Veganism and vegetarianism can be traced back to the ancient civilizations in many Asian and eastern Mediterranean societies. The meat-free lifestyle is believed to be first mentioned by the Greek philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras, in around 500 BCE. Early followers of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism also advocated following a vegetarian diet to stop humans from inflicting pain on animals and birds.
 
The term veganism came to existence in the year 1944 though, when Donald Watson and Elsie Shrigley held a meeting with other non-dairy vegetarians to discuss the diet and lifestyle. Despite the opposition, they actively found a new movement that shaped the vegan lifestyle as we know of today. According to Watson, the term “vegan” was taken from the first three and last two letters of “vegetarian” that marked “the beginning and end of vegetarian”. Later in 1949, Leslie J Cross defined veganism as “to seek an end to the use of animals by man for food, commodities, work, hunting, vivisection, and by all other uses involving exploitation of animal life by man”.