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I think that “vegan” is sometimes the best word to use, sometimes “vegetarian” is a better word to use, and sometimes “plant-based diet” or something else is better.

As animal advocates, we’re essentially marketers for a certain idea and a certain behavior change: not eating animal products, seeing animals as having their own intrinsic values and being worthy of protection from human interference and harm, etc. Like other marketers, we have to consider our audience if we want to create the most behavior change possible.

The purpose of our website is not to get people to go vegan, the primary purpose is to get them to join us – get on our email list, etc. Once we have them roped in, then we can start educating them about how farm animals are treated, vegan eating, etc. If they refrain from signing up because they are not vegan (or vegetarian), then we lose the ability to communicate with them, influence them, and get them involved.

Even when it comes to general outreach though, I strongly believe that for the general public it’s better to use “vegetarian” or more general comments (like “I don’t eat animal products”) than to use “vegan.” As I write about in my book, there is a good deal of research into “Message Discrepancy”, which is how different the speaker’s request is from the audience’s current belief. The sweet spot for behavior change – the message that is going to create the most behavior change in the audience - is one that encourages a substantial change, but one that is not so drastic that people cannot picture themselves doing it.

My sense, both from the research and my own work as an activist, is that “vegan” is too large of a request to work best for general audiences. We know it’s easy, but most people don’t. So a smaller but still substantial request - like vegetarianism – is I think better, and creates both more behavior change in the short term and also ultimately more vegans (because many people who become veg later go on to become vegan).

But for me, as a person who both encourages individuals to go vegan and also encourages institutions to go cage-free in my work, the reason is pure pragmatism. Institutions are not going to go vegan (not any time soon at least), and many individuals are never going to make the switch to veganism.

Creating institutional changes (at the corporate or institutional level) is a great way to reduce the suffering of animals so that the default choice (the choice made by those who buy eggs and don’t give a damn about animals and never will) is not quite so torturous. And the research also indicates – I should point out – that these welfare reforms on the policy/legal level typically coincide with increasing rates of veganism if you look to countries that have more advanced welfare reforms.

At any rate, the research strongly indicates that these changes do not HURT our efforts at getting people to go vegan. But they do help reduce the suffering of many many animals, sometimes with not that much work on our part as advocates.