How many vegans are in the world? Over the half-century, veganism has been the minority of another minority.
What does that mean? According to a 2015 survey run in America, 3.4 percent of the population were vegetarian, and just 0.4 percent were vegan.
But things have changed fast since, and according to The Economist, 2019 is the year of the vegan. Searching Google for veganism shows an increase of 550 percent over the last five years.
In the U.S., we’ve jumped from 0.4 percent to almost 3.5 percent that identifies as ‘vegan’. In the U.K. alone, veganism has risen by 300 percent over the previous five years, reaching 650,000 citizens.
That’s just a bit above 1 percent of the country’s total population.
Vegan Inflated Numbers
However, the numbers are inflated by plant-based diet eaters’ catalogs as vegans. But what does that mean?
Well, it is essential to understand that veganism is a specific lifestyle and not just a ‘plant-based’ diet.
Plant-based diets describe vegetarians who choose to eat a ‘vegan’ as in only plant-based foods.
So if you do not have a cruelty-free lifestyle, then you’re not vegan but just a plant-based eater.
My partner and my parents are flexitarians. That means they choose to eat what they want when they want.
On occasion, they decide to have plant-based diets for more extended periods.
When interviewed, they’d answer that from a diet point of view.
They eat plant-based foods. But that catalogs them as vegetarians to media, which then would only inflate the data relating to the numbers of vegans.
Also, as is the case with my parents and my partner, the choices for food are frequently changing, and so does the data.
The correct way to assess vegans is by looking not at the food they eat but at their life choices.
Vegan, Not Vegetarian
The best example is the ‘Vegetarianism in America’ research published by Vegetarian Times Magazine.
The study shows that 7.9 million people in the U.S. – 3.4 percent of the U.S. population – follow a vegetarian-based diet.
However, only 1 million of them (that’s approximately 0.5 percent) have a vegan lifestyle.
Perceived as more conscious when compared with plant-based diets, people that follow a vegan lifestyle have removed all animal-based products from both their diets and their fashion choices.
Thanks to the Hindu religion, India is one of the most vegetarian-friendly countries in the world.
Hinduists in India make up the majority of the population, up to 42 percent of the Indian population, which totals 1.2 billion.
But, there is no official data on how many lifestyle vegans are in India or worldwide.
Veganism is Taking Over
Veganism is seeing an explosive rise, and significant growth comes from Western countries, Eastern Europe, and Israel.
Moreover, as cultures and landscapes change for the better, the concept of a vegan lifestyle has started to gain ground across countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa as well, making veganism the world’s fastest-growing trend.
Finally, recent data shows that over the next ten years, at least 1 in 10 people will become vegan.
