[ELI5] Is there a difference between a food product being “vegetarian” vs “plant based,” or is it just a marketing choice?
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Neither term is regulated in the US beyond the FDA’s requirement that its use isn’t misleading.
The term “vegetarian” means different things to different groups. The Catholic Church is where the term originated, and Catholics consider a large number of meat based products to be “not meat” – such as fish, alligators, and beavers. In practice, the term really only means that the product doesn’t contain meat protein from domesticated farm animals.
If you see the term “plant based” it means that it has plant protein, but *does not* mean that it doesn’t have animal protein.
This doesn’t mean that products with these terms contain beaver meat, just that the terms themselves are, as you suspect, meaningless marketing terms. If you want to see whats actually in a product you need to read the ingredient label.
Plant based usually means vegan, meaning no animal products. Vegetarian means no meat. Vegetarian food can have things like milk, plant based foods cant.
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