Plant-based and vegetarian diets: an overview and definition of these dietary patterns

This paper aims to present an overview of the definitions of “plant-based and “vegetarian diets” adopted by different organizations worldwide, proposing new standard definitions and discussing the notion of vegetarianism as a restrictive dietary pattern. An extensive literature review on the different definitions of vegetarian and plant-based diets was conducted. Definitions of different international vegetarian and vegan organizations were also taken into account. Objective definitions for vegetarian and plant-based diets, as well as for their subcategories, were proposed. Other aspects related to how vegetarian diets are viewed and defined were also discussed. We proposed that a vegetarian diet should be defined as “a dietary pattern that excludes meat, meat-derived foods, and, to different extents, other animal products”. This definition would include, among others, ovolactovegetarian and vegan diets. The proposed definition for a plant-based diet was “a dietary pattern in which foods of animal origin are totally or mostly excluded”. Other types of diets, such as flexitarian and pescetarian diets, could be considered plant-based. A vegetarian diet should not be considered restrictive. Instead, terms such as alternative or non-conventional could be used to define it and to distinguish it from the conventional diet adopted by most of the Western population. This paper was able to elaborate objective definitions of vegetarian and plant-based diets. Standardizing nomenclatures may reduce misinterpretation and confusion in this field of study.