Vegging out: Vegetarianism & veganism have lost some allure, but veganuary continues to rise

Vegging out

‍While it may feel as though the plant-based section of your local grocery store is always growing, and that more veggie offerings are cropping up on your favorite menus, the number of strict vegans and vegetarians in the US has actually been trending in the opposite direction in the last 4 years, according to new data from Gallup's Consumption Habits poll.

The survey finds that meatless dietary choices have fallen to their lowest popularity since the late 1990s, with only 4% of Americans identifying as vegetarian in 2023, and just 1% placing themselves in the vegan category. While it’s too soon to call time on whether we’ve hit “peak vegan” in the US, the fact that the figures have slipped at all is somewhat surprising.

Ongoing debates around the health concerns associated with meat-heavy diets, increased public awareness of the environmental impacts of the industry, and an ever-growing list of celebrities eager to espouse the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle have clearly not swayed the wider population away from meat… at least not full-time, anyway.

‍Part-time veggies

‍Although only a slim proportion of Americans identify as strictly vegetarian or vegan, there does seem to be continued momentum around temporary dietary changes, as projects like “Meatless Mondays” and “Veganuary” gather steam.

Indeed, since 2014, more than 2.5 million resolution-makers globally have signed up to participate in Veganuary, a non-profit annual event that challenges partakers to follow a vegan lifestyle for the entire month of January. This year, over 700,000 people signed up, with many more taking part unofficially, thanks in part to viral content on social media — posts with the tag #veganuary were watched more than a billion times on TikTok.

Indeed, surveys commissioned by Veganuary found that 7% of Americans, 9% of Germans, and 4% of Brits had participated in Veganuary for at least part of the month, which suggests that taking a break from meat, either for the planet or health reasons, is increasingly popular, even if the change is never made permanent. This is consistent with other data from a recent YouGov survey, which saw few people who had previously sustained a plant-based diet actually remaining veggie. The poll found that, while nearly 1 in 5 Americans reported that they’d been a vegetarian at some point in their lives, only 7% identified as a vegetarian at the time of asking (interestingly, a higher number than the Gallup survey).