Rhetoric of Vegan/Vegetarianism, and Health, Medicine, and Culture

Abstract

This dialogue piece provides scholars of the rhetoric of health and medicine with a close examination of vegan and vegetarian diets/lifestyles through the perspective of several scholars, activists, and/or medical practitioners. Through these conversations, the authors illuminate many key areas of interest and future examination related to vegan and vegetarian diets through the lens of several subtopics including health impact, ethics, cultural influence on diet, gender, medical advice, emerging “meat” technologies, and societal rhetoric about vegans and vegetarians.The dialogue participants provide a discussion on how vegetarian diets—and vegan diets in particular—can progress individual and public human health, liberate non-human animals, improve the environment, and provide a vehicle in which several important social justice movements (for both humans and animals) can take root, all the while recognizing the many reasons reasons people might choose a vegetarian or vegan diet.