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Going Vegan Or Vegetarian- Many Paths To One Goal (Faunalytics)

Background

Vegans are the backbone of farmed animal advocacy. Even in a time of increased focus on corporate lobbying campaigns, nearly every advocacy group is putting resources toward getting people to “try veg,” “go vegan,” or “leave meat off your plate.” Many of these campaigns incorporate lessons learned through research and impact evaluation, as there is now a fair bit of well-conducted research exploring how to create new vegans and vegetarians (collectively called veg*ns in this report).

At the same time, research about how to assist and retain new vegns—particularly those who adopt a dietary change outside the context of an advocacy campaign—is very limited. Improving our understanding and support of new vegns is particularly important as the public’s exposure to plant-based eating and veganism continues to increase. We do not want people to treat vegetarianism and veganism as fad diets to be tried and discarded. Faunalytics (2014) showed that there were far more former veg*ns in the U.S. than current ones, many of whom tried the diet for only a short time.

Upcoming Reports

The purpose of this study is to provide solid data for advocates about how to turn those short-term vegns into permanent vegns. This is the first of several reports that will come out of this study.

Participants

This study includes 222 members of the general public in the U.S. and Canada, all of whom had started transitioning to a vegan or vegetarian diet within the past two months.

The Level of Commitment section of this report shows that more than 90% of the sample said they would probably or definitely continue their new diet change permanently. Therefore, it may be best to consider this sample representative of people who have already moved beyond a simple interest or desire to change into the stage where they are ready to actively work toward a veg*n goal.

Key Findings

  1. Most people transition to veganism or vegetarianism gradually. Just 21% of people went veg*n overnight. 38% planned to transition over a few days or weeks, 34% over many weeks or a few months, and 7% over many months. After six months, people who transitioned more slowly tended to feel less successful and be further from their goal diet than those who transitioned more quickly—but they were just as likely to continue with it as the others.
  2. For people who reduce gradually, we found no significant evidence that any one reduction method works better than another. Whether people reduced their total consumption a bit at a time, their consumption of particular foods one at a time, or a combination of the two, rates of success were not significantly different.
  3. When going vegan or vegetarian, imperfection is the rule rather than the exception. On average, by the end of the six-month tracking period, 88% of participants felt successful but were still consuming 6.1 more monthly servings of animal products than they intended. Further, just 28% of participants felt completely successful, although 57% had met or surpassed their goal level of consumption.
  4. The typical person reduced their animal product consumption by 42.1 monthly servings over the first six months or so of going veg*n. That is, they ate 42.1 fewer servings of animal products per month by the end of the study than they were before they began their dietary transition. For new vegetarians, this meant going from about 15 servings a week to under 6. For new vegans, it meant going from about 12 servings a week down to one serving per week and a half—not perfect, but getting close to eliminating all animal products.
  5. Choosing veganism over vegetarianism appears to be more common than it used to be. In this general population sample, 41% of people were working toward veganism, 59% toward vegetarianism (1.4 times as many). We compare this against our 2014 study showing that at the time, there were 3 times as many vegetarians as vegans. (At the same time, methodological differences between the two studies could exaggerate the change, so the extent of it should be considered uncertain.)
  6. People with spouses or children tended to be further from their veg*n goals after six months compared to unmarried people without children. These findings point to some key competing demands and indicate that they may make progress more difficult.

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