Why are my vegan friends going back to meat?

By Lara Williams

For many, the real meaning of Christmas lies in sharing meals with family and friends. These feasts are often extravagant in style or size (or both) and are designed without our gut microbiomes and arteries in mind: Such is their joy.

They’re also often laden with tradition. My family’s festive table, however, has been through a series of evolutions. My pescetarian childhood Christmas was celebrated around an enormous bowl of pesto pasta. We had a few years of the traditional roast turkey, followed by beef when it was decided a big bird wasn’t worth the stress. Then the feast was vegan until last year, when my parents decided to welcome small amounts of dairy back into their lives.

All the meals were suitably celebratory, but the transition back toward dairy was notable because it echoes a shift I’ve seen multiple times among my peers. Several vegetarian and vegan friends have reverted to eating meat or are considering it, while — at least in my limited experience — no one seems to be going the other way. There’s also been a spate of celebrities renouncing plant-based diets too, including Lizzo, Miley Cyrus and Bear Grylls. Full disclosure: I’ve been a vegetarian for the last seven years, but I sometimes eat fish, and on a few occasions, I have eaten meat. (Some might call me a flexitarian.)

It’s tempting to dismiss a preoccupation with others’ food choices as nosy. But it matters, at least on a macro scale. UK agriculture accounted for an estimated 12 per cent of UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2023, a proportion that has been growing in significance as other sectors’ emissions decline. And as the UK imports around half of its food, our diets have effects beyond those associated with domestic farming.

Looking at it from a consumption perspective, food makes up about 30 per cent of the carbon footprint of a typical household in high-income European countries. Most of that footprint comes from animal products, with livestock farming accounting for 14.5 per cent of global emissions. Governments seeking to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions will have to clean up their nations’ plates.

This doesn’t mean that everyone must go vegan. Given food consumption is highly personal, influenced by numerous factors including culture, allergies and health, that would be an unrealistic goal. But coupled with improvements in production practices and food waste, big reductions can be achieved with small lifestyle shifts. The Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent advisory body, has recommended that UK meat consumption should come down by 20 per cent by 2030. A 2019 report written by Richard Carmichael, a research fellow at Imperial College London, for the CCC says that halving consumption of animal products by avoiding the highest-impact producers would achieve 73 per cent of the emissions reduction made from switching to entirely plant-based diets.

A few years ago it felt like there was a lot of momentum behind the transition to plant-based (or at least plant-heavy) diets. New alternative proteins from companies including Impossible Foods Inc. and Beyond Meat Inc. were hitting the market, and there was a boom in specialist vegan eateries. These days, Beyond Meat’s stock price has plummeted, and there’s a rash of stories about vegan restaurants having to add meat to their menus in order to survive.

So what’s happening to our eating habits?

A YouGov tracker survey shows that the proportion of respondents in the UK identifying as eating fewer or no animal products — from flexitarianism to veganism — largely hasn’t changed over the past five years:

As you’d expect, vegans and vegetarians skew slightly younger — but the differences aren’t huge:

But what people identify as is less important than what they actually eat. Here, data from the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ Family Food Survey has interesting insights. Total meat consumption has been slowly declining, falling to a record low in 2021:

While cheese consumption has increased slightly, consumption of semi-skimmed milk peaked in 2012. Meanwhile, non-dairy milk substitutes have climbed to about 110 milliliters (around 4 ounces) per person a week in 2022 from less than 25 milliliters in 2004, when it was first broken out as a separate category — this still represents only a fraction of cow’s milk being quaffed, but it’s an impressive growth rate.

In the last few years, price has almost certainly been a factor influencing our shopping baskets. As the sticker shocks caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine hit in 2022, you can see drops in consumption of categories including fish and cheese. But our diets have changed a lot since the 1970s, and I suspect the long-term declines in meat consumption are thanks in part to the globalization of food — we didn’t just start importing more produce from overseas (which has enabled us to eat fresh tomatoes, for example, all year), but we’ve been more exposed to plant-based recipes from different cultures.

In that half-century, there’s no doubt that vegetarianism and veganism has become far easier and more socially acceptable. That has ripple effects as meat eaters can also now enjoy more flexible dining selections. But left to society and markets, things are moving too slowly to meet targets for meat consumption, and Carmichael’s work reveals that clear barriers to eating more vegetarian and vegan dishes remain.

Several things swayed my friends back to animal products, including romantic partners, concerns over ultra-processed foods or merely feeling that they were alone in their endeavors. Given governments have generally avoided policies nudging people toward more sustainable diets, it’s no surprise that people are returning to what those around them are doing.

There’s also a lesson for policy in this shift. The failure of vegan restaurants reflects the fact that an exclusive approach is less effective. Vegans and vegetarians socialize with those who eat meat. A social group would likely pick a location where everyone can eat happily. Having both options also normalizes plant-based meals — they are, after all, just food — and makes them more accessible to those who don’t identify as vegan but may want to try a particular dish. Such an approach could be taken with catering at government-funded institutions such as schools and hospitals, which, according to Carmichael, provide 30 per cent of meals in the UK.

But with meat drawn into the culture wars and farmers already angry about a range of policy changes, this is an area that lawmakers are nervous about. At the United Nations climate conference in Azerbaijan, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer insisted that he won’t “tell people how to run their lives.”

In the end, the impetus to coax people further toward a more flexitarian practice — where meals are more heavily plant-based but meat, dairy and fish are enjoyed in moderation — may come from another source: public health.

Although meat consumption has declined overall, there’s been a steady rise in ready meals and processed meats, which has led to overconsumption of saturated fat and salt. In England, 64 per cent of adults were estimated to be overweight or living with obesity in 2022 to 2023. This puts strain on the National Health Service. Obesity costs it £6.5 billion ($8.1 billion) a year and is the second-biggest preventable cause of cancer.

Helping people eat healthier diets with more fruit, vegetables and fiber would have enormous benefits for human well-being and the planet. Research suggests that reducing average meat consumption to two to three servings a week could prevent 45,000 deaths and save the NHS £1.2 billion a year. Starmer may not want to push the envelope, but the government can’t ignore the diet question forever.

Perhaps Christmas isn’t a time to dwell too much on what’s healthy. Enjoy your dinner, whatever is on your plate. But come 2025, we should all reflect on whether our diets are serving our best interests.