A vegetarian excludes meat, poultry, and fish from their diet. A vegan excludes all animal-derived products, including dairy, eggs, and honey. That single distinction, how far the exclusion of animal products extends, is the core difference. But in practice, the gap between the two is wider than most people realize, affecting everything from nutrition planning to grocery shopping to clothing choices.
What Vegetarians Eat
All vegetarian diets cut out meat (beef, pork, lamb, chicken, and other poultry) along with fish and seafood. Beyond that shared baseline, vegetarianism branches into several subtypes based on which other animal products stay on the plate.
- Lacto-ovo vegetarian: The most common type. Excludes meat, fish, and poultry but includes both dairy products and eggs.
- Lacto-vegetarian: Excludes meat, fish, poultry, and eggs, but keeps dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt, butter).
- Ovo-vegetarian: Excludes meat, fish, poultry, and dairy, but keeps eggs.
- Pescatarian: Sometimes grouped under the vegetarian umbrella, this diet excludes meat and poultry but allows fish, seafood, and usually dairy and eggs.
When someone simply says “I’m vegetarian” without specifying, they almost always mean lacto-ovo vegetarian. Eggs and dairy remain staples, which makes meal planning, dining out, and meeting nutritional needs significantly easier than a fully vegan diet.
What Vegans Eat (and Don’t Eat)
A vegan diet is 100% plant-based. No meat, no fish, no dairy, no eggs, and no honey. That last one surprises people, but most vegans view beekeeping as a form of animal exploitation and exclude honey along with other insect-derived products like beeswax and silk.
The practical challenge for vegans often shows up in processed and packaged foods, where animal-derived ingredients hide under unfamiliar names. Whey (from milk) appears in chips, bread, and baked goods. Gelatin, made by boiling animal skin and bones, is in gummy candy, marshmallows, and vitamin capsules. Carmine, a red dye extracted from insects, shows up in cosmetics and red-colored foods. Even some wines and beers use isinglass, a clarifying agent made from fish bladders. Reading ingredient labels becomes a routine part of grocery shopping for anyone eating vegan.
Veganism Beyond the Plate
This is where veganism diverges most sharply from vegetarianism. Vegetarianism is a diet. Veganism, for many who practice it, is a broader ethical stance against using animals for human purposes. That extends into clothing (avoiding leather, fur, wool, and silk), cosmetics (choosing products not tested on animals and free of animal-derived ingredients), and household products. Vegans typically look for items labeled cruelty-free and opt for synthetic or plant-based alternatives to materials like leather and wool. A vegetarian, by contrast, generally makes no changes outside of food.
Nutritional Differences
Vegetarians who eat dairy and eggs have a built-in safety net for several nutrients that are harder to get from plants alone. Eggs provide complete protein and vitamin B12. Dairy supplies calcium, vitamin D, and additional B12. Vegans need to plan more carefully to cover those gaps.
Vitamin B12 is the most critical concern. This nutrient is essential for nerve function and red blood cell production, and it’s found almost exclusively in animal-derived foods. Meat-eaters average about 7.2 micrograms of B12 per day; vegans average just 0.4 micrograms. Deficiency rates are higher among vegans than vegetarians, though vegetarians still face meaningful risk. People who have followed a vegan diet since birth show higher rates of deficiency than those who switch later in life. Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding on an unsupplemented vegan diet face elevated risk of complications, including low birth weight. For vegans, a B12 supplement or fortified foods (like plant milks and nutritional yeast) aren’t optional extras. They’re necessary.
Getting Enough Protein
Vegetarians who eat eggs and dairy get complete proteins with all essential amino acids in balanced proportions. Vegans can absolutely meet their protein needs, but individual plant proteins tend to be low in specific amino acids. Legumes like soybeans, lentils, and peas are low in sulfur-containing amino acids. Grains like wheat and corn are low in lysine. Both are lower in leucine, an amino acid important for muscle maintenance, than animal proteins.
The fix is straightforward: eat a variety of plant proteins throughout the day. Combining grains and legumes (rice and beans, hummus and pita, lentil soup with bread) creates a complementary amino acid profile that covers what either food lacks on its own. You don’t need to combine them in a single meal, just across the day.
Health Outcomes
Both diets are associated with health benefits compared to a typical meat-heavy diet, though the specifics differ in degree. Data from the EPIC-Oxford study, one of the largest long-running comparisons of dietary groups, provides some useful numbers.
Both vegetarians and vegans tend to have lower BMI, lower LDL cholesterol, and lower blood pressure than regular meat-eaters. On average, vegetarians weigh about 1 kg/m² less by BMI, while vegans come in about 2 kg/m² lower. That BMI difference turns out to be important because it explains much of the gap in other health outcomes.
Vegetarians in the study had a 23% lower risk of heart disease compared to meat-eaters over 18 years. The estimate for vegans was 18% lower, though the smaller number of vegans in the study made that figure less statistically reliable. For type 2 diabetes, vegetarians showed 35% lower risk and vegans 47% lower risk. However, once researchers accounted for the BMI differences, those diabetes advantages largely disappeared, suggesting the benefit comes primarily from maintaining a lower body weight rather than from avoiding animal products specifically.
One notable caution: both vegetarians and vegans in the study had lower bone mineral density than meat-eaters. Calcium and vitamin D intake deserve attention on both diets, especially for vegans who skip dairy entirely.
Environmental Impact
If environmental footprint is part of your decision, the gap between vegan and vegetarian is substantial. A Polish study comparing daily carbon footprints across dietary groups found that vegans produced an average of 1.38 kg CO2 equivalent per day from food, while vegetarians produced 2.45 kg. That makes a vegan diet roughly 44% lower in carbon emissions than a vegetarian one. Both were considerably lower than meat-based diets, with vegans producing about 62% less than meat-eaters. Dairy production, particularly from cattle, accounts for much of the difference between vegan and vegetarian footprints.
Choosing Between the Two
Vegetarianism is often the easier starting point. Keeping dairy and eggs simplifies cooking, dining out, and meeting nutritional needs without supplements (beyond possibly B12 for some vegetarians). It still delivers meaningful health and environmental benefits compared to a standard Western diet.
Veganism requires more planning but goes further on every axis: lower environmental impact, a broader ethical commitment, and potentially greater weight management benefits. The trade-off is vigilance around B12, calcium, vitamin D, and protein variety, along with the practical work of reading labels and finding alternatives for everyday products.
Many people move from one to the other over time, starting vegetarian and gradually dropping dairy and eggs as they find plant-based replacements they enjoy. Neither diet is nutritionally risky when planned well. The difference comes down to how far you want to take the exclusion of animal products, and whether your motivation is primarily health, ethics, environmental concern, or some combination of all three.