Vegetarianism is the practice of following a plant-based diet including fruits, vegetables, cereal grains, nuts and seeds, with or without dairy products and eggs.

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A vegetarian does not eat meat, game, poultry, fish, crustacea, shellfish or products of animal slaughter such as animal-derived gelatine and rennet. There are a number of vegetarian diets. A lacto-vegetarian diet includes dairy products but excludes eggs, an ovo-vegetarian diet includes eggs but not dairy products, and a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet includes both eggs and dairy products. A vegan diet excludes all animal products, including dairy products, eggs and honey. Vegetarianism may be adopted for ethical, health, environmental, religious, political, cultural, aesthetic, economic or other reasons. 

Semi-vegetarian diets consist largely of vegetarian foods, but may include fish and sometimes poultry, as well as dairy products and eggs. With these diets, the word “meat” is often defined as only mammalian flesh. A pescetarian diet, for example, includes “fish but no meat”. The colloquial application of the word “vegetarian” to such diets has led vegetarian groups, such as the Vegetarian Society, to clarify that such fish or poultry-based diets are not vegetarian, due to the fact that fish and birds are animals.