Where's the beef?
The proportion of people in the UK who follow plant-based or vegetarian diets is unchanging.
Vegans. They’re everywhere, aren’t they? Well, no.
Very few people in the UK are vegans. Only 2% - about one in 50 people. You may have read (here, here and here) about stores abandoning plant-based product lines in the wake of the cost-of-living crisis, and there has been a decline – from a peak of a whopping 3% in July 2021.
The vast majority of people are meat-eaters, and the next largest group are flexitarians – people who only eat meat or fish occasionally. These two groups alone currently account for 86% of consumers. Five years ago, they also accounted for 86% of consumers.
For the sake of completeness, there has also been absolutely no change in the proportion of people who are vegetarian (5% now, 5% in 2019) and pescatarians (3% now, 3% in 2019). Despite it being the subject of endless column inches and debate, the dietary choices of people in the UK are essentially unchanging.
Why do we think this trend is increasing?
This data is the kind that catches people out. It feels like there should be growth in the number of people who follow a plant-based diet. Our daily experiences and observations seem to give us ample evidence of that increase. We see more plant based or meat-alternative options in supermarkets and virtually every menu in every restaurant has a vegan option. And although 2% is a small percentage, it’s still a large number – accounting for just under 1 million adults in England and Wales – so chances are that we all know vegans, even if we don’t follow plant-based diets ourselves.
It's also just possible that this is the kind of trend that is slightly exaggerated in media commentary, like here, here, here and here. What’s particularly interesting about the tone of that commentary is that it suggests (sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly) that it is a younger generation driving an aversion to meat and dairy. That suggestion also allows it to be absorbed into broader cultural discourse, with vegan as code for ‘woke’.
But the data don’t back this up at all. There’s a bit more fluctuation in the dietary choices of 18-24s (Gen Z adults) - it looks like a large-ish number did eat less meat in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic (around the time Cop26 focussed minds on the climate crisis) but any adjustment proved short lived. It’s also possible that sample sizes are playing a role in the fluctuation here - this is a small cohort.
Regardless, at the start of this year, only 4% of that group were vegan. 64% said they eat meat – almost the same as the proportion who ate meat in 2019 (67%).
The other reason we might assume that there are more vegans than there are, or that the number is rapidly increasing, is because plant-based food has become so much more visible.
Aisles in supermarkets are devoted to it and plant-based meat has become a curiosity item – one that a lot of people have tried, without necessarily switching to full time. It’s easier to notice these things when supermarket signage directs us to them, when the packaging becomes more appealing and when we see adverts for oat milk on billboards. But supermarkets have always sold falafel. Despite some innovation, a lot of these lines have always been there.
What does this mean?
In the short term, veganism will remain surprisingly divisive. In Trajectory’s regular polarisation tracker we explore the issues that the UK public would most and least like an organisation or brand to weigh in on. Veganism is always the most polarising issue – as many people would be turned off by a brand taking a stand on plant-based diets as would be attracted to it. It’s strange, given how many other issues there are to be at loggerheads over, to care so much about what people choose to eat - but it is perhaps reflective of how little people know about how widespread veganism actually is.
Although a small proportion of the population, vegans will continue to have an outsized impact. Partly that’s because small percentages are still fairly large numbers in terms of people, but also because in a group of ten, the person with the plant-based diet will steer group decision making to a venue that caters for all. Or at least, they should, if they want to carry on being friends.
It remains highly likely that the proportion of people in the UK who eat meat declines over the next few decades. But the decline will be slow, driven by climate urgency and rising prices. Younger groups are already a little more likely to avoid meat than older groups. It’s equally likely that the bigger change though will be in frequency with which we eat meat, rather than cutting it out altogether. It could be a delicacy that we go out to eat, rather than something we cook at home.
It’s also possible that this trend isn’t slow forever. Recent declines in the plant based market have been attributed, at least partly, to cost-of-living pressures and people defaulting to trusted and cheaper options. If and when those financial pressures each, we could see a sustained rise in meat and dairy alternatives again.
Interesting. From a dining out / ordering in perspective, veganism is one of those things a lot of restaurants have to negotiate to keep customers. In my household there is a flexitarian, a vegan, and a celiac. When my omnivorous but lactose-intolerant son visits, he brings his gluten-intolerant girlfriend. Plus I have a vegan son whose new girlfriend is vegetarian. So either I have to cook several different menus, or we have to make sure a restaurant can cater for all of these weird eaters (and when we do find one, we become regular customers). It's a real chore. Also, ingredient-checking-fatigue may be one of those factors affecting the popularity of special vegan concoctions on supermarket shelves, especially when "Free From" labels can apply to plant-based and/or GF options.