The new trend of the year? It is called the veggan diet, and it is a vegan diet with the sole exception of the consumption of eggs, therefore an ovovegetarian or ovo-vegan diet, which for convenience has been renamed veggan (vegan + egg = veggan). According to those who follow it, the veggan diet, with the addition of organic and free-range eggs, is healthier and more complete than the traditional vegan diet , especially if those who follow the vegan diet do so for healthy but unethical reasons. This new trend is actually not the first case of “personalization” of a diet “for the masses” or very much in vogue depending on the effects that the same diet has on our physical but also mental health. When we change our diet, whatever it is, let’s always ask ourselves this question : will I be able to do it forever?
Long-term sustainability of a diet is the key to avoiding drastic or harmful regimes and focusing on what we can do for our health instead. Among the diets that are not completely vegan, but can be considered transitional diets (for those who want to become vegan but start from an omnivorous diet) or diets in a certain sense of compromise, we find not only the veggan or ovovegetarian diet, but also Mark Bittman’s VB6 diet (you eat vegan until six in the afternoon), the peach-vegan diet (vegan apart from the consumption of fish), the lacto-vegan or lacto-vegetarian diet (vegan apart from the consumption of dairy products and cheeses), and obviously the lacto-ovo-vegetarian diet, what is often defined as vegetarian tout-court.
What are the benefits? First of all, we experiment with a regime that we like, and verify that it is right for us. Secondly, the choice of a less restrictive regime helps us, as I said, to maintain it over time.