A growing number of vegans are shunning1 sex with meat-eaters

They say you are what you eat, and growing numbers of vegans are shunning sex with meat-eaters because they see them as "a graveyard² for animals", a New Zealand researcher says.

These vegans not only refuse to eat meat or animal products but refuse to have sexual contact with meat-eaters because their bodies are made up of dead animals, the researcher was reported saying in The Press newspaper on Tuesday.

Annie Potts, co-director of the New Zealand Centre of Human and Animal Studies at New Zealand's Canterbury University, said she coined the term vegansexuals during her research.

She discovered the vegansexuals while interviewing 157 vegetarians³ and ethical⁴ consumers for a study.

"It's a whole new thing -- I have not come across it before," said Potts.

One vegan said while she found non-vegans attractive, but would not want to be physically⁵ close to them.

"I would not want to be intimate with someone whose body is literally⁶ made up from the bodies of others who have died for their sustenance," she said.