[896] in Vegetarian_Support_Group
How many vegetarians
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vegetarian Resource Center)
Sun Apr 7 18:00:39 1996
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 17:59:15 -0400
To: vsg@MIT.EDU
From: Vegetarian Resource Center <vrc@tiac.net>
David Seelig posted an excerpt from an alternative medicine WWW page
that claims that onlyu 2% of the US population call themselves vegetarians.
We think that the figure is MUCH MUCH higher.
At last count, about 7-11% of the US population were calling themselves
vegetarians, UNLESS of course, that figure has declined recently
because many ersatz "vegetarians" are NOT REALLY vegetarians and
they know it and correctly answer questions.
Gallup (1990 or 1991) in a poll for the National Restaurant Association
determined that 3% of the USA population is consistently vegetarian
(lacto-ovo or stricter) ALL THE TIME - and that 20% of the USA
population determine where to eat on the basis of whether or not
vegetarian meals are offered, and that about a third of those sampled
determined that they would order vegetarian meals IF they are offered
in any restaurant, since they like vegetarian meals.
Now, that means, negatively, that 2/3 might be unfriendly at an
affective level to their own becoming vegetarians, but it might not
be so negative as we suspect (or experience?).
The shock of the Gallup Poll for vegetarians is that we had been
for many decades been telling the public that 1.5% of the population
is vegetarian and that about .2% (or even .1%) is vegan.
That figure seems to have risen dramatically during the past 20 years.
Education, media information and scrutiny (despite economic and
political disincentives to cover vegetarian issues - see Prof. Chomsky).
In any case, the figure of 2% CLAIMING vegetarian status seems
incredibly low, in recognition of the numerous quality studies
that have been during the past decade.
Maynard S. Clark
Vegetarian Resource Center
vrc@tiac.net
