GoVeg!

In 2002, the UK Food Standards Agency reported that 5% of respondents self-identified as vegetarian or vegan. Though 29% of that 5% said they avoided "all animal products", only 5% reported avoiding dairy products. Based on these figures, approximately 0.25% of the UK population follow a vegan diet. In 2005, The Times estimated there were 250,000 vegans in Britain, which suggests around 0.4% of the UK population is vegan. A 2007 survey for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs into the UK population's attitudes and behaviour towards the environment found that 2.24% of the population identified themselves as vegan. In the same study, vegetarians who did not also eat chicken or fish made up 2.7% of the population. The DEFRA study also indicated that slightly more men than women are vegan, that more vegans live in towns or cities than the country, and that people aged 16-29 were vegan more often than any other age group.Various polls and research conducted during the 1990s put the percentage of Swedish residents being vegan at between 0.27% and 1.6% of the entire population. A study of the eating patterns of 2,538 Swedish children of ages 4, 8 and 11 by the Swedish National Food Administration found that about 1% of the children were vegetarian, less than 1% were lacto-vegetarians, but found no children to be vegans. The website VeganWelt estimates there to be between 250,000 and 460,500 vegans in Germany, or between 0.3% and 0.5% of the German population. The Netherlands Association for Veganism estimates there to be approximately 16,000 vegans in the Netherlands, or around 0.1% of the Dutch population.The term "animal product" in a vegan context refers to any material derived from animals for human use.Notable animal products include meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, dairy products, honey, fur, leather, wool, and silk. Common animal by-products include gelatin, lanolin, rennet, whey, casein, beeswax, and shellac.Animal products are ingredients in many products and are used in the production of many more products, although not always present in the final form. Many products use obscure names on their ingredient list,including non-animal sources.Non-food products are not required to provide ingredients on their labels. Although some vegans attempt to avoid all these ingredients, Vegan Outreach argues that "it can be prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to shun every minor or hidden animal-derived ingredient," and therefore that doing what is "best for preventing suffering" is more important than identifying and excluding every animal ingredient.Although honey and silk are by definition animal products, some vegans consider their use and the use of other insect products to be acceptable.However, inclusion of honey and silk are contrary to the definition of veganism given by the Vegan Society. Fruitarianism is a diet of only fruit, nuts, seeds, and other plant matter that can be gathered without harming the plant. Su vegetarianism originating in Hinduism, excludes all animal products as well as the fetid vegetables: onion, garlic, scallions, leeks, or shallots. Macrobiotic diet is a diet of mostly whole grains and beans. Not all macrobiotics are vegetarians as some consume fish. Raw veganism is a diet of fresh and uncooked fruit, nuts, seeds, and vegetables. Dietary veganism: whereas vegans don't use animal products of any kind, dietary vegans restrict their veganism to their diet. Freeganism argues that all commodities produced under capitalism, not only those from animal sources, contribute to exploitation and avoid buying anything, including food. While many freegans are vegans or vegetarians, others will eat animal products that would otherwise go to waste under the justification that doing this does not encourage further animal exploitation. It should be noted that most vegetarians also are aware of avoiding products that may use animal ingredients not included in their labels or which use animal products in their manufacturing i.e. cheeses that use animal rennet, gelatin (from animal skin, bones, and connective tissue), some sugars that are whitened with bone char (e.g. cane sugar, but not beet sugar) and alcohol clarified with gelatin or crushed shellfish and sturgeon. Vegetarians often eat free-range as opposed to battery eggs on moral grounds