# Vegan Nutrition
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[Introduction and Overview](/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick) › [Glossary for the Networking Language](/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick/Glossar) · 16 min read
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## Definition
**Vegan nutrition** refers to a dietary approach that stems from the idea of overcoming the exploitation of animals and the suffering inflicted on them through human use as comprehensively as possible.
Its foundation is thus primarily an ethical question about the relationship between humans and other animals.
In terms of nutrition, this stance leads to the selection of foods based on plant and other non-animal sources. These include in particular:
- Vegetables and fruits
- Grains and legumes
- Nuts and seeds
- Mushrooms
- Plant-based oils
- Plant-based ferments
- Other foods of non-animal origin
However, the ecological quality of these foods depends significantly on their production, processing, origin, and integration into their respective habitats.
Vegan nutrition must be distinguished from **veganism** as a more comprehensive way of life. Veganism extends beyond nutrition to include other forms of animal use and exploitation.
Today, people adopt a vegan lifestyle for various reasons, including animal welfare and rights, ecological considerations, health, personal convictions, or criticism of industrial animal farming.
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## Historical Development
The idea of not using animals for human nutrition on ethical grounds is much older than the term "vegan" itself.
However, the modern vegan movement emerged within the context of the British vegetarian movement.
In 1944, Donald Watson, Elsie Shrigley, and others who were then referred to as **"non-dairy vegetarians"** met. They sought to describe a way of life and diet that went beyond the vegetarianism of the time and also included dairy products and other forms of animal use.
A distinct term was needed for this stance.
Donald Watson and the early members chose **"vegan"**, a word formed from the beginning and end of the English word **"vegetarian"**.
In November 1944, this led to the founding of the **Vegan Society** in the UK.
The ethical foundation was further refined in the following years.
In 1949, Leslie J. Cross noted that the Vegan Society still lacked a clear definition of veganism. He formulated the fundamental principle of **liberating animals from human exploitation**.
This understanding was subsequently expanded to include human use of animals for food, goods, labor, hunting, animal testing, and other forms of exploitation.
The definition known today gradually emerged from this development.
The Vegan Society now describes veganism as a philosophy and way of life aimed at excluding **as far as is possible and practicable** all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals.
The phrase **"as far as possible and practicable"** is crucial here.
According to this definition, veganism does not mean achieving a state of absolute freedom from suffering in a complex world. Instead, the goal is to exclude avoidable exploitation and cruelty toward animals to the greatest extent possible within the given circumstances.
The often paraphrased statement
> **"as free from animal suffering as possible"**
thus captures an important aspect of the later-developed definition but is **not a historical original quote from the founding period in 1944**.
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## From the Original Question to Today’s Nutritional Issue
This origin is important for understanding vegan nutrition.
The starting point was not simply the classification of foods into animal and non-animal product groups.
At the center was an ethical question:
> **How can humans live without unnecessarily exploiting animals and inflicting avoidable suffering on them?**
In terms of nutrition, this stance led to a plant-based diet.
From the perspective of the qualitarian, a further question arises:
> **How far must this consideration extend when we look not only at farmed animals but at the entire habitat?**
After all, the production of plant-based foods also takes place within ecosystems.
Soil organisms, insects, birds, mammals, wild plants, fungi, and many other living beings share the landscapes where agriculture occurs. Soil cultivation, harvesting, irrigation, plant protection, machinery, and landscape changes can directly affect their living conditions.
Thus, the original question of animal suffering expands to include the entire agricultural system:
> **How can food be produced in a way that minimizes avoidable suffering and destruction of livelihoods while preserving and developing living ecosystems?**
At this point, a direct connection emerges between vegan nutrition and the [Qualitarian](https://wiki.teikei.us/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick/Glossar/Qualitarian).
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## Plant-Based Does Not Automatically Mean Regenerative
A plant-based food is not inherently sustainable, regenerative, or ecologically integrated simply because of its plant origin.
Plant-based foods can come from very different agricultural systems, including:
- Diverse mixed cropping and agroforestry systems
- Perennial crops and regenerative vegetable farming
- Small-scale regional structures
- Intensively managed arable land
- Large-scale monocultures
- Heated greenhouses
- Distant growing regions
These systems differ significantly in terms of soil cultivation, biodiversity, water use, energy input, operating resources, landscape structure, and transport.
A food from a diverse mixed-cropping system may be embedded in a complex ecosystem, while another plant-based food may come from a highly simplified agricultural system. Even the distinction between regional and non-regional is not sufficient on its own.
The key factor in assessing a food is **how it was produced and what living conditions were preserved, created, or impaired through its production**.
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## Animals Fulfill Functions in Agricultural Systems
In integrated agricultural systems, animals can perform various functions within the farm and landscape ecosystem.
These may include:
- **Grazing**, where animals consume plants and shape vegetation development through selective feeding, movement, and trampling.
- **Landscape management**, where grazing animals help shape meadows, pastures, orchards, and other open landscapes and influence woody plant growth.
- **Biomass conversion**, where animals use plant material that humans cannot directly consume as food.
- **Return of organic matter**, where manure, urine, and other organic materials re-enter soil and nutrient cycles.
- **Nutrient cycles**, where animals absorb nutrients, move them within a landscape, transform them, and make them available again.
- **Utilization of grassland**, where particularly ruminants can use grasses and other plants that humans cannot digest directly.
- **Integration of cover crops**, where animals utilize existing biomass and return some of the absorbed nutrients directly to the field.
- **Seed dispersal and vegetation development**, where seeds are spread via fur, hooves, or digestion, and different plant communities are shaped by feeding and movement.
- **Creation of diverse habitats**, where grazing, trampling, dung, and spatially varying intensity of use can generate small-scale structures.
These effects do not arise from animal husbandry alone.
Whether animals fulfill such functions in an ecologically meaningful way depends on factors such as species, number of animals, stocking density, grazing management, soil, climate, vegetation, and the specific landscape system.
If farmed animals are removed from an agricultural system, the functions they previously performed do not necessarily disappear. However, they must be taken over by other biological, human, or technical processes.
These may include composting, green manure, and cover crops. Mowing, mulching, mechanical soil cultivation, or the transport and distribution of biomass may also become necessary. Nutrients can be introduced via external organic or mineral fertilizers.
A machine that mows a meadow does not establish the same relationships as an animal that selectively grazes, moves through the landscape, leaves excrement, and is itself part of a living ecosystem.
The decisive question, therefore, is not simply **whether animals are kept within an agricultural system**, but what ecological functions exist, how they are performed, and what impacts arise for the entire habitat.
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## Dietary Categories and Natural Ecosystems
Vegan, vegetarian, and animal-based diets are categories people use to describe and differentiate their eating habits.
A natural ecosystem does not recognize these categories.
Ecosystems have evolved over very long evolutionary periods from relationships between plants, animals, fungi, microorganisms, soils, water, climate, and landscapes.
Plants build biomass using solar energy. Herbivores influence vegetation and plant communities. Predators affect animal populations and their behavior. Insects pollinate plants. Animals spread seeds. Fungi and microorganisms decompose organic material. Soil organisms alter and structure soils.
Death and decomposition return substances to cycles from which new life can emerge.
Large herbivores and other mammals have also shaped landscapes over long periods. Feeding, trampling, excrement, migrations, and the movement of nutrients are part of these ecological relationships.
Humans are also part of these connections.
When societal dietary categories are applied to agriculture, an additional question arises:
> **What happens to a developed ecosystem when a human-defined dietary category becomes the guiding principle for agriculture and landscape?**
A society can decide not to consume certain foods or to no longer support certain forms of animal husbandry.
However, the ecological functions within a landscape do not automatically disappear as a result.
It must be considered:
- Which functions remain necessary,
- Which can be performed by wildlife and natural processes,
- Which can be taken over by plants and microorganisms,
- Which require human labor,
- And which can be replaced by machinery or external inputs.
From the qualitarian perspective, a dietary decision should therefore always be considered in conjunction with the respective habitat.
The question is not only **which foods people eat**, but also **what agricultural system and landscape emerge from their food supply**.
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## Life Supports Life
Every human diet is embedded in biological life cycles.
Humans cannot produce food without interacting with other life forms and their habitats.
With animal-based foods, this becomes immediately apparent when an animal is slaughtered.
With plant-based foods, a plant may be fully harvested, ending its life. In the case of fruits, seeds, or other plant parts, the plant may continue to live.
However, agriculture still requires land, water, soil, and nutrients, thereby altering the habitats of other organisms.
Plants compete for light, water, and nutrients. Animals feed on plants and other animals. Fungi and microorganisms decompose dead material. Organic matter becomes part of the soil and can support new life.
In this sense, the following holds true:
> **Life supports life.**
This does not mean that all forms of killing, using, or interfering are equivalent.
Killing a mammal is not the same as harvesting a fruit. A diverse regenerative agriculture is not the same as the large-scale destruction of a habitat.
However, the fundamental connection remains: **human life depends on other life**.
No one can completely remove themselves from this relationship through the choice of a dietary category.
This is precisely where responsibility arises.
Questions such as the following emerge:
- How much avoidable suffering occurs?
- Which interventions are truly necessary?
- Which interventions can be avoided?
- Which habitats are preserved or regenerated?
- What impacts arise for soil, water, plants, and animals?
- What form of agriculture do we leave for future generations?
From this perspective, the original ethical impulse of vegan nutrition—to prevent avoidable animal suffering and exploitation as much as possible—can be embedded in a broader responsibility toward the entire living system.
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## Critical Examination of Highly Technologized Plant Production Systems
From the qualitarian perspective, an important critique arises where plant-based food supply is linked to highly simplified and technologized agricultural systems.
Large-scale plant cultivation can involve large machinery, frequent passes, and intensive soil cultivation. Plowing can turn soils and regulate plant growth but also affect soil structure, soil cover, and soil life.
Large uniform fields facilitate efficient mechanical cultivation. At the same time, this can lead to the loss of small-scale landscape elements and ecological transition zones.
Systems become particularly critical when several factors coincide:
- Few crop species or large-scale monocultures
- Permanent intensive soil cultivation
- High use of external fertilizers
- High use of pesticides
- Strong dependence on machinery
- High energy and water requirements
- Loss of hedgerows, field margins, and other habitats
When nutrient cycles within a farm or landscape system are not sufficiently maintained, nutrients must increasingly be introduced from outside. Pesticides specifically intervene in biological processes and, depending on the active ingredient and its application, can also affect other organisms and ecological relationships.
Machinery, irrigation, operating resources, processing, cooling, and transport can additionally require significant amounts of energy.
Such structures do not arise exclusively for vegan nutrition and are also widespread in agricultural systems with animal husbandry.
However, they demonstrate why the term **vegan** alone does not provide information about the ecological quality of an agricultural system.
A system that produces food for humans while severely impairing soil life, biodiversity, and natural habitats does not automatically become a good food system simply because its products are plant-based from the qualitarian perspective.
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## Soil Life as a Foundation
Healthy nutrition begins in the soil.
A living soil emerges from complex relationships between bacteria, fungi, plant roots, insects, worms, organic matter, water, air, minerals, and many other organisms.
Different components perform various tasks:
- Bacteria and fungi are involved in decomposition, nutrient transformation, and nutrient processes.
- Mycorrhizal fungi can form relationships with plant roots and influence the uptake of water and nutrients.
- Plant roots penetrate the soil, release organic compounds, and interact with numerous soil organisms.
- Worms and other soil animals move organic material and contribute to the formation of pores and soil aggregates.
- Organic matter provides food and raw materials for soil life and humus formation processes.
- Water and air enable biological processes and nutrient transport.
Intensive soil cultivation, permanently uncovered soils, heavy machinery, one-sided crop rotations, and other intensive farming practices can disrupt these relationships.
A severely damaged soil may lose some of its ability to:
- Absorb and store water,
- Build carbon,
- Make nutrients biologically available,
- Provide resilient nutrition to plants,
- And support diverse soil life.
From a quality-oriented perspective, it is therefore not enough to ask solely whether plant-based foods are produced on a field.
The question also is:
> **What happens to the soil during this production?**
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## Agriculture Is Also Habitat
An agricultural area serves food production and is simultaneously a habitat.
There, birds, insects, small mammals, amphibians, soil organisms, wild plants, and fungi live or move.
These living beings fulfill various functions within the landscape. Birds use fields, meadows, trees, and hedges as feeding, breeding, resting, or refuge areas. Insects participate in pollination, decomposition, and food chains. Small mammals and other wildlife use fields, meadows, and field margins or move through agricultural landscapes. Below the visible surface, soil life forms a significant part of the ecosystem.
Agriculture therefore always changes the living conditions of other species.
Large, uniformly managed areas with few crop plants can greatly simplify this habitat. Hedgerows, trees, field margins, wetlands, varying vegetation heights, fallow land, mixed crops, and adapted grazing can, in contrast, create more diverse ecological niches.
From the qualitarian perspective, the following question is therefore also part of food quality:
> **How much life can exist alongside our food on this land?**
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## A Vegan Agriculture Can Look Very Different
Agriculture without farmed livestock can be designed in many different ways.
Plant-based systems can work with the following approaches, among others:
- Diverse crop rotations and cover crops
- Mixed cropping
- Agroforestry and perennial crops
- Compost and organic return
- Mulch and permanent soil cover
- Reduced soil cultivation
- Humus building
- Promotion of wildlife and habitats
Compost can return organic material to the soil. Cover crops and diverse crop rotations can cover the soil, promote different root systems, and support nutrient cycles. Agroforestry and perennial crops can enable long-term root, soil, and landscape structures.
Promoting wildlife can also be part of a plant-based agriculture.
Agriculture without farmed livestock does not mean agriculture without animals.
Insects, birds, small mammals, soil organisms, and other wildlife remain part of the ecosystem.
From the qualitarian perspective, the decisive dividing line therefore does not simply run between **agriculture with animals** and **agriculture without animals**.
What matters is the quality of the relationships within the respective system.
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## The Regional Question
A vegan diet can have a broad regional foundation in areas with favorable conditions.
These may include in particular:
- Fertile soils
- Long growing seasons
- Diverse crops
- Sufficient water availability
- Good storage and processing options
There, various plant-based sources of protein, fat, carbohydrates, and micronutrients can emerge within a diverse regional agriculture.
In northern regions, high mountains, dry areas, grasslands, or regions with very short growing seasons, the possibilities for plant cultivation may be different or more limited.
A fully vegan diet may there rely more heavily on imports, greenhouse production, storage, processing, transport, or other technical infrastructures. Short harvest periods may require extensive preservation. Fermentation, drying, canning, or other forms of processing can play an important role.
Greenhouse production, cooling, and storage can also generate additional energy demand.
This does not mean that a vegan diet is fundamentally impossible or wrong in such regions.
It means that its actual ecological and regional integration must be considered.
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## Nutrition and Natural Boundaries
Qualitarian assumes that not every region must produce everything.
Every habitat has its possibilities and limits, shaped by:
- Climate and growing season
- Soil and water
- Altitude and landscape
- Existing plants and animals
- Seasons
- Regional processing and preservation
- Cultural and agricultural knowledge
Over generations, people have developed experience with cultivation, animal husbandry, processing, fermentation, drying, storage, and preparation in specific places.
A diet that largely ignores these conditions may require significant technical and logistical effort to be implemented nonetheless.
A regionally embedded diet therefore also considers what a habitat can sustainably produce and regenerate in the long term.
The question is:
> **What diet can emerge from the possibilities of this habitat while preserving or improving its livelihoods?**
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## Vegan Nutrition and Animal Suffering
A key motivation for vegan nutrition is the reduction or avoidance of animal suffering.
This question is clearly connected to the historical development of veganism and its goal of excluding exploitation and cruelty toward animals as far as possible and practicable.
From the qualitarian perspective, this consideration is expanded to the entire habitat.
Plant-based agriculture also intervenes in habitats. Particularly relevant are:
- Soil cultivation
- Harvesting methods
- Plant protection
- Machinery use
- Changes to hedgerows, field margins, and refuges
- Irrigation, drainage, and changes to the water balance
Soil cultivation alters the habitat of soil organisms and can affect other animals. Harvesting methods directly impact fields. Plant protection specifically targets certain organisms and can also affect other species and ecological relationships.
The removal of hedgerows, field margins, or wetlands can reduce refuges. Machinery can directly endanger animals, while changes to the water balance can influence entire communities.
Therefore, qualitarian asks not only about the farmed or slaughtered livestock but also:
> **Which life forms were promoted, displaced, or impaired by the entire agricultural system?**
The original ethical question of veganism is not abandoned.
It is expanded to the entire habitat.
If avoidable suffering is to be prevented as much as possible, the living beings and habitats that are not immediately visible in the final product must also be considered.
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## Relationship to Qualitarian
The term [Qualitarian](https://wiki.teikei.us/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick/Glossar/Qualitarian) does not fundamentally question vegan nutrition.
It considers its quality in the context of the entire living and agricultural system.
A vegan diet can be based on diverse regional plants, healthy soils, regenerative farming methods, and short supply chains. It can also be associated with monocultures, intensive soil cultivation, high external inputs, and distant supply chains.
From the qualitarian perspective, several levels come together:
- **Soil and water:** Are soil fertility, soil life, and water balance preserved or further developed?
- **Biodiversity and habitat:** Which plants, animals, and other organisms can exist alongside the cultivated crops?
- **Cycles:** How are nutrients, water, and organic matter moved and returned within the system?
- **Technology and energy:** Which functions are performed by machinery, and how much energy, processing, cooling, and storage are required?
- **Inputs:** What external fertilizers, pesticides, or other inputs does the system need?
- **Regional supply:** Which foods can actually emerge from the respective habitat, and which imports supplement this supply?
- **Resilience:** How dependent is the diet on distant supply chains and external resources?
- **Long-term viability:** What livelihoods are preserved for future generations?
Vegan nutrition thus remains a possible dietary approach.
Qualitarian places it—as well as vegetarian and animal-based diets—in the broader context of agriculture, ecosystems, and regional carrying capacity.
This raises a fundamental question:
> **What happens when our dietary categories encounter the ecological relationships of a landscape?**
An ecosystem does not care whether humans classify its components as vegan, vegetarian, or animal-based.
It consists of relationships between life and life.
Qualitarian therefore seeks to unite the ethical question of nutrition with the ecological reality of the respective place.
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## The Decisive Question
From this perspective, the sole question is not:
**Is this food vegan?**
The follow-up question is:
> **Is the living system from which this food originated healthy, diverse, resilient, and sustainable in the long term?**
This shifts the focus from the individual product to its relationships with soil, water, plants, animals, people, and the place from which our food comes.
The question of animal suffering remains.
It is placed in a larger context.
If human life is supported by other life, the responsibility does not lie in mentally dissolving this relationship.
It lies in consciously engaging with it:
> **What form of our diet respects the life that supports it, preserves its livelihoods, and enables future generations to live within a living ecosystem?**
## Related Terms
- [Qualitarian](https://wiki.teikei.us/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick/Glossar/Qualitarian)
- [Vegetarian Nutrition](https://wiki.teikei.us/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick/Glossar/Vegetarische-Ernaehrung)
- [Animal-Based Nutrition Including Meat](https://wiki.teikei.us/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick/Glossar/Tierische-Ernaehrung)
- [Regenerative Agriculture](https://wiki.teikei.us/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick/Glossar/regenerative-landwirtschaft)
- [Nutrition Regions](https://wiki.teikei.us/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick/Glossar/Ernährungsregionen)
- [Regionality](https://wiki.teikei.us/en/home/0_Einstieg-und-Überblick/Glossar/Regionalitaet)
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Created on August 6, 2026 · Last updated on October 10, 2026
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