Who is really eating meat-free? Studies offer widely varying answers
Credit to Author: Randy Shore| Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2019 16:51:23 +0000
If you find yourself triggered by the notion of being “practically vegetarian” or “mostly vegan,” read no further.
“It’s kind of a running joke in the community,” said Corie Kielbiski, a vegan for the past 12 years. “There are so many people who call themselves vegan, but eat a little dairy sometimes because they can’t give up cheese. I’m like, what? No. Are you kidding?”
She laughs it off.
Kielbiski has been eating a plant-based diet for most of her adult life, a practice that is intertwined with her animal-rights activism and extends to everything she buys and wears.
If you believe what you read in headlines and see on social media, you would think that she has a lot of company.
A study last year by researchers at Dalhousie University found that more British Columbians identify as vegan (four per cent) and vegetarian (8.6 per cent) than in any other province. In the under-35 age group, an astonishing 28 per cent say they are vegetarian and 9.2 per cent are vegan.
Corie Kielbiski is director of the Vancouver Island Vegan Association.
“British Columbians are the vegan and vegetarian champions of Canada,” said lead researcher Sylvain Charlebois.
But new research from the University of B.C.’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems suggests the Dalhousie research and similar studies on popular trends should be taken with a grain of salt.
Mirjana Valdes took data from Statistics Canada’s Canadian Community Health Survey, which employs a rigorous two-stage random selection methodology and insistence on subject participation in interviews.
With a pool of 20,000 interviews, the data is as close to bulletproof as it gets, said Valdes, a nutrition researcher and medical student. Rather than asking subjects whether they are vegan or vegetarian, they were asked what foods they never eat, which allowed her to place people in carefully defined categories.
“Vegetarianism appears to mean different things to different people,” she notes. “A person’s self-labelled status may be more of a social identity as opposed to strictly defining what they eat or exclude. … Our study is different, because it focused on the foods that people actually eat and don’t eat, rather than labels.”
“The survey asks whether you ‘completely exclude from your diet’ any of the following foods, and then list a variety of animal products,” she explained. “This is something we haven’t seen in other surveys.”
The data allowed Valdes to populate categories of plant-based eating with a high degree of accuracy.
Meat excluders refrain from eating meats such as beef and pork, but may eat poultry, fish, eggs and dairy. Vegetarians don’t eat meat, poultry or seafood, but may eat eggs and dairy. Vegans never eat meat, poultry, seafood, eggs or dairy.
So, what does the data show?
About five per cent of Canadians practise some version of plant-based eating.
• 1.29 per cent are vegetarian
• 2.81 per cent are meat-excluders
• 0.65 per cent are pescatarian (meaning they eat some fish)
• 0.28 per cent are vegan
“I was absolutely surprised by the number of people in each category, because these diets are so popular nowadays,” she said. “But just over one per cent reported being vegetarian, which is quite low, and only a fraction of one per cent reported being vegan, far less than other widely cited studies.”
Unlike the Dalhousie research, Valdes found no association between any of the versions of plant-based eating and age. Not marital status, either.
There was one exception. “Among people who identify culturally as South Asian, there was a much higher percentage of vegetarians than other Canadians,” she said. “It makes sense because vegetarianism is very common in India and South Asian countries in general.”
There is a disconnect between how people identify themselves and what they actually eat, according to a Dalhousie University study.
Studies that combine self-reported vegetarian status with reporting on dietary intake reveal similar conflicts between people’s self-image and their actual eating habits, according to Valdes’s master’s thesis. A U.S. national health survey found that about one quarter of self-reported vegetarians had consumed red meat in the 24 hours before they were surveyed.
A 2005 B.C. study found that nearly six per cent of people in a population-representative sample reported following a vegetarian diet, but only 1.5 per cent completely refrained from eating meat, poultry and seafood, which closely aligns with Valdes’s conclusions.
Figures from the Dalhousie study that suggested a massive surge in meatless eating among young British Columbians were drawn from a national sample of just over 1,000 Canadians. Respondents are drawn from a pool of people who had agreed to participate in surveys.
“We have surveyed the same questions several times over the years, so we are pretty confident with our numbers,” said Charlebois, the Dalhousie researcher.
They do appear to capture the popular zeitgeist. “Plant-based diet” was the No. 1 diet-related search on Google Canada over the past year.
In the Dalhousie study, about two per cent of Canadians claimed to never eat meat, while one per cent self-identify as vegan and 10 per cent as “flexitarian,” meaning they are vegetarians who occasionally eat meat and fish.
British Columbians were about four times as likely as other Canadians to report some form of plant-based eating.
Adherence to your chosen dietary practice is definitely a point of contention among people who eat a plant-based diet, according to Kielbiski, who is director of VIVA, the Vancouver Island Vegan Association.
“I know there are some people who are vegan, but who eat animal products when they go to a restaurant,” she said.
People are more complicated than their labels, but she doesn’t get angry about it.
However, people who deviate from the vegan lifestyle can attract vitriol and online shaming.
Vegan influencer Alyse Parker touched off a firestorm recently when she claimed that eating “full-on carnivore” for 30 days left her “feeling more mentally clear, focused, wholesome and healthy than I had felt in years.”
That Instagram post drew 6,744 comments ranging from supportive to furious, with some suggesting she seek help for an eating disorder.
“Doing less harm is what’s important in my eyes,” said Kielbiski. “So if that means that someone goes from eating animal products at every meal to eating them once in a while, that’s a good step in the right direction.”
While she is strict with herself most of the time, she did try the White Spot Beyond Meat burger on a recent ferry trip, “even though it’s not a vegan kitchen.”
The sensation was so close to real meat, she found it unnerving. Nonetheless, she applauds big chains that give people meat-free options.
“I used to think it would be so hard to be vegan, especially eating out or eating with other people,” she said. “But as soon as I thought about the animals, I realized I could adjust. It’s not as hard as people think.”
Shira Blustein is the founder of Vancouver’s busy vegan-friendly restaurant The Acorn.
Vancouver and Victoria have a growing roster of vegan restaurants and nearly every decent place to dine has vegan and vegetarian menu items.
“I ask guests, and about 50 per cent are vegan or vegetarian and 50 per cent are not and I love the 50 per cent that are not,” said Shira Blustein, founder of The Acorn. “I’m not here to convert anybody or push a political agenda. We are just making vegetables that taste good.
When the restaurant opened seven years ago, the clientele was almost exclusively women, but men are increasingly part of the mix now, she said.
“I love that I don’t have to explain everything to people anymore; that’s been the biggest shift,” she said. “There was a lot of hand-holding at first, to reassure people that they would just eat vegetables and it was going to be all right and they would be happy.”
Whether young people really are according-to-Hoyle vegetarians or vegans, restaurants are seeing an uptick in sales of meat-free options.
The trendy Chinatown eatery Juniper attracts diners mostly under the age of 45 and between 35 and 45 per cent order a vegetarian or vegan dish, said chef Warren Chow.
The vegan snack board with lentil paté, veggie chips and vegan cheese is every bit as popular as the meat and cheese charcuterie board, he said. “The sales between those two boards is about 50-50.”
“I don’t often get inquiries about making something vegetarian or vegan because my menu has enticing options for our non-meat-eating guests to enjoy,” he said.
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