People Are More Likely To Say They're Vegan Than Be Vegan, Finds Study

A new study has found that people are more likely to say that they’re vegan than to actually follow a vegan diet.

The study also found that most nationally representative data on vegan diets comes from Europe and North America, despite those regions representing just a fraction of the global human population, while other regions are significantly underrepresented.

“The Aspirational Plate: Mapping The Gap Between Vegan & Vegetarian Identity And Global Behavior,” is the new study from Faunalytics, a nonprofit research and analysis organization that uses its data and insights to support animal advocacy.

Researchers investigated dietary rates across 58 countries over 10 years by conducting a systematic review of 837 nationally representative sources. The data they gathered indicates a “gap between vegan identity and global behavior.”

While veganism rates have “risen significantly” over the last decade, the researchers described it as more of “a crawl than a sprint.” Europe appeared to be driving global growth, while uptake in other regions either plateaued or could not be estimated.

The ‘identity-behavior gap’ and meat-free diets

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The study also found that people are “significantly more likely” to self-identify as vegan or vegetarian than they are to follow an animal-free diet. Faunalytics said that in practice, this means that while an average of 1.65 percent of Europeans claim to be vegan, only 1.01 percent actually follow a vegan diet. In North America, while 3.24 percent of people claim to follow a vegetarian diet, just 0.75 percent follow one.

Furthermore, the study found that the “vast majority” of the nationally representative data on veganism came from Europe (69 percent) and North America (18 percent), even though those regions only make up roughly 16 percent of the global population.

While 87 percent of the data came from Europe and North America, there was no data for Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, two regions that represent nearly 40 percent of the global population. The researchers found only “extremely limited” data on vegan diets in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, and North Africa.

‘Veganism is something worth aspiring to’

Photo shows a man's hands holding a knife and fork either side of an empty plate. A new study has found that people are more likely to say that they’re vegan than to actually follow a vegan diet — Adobe Stock Faunalytics noted that the identity-behavior gap indicates that veganism is aspirational

In The Aspirational Plate, Faunalytics made several recommendations to close the gap between vegan and vegetarian identity and behavior.

The nonprofit encouraged researchers to “fill the Global South data gap” by prioritizing funding and local collaboration in underrepresented regions; to pair self-ID with intake measures to get a better picture of people’s actual lifestyles; and to clearly define terms like vegan, vegetarian, and flexitarian, which can be misinterpreted.

Faunalytics also recommended treating self-reporting “with caution,” not assuming Europe’s plant-based growth is universal, and seeing the identity-behavior gap as “an opportunity,” as it implies that “veganism is something worth aspiring to.”

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