Lacto-vegetarians, and those who use eggs as well are called Lacto-ovo vegetarians. Among some agricultural peoples, flesh-eating has been infrequent except among the privileged classes; such people have rather misleadingly been called vegetarians.
Deliberate avoidance of flesh-eating probably first appeared sporadically in ritual connections, either as a temporary purification or as a qualification for a priestly function. Advocacy of a regular fleshless diet began about the middle of the 1st millennium BCE in India and the eastern Mediterranean as part of the philosophical awakening of the time. In the Mediterranean, avoidance of flesh-eating is first recorded as a teaching of the philosopher Pythagoras of Samos (c. 530 BCE), who alleged the kinship of all animals as one basis for human benevolence toward other creatures. From Plato, onward many pagan philosophers (e.g., Epicurus and Plutarch), especially the Neoplatonists, recommended a fleshless diet; the idea carried with it a condemnation of bloody sacrifices in worship and was often associated with belief in the reincarnation of souls and, more generally, with a search for principles of cosmic harmony in accord with which human beings could live. In India, followers of Buddhism and Jainism refused on ethical and ascetic grounds to kill animals for food. Human beings, they believed, should not inflict harm on any sentient creature. This principle was soon taken up in Brahmanism and, later, Hinduism and was applied especially to the cow. As in Mediterranean thought, the idea carried with it a condemnation of bloody sacrifices and was often associated with principles of cosmic harmony.