Fig or Anjeer is a delicious fruit and is known for its nutritious properties. However, some call this fruit ‘non-vegetarian’ due to the natural process with which it is formed.
The pollination process of figs begins when a female wasp crawls into the inverted closed flower of a fig tree to lay her eggs.
However, during the process the wasp breaks her antennae and wings, making her unable to exit the flower and die there.
The fig digests the wasp’s body, breaking it down to protein. Meanwhile, her eggs hatch into larvae, mate, and then crawl out of the fig.
Since the wasp dies and was absorbed within the fruit, many vegans don’t eat the fruit and consider fig ‘non-vegetarian’.
However, the commercially grown figs are often grown without this pollination process by the wasp.
Some vegans still eat figs as they say veganism is against the exploitation of animals, while fig pollination is a natural process, without any human intervention.