Tags - #Vegan_Blog

Who was the first known vegan?

Although it’s hard to verify some facts about veganism. One of the earliest known vegans was the Arab poet al-Ma’arri approximately 973 - 1057 BCE. There would have been more but, the facts aren’t really verifiable.

Some of the early Vegans were termed as ‘Vegetarians” as an official word for veganism was not created. Early vegetarianism can be traced back to the Indus valley civilization in 3300-1300 BCE in the Indian subcontinent. Many Indian philosophers Mahavira, Acharya Kundakunda, and the Tamil Poet Valluvar were all considered vegetarian. So as The great emperors Chandragupta Maurya and Ashoka.

When was the term ‘vegan’ coined?

In the early 19th-century in Britain and the United States, vegetarianism was gaining a lot of popularity.

Then came a minority of vegetarians who avoided animal products entirely. In August 1944, several members of the vegetarian society. A British registered charity that was established on 30th September 1847 asked that a section of its newsletter be devoted to non-dairy vegetarianism.

When that request was turned down, Donald Watson, a secretary of the Leicester branch set up a new quarterly newsletter in November 1944. Which was called The Vegan News.

The term Vegan was invented by Watson and Dorothy Morgan, a schoolteacher he would later marry. The word is based on the first three and the last two letters of “Vegetarian” because it marked, in Mr.Watson’s words, “the beginning and the end of vegetarian”.

How veganism spread in its early days?

The way veganism spread in the early 1900s was with newsletters and magazines. A few people coming together and making it clear that exploitation of animals was not something they stood for.

The vegan society made it clear in 1947 as Watson wrote: “The vegan renounces it as superstitious that human life depends upon the exploitation of these creatures whose feelings are much the same as our own …”. From 1948 the Vegan’s front page read: “Advocating living without exploitation”.

As time went by more people joined the movement. Eventually in the 2010s vegan diet became increasingly mainstream that many news outlets and websites started to cover this form of living. From the 2010s till now veganism has grown in leaps and bounds, with more people going vegan every day.

Hopefully one day we can see that majority of the world would become vegan. Continue to help the environment and also give animals the freedom that they always wanted.