Facts and Figures

Number of UK vegetarians

• 4.5% of the UK population have a vegetarian or vegan diet. (NDNS 2018/19) [1]
• The latest figures show there are just over 3 million vegetarian and vegans (adults and children over the age of 18 months) in the UK. [2]

Meat-free Market

• In the UK, people ate 17% less meat in 2019 than in 2008. [3]
• In 2020, consumers in the United Kingdom spent almost £600 million on meat-free food items. This is almost twice the spend of 2016. [4]
• One in five ready-meals are plant-based or vegetarian. (Ready Meal survey from Eating Better 2021) [5]
• The global market for meat-substitutes is forecast to grow from 5.4bn USD in 2021 to £10.8bn in 2028 (Fortune Business Insights) [6]
• The plant-based alternative market in the UK and EU is forecast to grow from £3.9bn in 2019 to £6.6bn in 2025 (ING economics report 2020) [7]

Health

• Vegetarians have 14% lower cancer risk than meat-eaters (WCRF Feb 2022) [8]

Environment

• We should be eating 30% less meat by 2030. (National Food Strategy Report. 2021) [9]
• For a daily meat-eater, a 30% reduction means just two meat-free days a week. [10]
• A 75% reduction in global agricultural land use would be achieved if everyone switched to a plant-based diet. (Our World In Data) [11]
• Plant-based proteins produce 70 times less greenhouse gas emissions than an equivalent amount of beef, and use 150 times less land. (National Food Strategy Report. 2021) [12]

If more people chose vegetarian food, we would have less impact on animals whose habitats are adversely affected by climate change:

• Global wildlife population sizes have plummeted by 60% in less than 50 years. [13]
• One in six species is at risk of extinction if we fail to act on climate change. (Foreword WWF & Buglife 2019 Bees & Climate Report) [14]
• A study by the University of Oxford demonstrated that in countries such as the UK, where incomes are relatively higher than other parts of the world, a whole food vegetarian or vegan diet works out considerably cheaper than a meat-based diet. [15]

Cost

• The Future of Food study, published in the Lancet in 2021, compared the cost of plant-based and meat-based diets in 150 countries, and found that consumers could cut their food bills by a third by adopting a plant-based diet. (Vegan diet: 21-34% cheaper. Vegetarian diet: 27-31% cheaper. Flexitarian diet: 14% cheaper). [16]

Vegetarian School Food

In 2019, a food industry poll of 1,000 school students (aged 8-16 years) found:

• 70% of children want to see more vegetarian and vegan meals on their school menu. [17]
• 77% of meat-free youngsters admitted that they’d had to eat meat at some point because of the lack of options available to them. [18]
• 81% parents reported there are not enough healthy and tasty vegetarian options at their children’s school. [19]

Last updated October 2022.