Overview
About Vegetarian
Vegetarian compatibility tracks foods that fit a vegetarian diet — dairy, eggs, legumes, and vegetables — while flagging meat-derived ingredients like gelatin.
A vegetarian diet excludes meat and fish but may include dairy products and eggs. It focuses on plant foods with optional animal-derived products like milk, cheese, and eggs.
In the data
What the grading picks up
- Not vegetarian or vegan, and scored pro-inflammatory as a red meat if you are following an anti-inflammatory pattern
- Not vegetarian or vegan
- Not vegetarian or vegan
- Low in lactose thanks to long aging, but very high in casein, and set with animal rennet so it is not vegetarian
Examples
A few ingredients either way
Grading
How we grade Vegetarian
Every ingredient in the database carries one grade for vegetarian, and this page, the checker and the app all read that same grade. It describes the ingredient as it is usually eaten. Portion size and preparation move it.
Vegetarian is kept as a rule. In the app, an ingredient you would have to check the label on still counts against the day.
Practical
Following Vegetarian
- Watch for hidden meat-derived ingredients like gelatin and rennet.
- Include a variety of protein sources for balanced nutrition.
- Eggs and dairy can help meet protein needs
- Include a variety of plant proteins for balanced nutrition
- Iron-rich foods pair well with vitamin C
- Don't rely too heavily on cheese as a protein source
- B12 is still important if limiting animal products
Method
Test it with a diary
Most people find their own triggers by logging meals and symptoms for a few weeks and reading the result back. Three steps.
- 1Log every meal for a few weeks. Type it, say it out loud, or scan a barcode, and it lands as a list of ingredients.
- 2Rate how you feel through the day on whatever you are tracking, whether that is bloating, headaches, skin or sleep.
- 3Read the pattern back. Every ingredient you logged is scored against the days you felt worse, and the result ranks vegetarian against everything else you eat.
Questions
Questions people ask
Is real parmesan vegetarian?
Traditional Parmigiano-Reggiano is set with animal rennet, an enzyme taken from calf stomach, so authentic parmesan is not vegetarian. Only cheeses labelled as using microbial or vegetable rennet avoid this.
More about parmesan
Read next
Where to go next
References
Vegetarian sources
Where the vegetarian grades come from: food composition databases, clinical guidelines and patient organisations.
5 sources from peer-reviewed research, regulatory bodies, and clinical guidelines.
Get started
Following Vegetarian?
Log what you eat and how you feel, and the app finds the pattern for you. Or look an ingredient up here first.
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