![\"World](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/world-map.jpg\")
There is no doubt that veganism is growing and moreover is doing so in just about every country out there. Some nations are ahead of the curve and have long had large numbers of vegans whilst others, often more traditional societies where meat is part of the culture, may be yet to quite experience the same vegan explosion.<\/p>\n
We have already considered how many vegans there are in the UK<\/a> but here we delve a little deeper into some global stats on veganism. As with UK stats, there are no hard figures on this because it is not something that is generally asked in censuses or other similar official government reports. And, of course, people change: one day a person might be enjoying a bacon sandwich, the next day they might see the green light and become a vegan! Anyway, difficult though it is to give a truly definitive answer with any great certainty, we shall attempt to uncover which country has the most vegans.<\/p>\n When we are looking at which country has the most vegans, there are two obvious numbers that might be of interest. First is the country with, well, the most vegans. By this we mean in an absolute sense, so not in proportion to the overall population of the country. The second stat to consider, and perhaps the one that might be of more interest to many people, is which country has the highest percentage of vegans.<\/p>\n Obviously a big country like the USA (population 331m) is going to have more vegans that a much smaller nation like Israel (population 9.2m). But it gives us a better idea of how popular and widespread veganism is within a nation to look not at the absolute number of people following a plant-based lifestyle but instead to try and uncover which country has the most vegans in comparison to the overall population. In this piece, we will consider both questions but let\u2019s start with the second one.<\/p>\n Trying to answer this question really is tricky because there has been no wide-ranging global study considering the issue. Different nations and organisations may have conducted research but this has been at varied times and using differing techniques. Some have lumped veganism and vegetarianism together, others have looked at whether people do or would try vegan alternatives, or whether they intend to go vegan or approve of greater regulation to protect animals.<\/p>\n Information on these sorts of studies is handily available in one place<\/a> but does not help us a great deal in answering the question at hand. Other sources have used Google search trends to ascertain where veganism is the most popular. Research<\/a> of this nature in 2020 showed that the United Kingdom was the leading country for veganism.<\/p>\n Google trends gave the UK a perfect 100 out of 100 score, with Australia second on 87, Israel on 84, Austria on 82 and New Zealand on 81. Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada and Ireland completed the top 10. However, it is unclear what exactly these scores mean, and it is also clear they do not directly correlate with the number of vegans in a given nation. Whilst some searches, such as \u201cvegan restaurants in Leeds<\/a>\u201d or \u201cvegan protein powder<\/a>\u201d, might give a good indication that someone is vegan, they are far from perfect, and others such as \u201cwhy do people hate vegans<\/a>\u201d are certainly far more ambiguous.<\/p>\n The fact is that when we consider which country has the highest percentage of vegans, or the highest total number, we are really having to use quite a lot of guesswork, or estimation as we prefer to call it! For our more in-depth analysis regarding vegan numbers in the UK, we looked at four different pieces of research and tried to read between the lines.<\/p>\n However, with studies using different definitions of veganism (many, for example, focus solely on diet rather than lifestyle), asking different questions, typically being self-reporting and often having a limited sample size or a fairly clear bias (either for or against veganism) it really, really<\/em> is hard to come up with anything too meaningful.<\/p>\n Having said that we are having to rely on guesswork to a large extent, there is one thing we feel we can say with a fair degree of confidence. And that is that in absolute terms it is India that has the highest number of vegans. An IPSOS poll<\/a> back in 2018 suggested that 3% of the global population followed a vegan diet. This same study showed that a massive 19% of Indians are vegan, or at the very least followed a vegan diet.<\/p>\n The latest population data<\/a> tell us that India is the second-most populous nation, with almost 1.4bn people! That means there are around 260m vegans in India. Given those same population stats show us that only China (just over 1.4bn), India, USA (331m) and Indonesia (274m) have populations that exceed that 260m figure, we think we can safely say that India does indeed have more vegans than any other nation on Earth.<\/p>\n There are major limitations to this study, perhaps the most obvious being the relatively low sample size. In addition, it only looked at 28 nations, though there was an attempt to be broadly representative on a global scale. Even so, it seems almost certain that India would have the most vegans given its huge population and that compared to the only other comparable nation, China, far more people are vegan.<\/p>\n However, many would argue that this number is far too high. Whilst many in India are vegetarian, with this being a key tenet of Hinduism (the country\u2019s major religion), as well as Buddhism and Jainism, some feel that few Indians are actually vegan. Whilst cows are largely considered sacred, most Indians consume milk, either as a drink, in the form of paneer (cheese), as yoghurt, or even through ghee<\/a>, the clarified butter that is used for much cooking.<\/p>\n There has even been research that has suggested that vegetarianism is not as widespread as many people would have thought. An article on the BBC website<\/a> suggested that non-meat-eating is overreported for political and cultural reasons and that actually as few as 20% of Indians may be vegetarian. Many estimates put that number at between 23% and 37% (the IPSOS poll reports 22% though to be fair).<\/p>\n If vegetarianism is over-reported then we can be confident that veganism is too. Offsetting that, though, are claims that there were a massive 500m vegetarians in India. However, that same source<\/a> noted that of those, \u201conly one per cent are strict vegans. So, the total number of vegans in India is around five million.\u201d<\/p>\n The fact that we have some sites saying this huge nation has five million vegans, whilst we have a study suggesting the number is actually well over 250m, says a lot about how hard it is to get a clear picture of the situation. In reality, the truth is most likely somewhere in the middle of those numbers, with the five million figure representing fewer than 0.5% of the population and, as we have stated, the 260m figure being 19%.<\/p>\n Both of those numbers are very extreme when compared to the typical percentages for veganism that have been estimated or reported in other nations. Wikipedia may not be the most trusted website in the world but in the past decade, its standards have certainly improved. They look at a range of countries<\/a> (43 in fact, including many of the ones where veganism is known to popular) and the percentage of vegans ranges from 0.3% to 9%. Most fall within a far smaller range of between 1% and 5%, so that would suggest the numbers for India are unlikely to be as low as five million and almost certain not to be as high as 260m. That being said, it should be noted that these numbers concern dietary vegans, whereas many would be keener to know about \u201cfull\u201d vegans who try to eliminate all animal goods from their lives.<\/p>\n Data which we can assume is more robust in general than that found on Wiki (although to give the much-maligned online encyclopaedia its dues, the Wikipedia page linked to above does cite this info as the source for some of its stats) comes from Statista<\/a>. They note that:<\/p>\n In 2021, around three percent of responding German consumers between 18 and 75 years of age followed a vegan diet. In Brazil, China, Mexico, and the U.S. between one and two percent of respondents ate vegan. The noteworthy standout is India where close to a tenth of respondents said they typically follow a vegan diet. (The figure for India was 9%.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The fact that their figure lies somewhere very close to the middle of the previously quoted 0.5% and 19% is interesting and we would say that this may well be the most accurate estimation we have. That would put the number of vegans in India at around 125m and on that basis we would be very confident that no country has more vegans than India. Estimates of China\u2019s total of vegetarians are around 4% so even if they had as many vegans \u2013 which is almost certainly not the case \u2013 they would still fall way short of India.<\/p>\n We have fairly reliable stats on the size of the population in each country around the world, so if<\/em> we had decent records for the number of vegans in each country it would be simple enough to calculate which country had the highest percentage of vegans. But as we have seen, we do not have reliable stats on the number of vegans anywhere really, even in states where record-keeping is good, surveys, polls and official research is common and we know veganism is popular.<\/p>\n As such, we are once again left to what amounts to educated guesswork. Countries, such as India, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Israel and a handful of other places where we know veganism is widespread, are certainly in the debate. Many consider Israel to have the highest proportion of vegans, with Omri Paz, who founded an Israeli non-profit organisation called Vegan Friendly (great name!), stating<\/a> \u201cWe\u2019re considered the most vegan country in the world. Things are happening here before other places.\u201d He pointed to stats that showed that 5% of Israelis were vegan but whether that really does put Israel top of the pile is debatable.<\/p>\n Various studies suggest the number in India could be higher, as we have seen, whilst others suggest that the UK could have as much as 8% of its population being vegan. Ultimately, we can never really know how many vegans there are in a given place because it is very much a moving target. Given how quickly veganism has grown in recent years it should be unsurprising that many vegans have been following a plant-based lifestyle for only a short period of time.<\/p>\n How many of these will truly stick the course and be life-long vegans is impossible to know, whilst of course new people are adopting a greener way of life every day. And, that\u2019s before we even get to the issue of whether a dietary vegan is really a vegan, or whether we only class someone as such if they attempt to remove all animal products from all aspects of their life.<\/p>\n Unfortunately we do not have any truly accurate stats when it comes to the number of vegans within any given country. We certainly do not have enough comprehensive research to confidently state which nation in the world has the highest proportion of vegans.\u00a0However, due to its huge population and strong cultural and religious links with vegetarianism, we can be almost certain that India has the most dietary vegans in terms of the absolute number.<\/p>\n Aside from the lack of robust research into the issue, a major problem with ascertaining vegan numbers is that different studies and surveys may well look at different things. One country may look at dietary veganism, whereas another may look at \u201cfull\u201d, all-encompassing veganism. Equally, some polls have failed to differentiate between veganism and vegetarianism. In addition this is a very fluid area, with the number of vegans always changing as people alter their lifestyles and food choices.<\/p>\n Through all of this, perhaps the one thing we can be sure of is that veganism is growing. We know this because of the huge growth in vegan restaurants<\/a>, vegan convenience food and any number of vegan products, such as vegan protein powders<\/a>. In addition, the various search engines out there are all reporting huge growth in vegan-related terms. So, whilst we might not be sure where exactly all these vegans are, we can at least be sure that there are more than ever before!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4554,"template":"","acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/4552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Country with Most Vegans Hard to Calculate<\/h2>\n
![\"Vegan](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/vegan-spelled-in-veg.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCountries with Highest Percentage of Vegans<\/h2>\n
![\"Union](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/union-jack-in-fruit.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThe United Kingdom May Be a Contender<\/h3>\n
Lots of Guesswork<\/h3>\n
Most Vegans in Total: India<\/h2>\n
![\"India](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/india-flag-in-veg.jpg\")
<\/p>\n19% Too High?<\/h3>\n
Between 5 Million & 260 Million in India?<\/h3>\n
Statista Reports That 9% in India Are Vegan<\/h4>\n
What About the Country with the Highest Percentage of Vegans?<\/h2>\n
![\"Israeli](\"https:\/\/www.veganfriendly.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/falafel-israeli-flag.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWidespread Veganism: India, the UK, Australia, New Zealand & Israel<\/h3>\n
No Way to Truly Calculate Vegan Numbers<\/h3>\n
Conclusion: It’s Hard to Know For Certain<\/h2>\n
Studies May Be Including Vegetarianism<\/h3>\n
One Thing Is for Certain: Veganism Is Growing!<\/h3>\n