Countries with the Most Vegans and Vegetarians: What Surveys Show

Which country has the most vegetarians? India, by a wide margin: in a Pew Research Center survey of nearly 30,000 adults, 39% described themselves as vegetarian. After India, the picture blurs. Most other countries have only a handful of surveys, run by different pollsters, with different questions and sample sizes, and the results do not line up cleanly. This article lays out the best-documented national figures, explains why a tidy global ranking would be misleading, and then looks at what the evidence says about the climate case for eating more plants.

Key takeaways

• India has the highest self-reported vegetarian share in this comparison: 39% of adults in Pew's 2019-20 survey, driven largely by religious tradition.
• In the United States, Gallup's July 2023 poll found 4% of adults vegetarian and 1% vegan, little changed from 2012 and 2018.
• Germany's 2024 government nutrition report put vegetarians and vegans together at about 10% of respondents, while 39% regularly bought vegetarian or vegan alternatives to animal products.
• Different surveys of the same country can disagree by a wide margin, because "vegan" and "vegetarian" are self-labels and are defined differently from poll to poll.
• Food systems account for about 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and livestock and fisheries make up about 30% of that share, according to Our World in Data's analysis of Poore and Nemecek (2018).

Why there is no clean ranking

Imagine asking people in different countries whether they are "a runner." One survey counts anyone who jogs on weekends. Another counts only people who race. A third lets respondents decide. The answers would diverge, and you could not rank countries by runners per capita without arguing about the question first. Surveys of diets have exactly this problem.

Three things make the data hard to compare.

Self-identification versus behavior. Most polls ask people what they call themselves. The Vegetarian Resource Group, a US nonprofit that runs its own diet polls, points out that its surveys ask which foods people do not eat, whereas some other polls ask how people identify, and it warns that the two should not be compared directly. Pew's survey of India took the same approach: it explicitly left the definition of "vegetarian" up to the respondent. Someone who avoids red meat but eats fish may say yes in one country and no in another.

Sampling error on small shares. When only 1% of people are vegan, a poll of about 1,000 people finds roughly ten of them. Gallup's July 2023 poll surveyed 1,015 US adults by telephone, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four points for the full sample. Estimates for rare groups are noisy, so a move from 2% to 1% may be real change, or it may be chance.

Different populations and time frames. Pew sampled adults in 26 Indian states and three union territories. Germany's report surveys about 1,000 people aged 14 and older. The Vegan Society's British survey covers adults 16 and over in Great Britain, which excludes Northern Ireland. Comparing these as if they were one dataset ignores who was asked and when.

The best-documented national figures

The table below reports only figures traced to a named survey, with the year, sample, and the main caveat. Gaps in the table are real: for many countries there is no recent national survey that measures both groups on a consistent definition.

Country	Vegetarian	Vegan	Source and year	Main caveat
India	39% (self-described)	Not reported	Pew Research Center, Nov 2019 to Mar 2020, 29,999 adults	Respondents defined "vegetarian" themselves
Brazil	14%	Not measured	IBOPE Inteligência, April 2018	Vegan count of about 7 million is an estimate, not a survey result
Israel	About 8%	About 5%	Survey reported in Israeli media, cited by the Vegetarian Resource Group, 2021	Pollster and year not identified; self-identified
Germany	About 10% (vegetarian and vegan combined)	Included in the combined figure	BMEL Ernährungsreport, Forsa survey, May 2024, about 1,000 people aged 14+	Combined figure; sample is small
United Kingdom	4%	3% (vegan or plant-based)	Vegan Society and Ipsos, 2024, 10,194 adults in Great Britain	Great Britain only; vegan category merges two groups
United States	4%	1%	Gallup, July 2023, 1,015 adults	Margin of error of plus or minus four points

Sources: Pew Research Center (2021); Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira reporting of the IBOPE survey (2018); Vegetarian Resource Group (2021); BMEL via Forsa (2024); Vegan Society and Ipsos (2024); Gallup (2023).

The UK example shows how much the answer depends on the question. A separate commercial survey of British adults, run by Censuswide for the comparison site Finder, put vegans at about 4.7% in its 2024 edition, against 3% for the Vegan Society and Ipsos in the same year. Both are plausible readings of a murky category. Neither is simply wrong.

India: the largest vegetarian population

India's vegetarianism is the oldest and the best documented. In Pew's survey, conducted face to face in 17 languages between November 17, 2019, and March 23, 2020, 39% of adults said they were vegetarian, and 81% said they follow some restriction on meat, such as avoiding certain meats or meat on certain days.

Religion explains most of the variation:

Group	Describe themselves as vegetarian	Limit meat in some way
Jains	92%	Nearly all
Hindus	44%	83%
Christians	10%	66%
Muslims	8%	67%

Source: Pew Research Center, "Eight-in-ten Indians limit meat in their diets, and four-in-ten consider themselves vegetarian," July 8, 2021.

Jainism stands apart because its ethic of non-violence toward living things leads many followers to avoid all animal products. Pew reports that Jains were by far the most likely group to be vegetarian. Hindu practice varies by region, caste, and family, and many Hindus restrict meat on particular days or avoid specific meats, which is why the "limit meat" share (83%) is nearly double the strict-vegetarian share (44%).

This gap between strict vegetarianism and partial restriction is the most important lesson from the Indian data. "Vegetarian" in India often describes a household or a community identity, not an unbroken daily rule. Some people who say yes will still eat eggs, and others may eat meat outside the home. Pew's data captures how people see themselves, which is a real and meaningful measure, but it is not a food diary.

India's share also looks different when expressed in numbers rather than percentages. A 39% share of a country with well over a billion people is a very large absolute count, larger than the entire population of most countries. That is the reason India dominates any list of vegetarians by headcount, and why per-capita rankings and total rankings can tell different stories.

The United States: stable and small

Gallup has asked Americans about vegetarianism and veganism for decades. Its July 2023 Consumption Habits poll found 4% of adults identify as vegetarian and 1% as vegan, similar to its 2012 and 2018 readings. Vegetarianism may have slipped slightly from 6% in 1999 and 2001.

The demographic breakdown is more interesting than the headline:

• Politics: 9% of liberals are vegetarian, about three times the rate among moderates and conservatives.
• Gender: 6% of women say they are vegetarian, against 2% of men.
• Income: Lower-income adults (7%) are about twice as likely as middle-income (4%) or upper-income (3%) adults to be vegetarian.
• Overlap: Fewer than 1% of adults say they are both vegetarian and vegan.

The income result cuts against a common assumption that plant-based eating is mostly a wealthy-consumer trend. In the US sample, lower-income adults were more likely, not less, to describe themselves as vegetarian. Gallup does not explain why, and the sample is small enough that the pattern should be treated as a finding to watch, not a settled one.

The larger point is that the US share of strict vegetarians and vegans has been roughly flat for more than a decade in this poll, even as supermarket shelves filled with plant-based products. That is consistent with the idea that growth in plant-based purchasing is driven by people who still eat meat.

Germany and the flexitarian middle

Germany's Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) publishes an annual Ernährungsreport based on a Forsa survey of about 1,000 people aged 14 and over. In the 2024 edition, vegetarians and vegans together made up about 10% of respondents, unchanged from the year before.

The report also tracks a larger group. Those who describe their diet as flexitarian, meaning mostly plant-based with occasional meat, remained above 40%, down slightly from the two previous years. Adding vegans, vegetarians, and flexitarians together gives more than 50% of respondents who say they are actively shifting toward a plant-oriented diet. Separately, 39% said they regularly buy vegetarian or vegan alternatives to animal products, up from 29% in 2020.

These numbers measure different things, and mixing them up leads to headlines such as "40% of Germans are vegetarian," which is not what the report says. A person who buys a plant-based sausage once a week is a customer of plant-based products, not a vegetarian. For market analysis, that customer matters. For counting vegetarians, that customer does not.

Brazil and Israel: self-identified shares

Brazil's best-known figure comes from an April 2018 survey by IBOPE Inteligência, which found 14% of respondents declared themselves vegetarian, up from 8% in 2012. Some coverage notes the earlier comparison covered metropolitan regions only, so the growth rate is not strictly like-for-like. The Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira estimated about 7 million vegans, but that number was calculated by applying the UK ratio of vegans to vegetarians to the Brazilian total. It is an extrapolation, and there is no Brazil-specific survey that counts vegans directly.

Israel is often called the vegan capital of the world, based on survey figures of about 5% vegan and 8% vegetarian. The Vegetarian Resource Group, which looked into the claim, was told the figures reflect people who call themselves vegetarian or vegan, a label that can mean different things to different people, and it noted the pollster and year were not identified in the coverage it saw. For that reason Israel is best described as having a high self-identified share in at least one widely quoted survey, not as a verified world leader.

Older versions of this ranking listed precise percentages for countries such as Mexico, Taiwan, Switzerland, and Argentina. This article drops them because no recent national survey with a named source could be confirmed for those countries in the sources reviewed. A missing number is more honest than a confident guess.

What drives the difference between countries

Three drivers recur across the data, and they work through different mechanisms.

Religion and tradition. The Indian figures are the clearest case. Where a diet is tied to religious ethics, such as the Jain commitment to non-violence, it is passed through families and communities. Changes happen slowly, and they rarely depend on the price of tofu.

Ethics, health, and environment. In wealthy countries with lower baseline vegetarianism, people who change diets often cite animal welfare, health, or climate concerns. These shifts are typically individual decisions and respond to media attention, new products, and social networks. Germany and the United Kingdom fit this pattern, and so does the "flexitarian" middle in the BMEL data.

Availability and price. The relationship between plant-based eating and income runs both ways. In places where meat is expensive, plant-based meals may be the default. Where meat is cheap and heavily marketed, they are a choice. Gallup's finding that lower-income Americans were more likely to be vegetarian is consistent with price pressure playing a role, though the poll does not say so.

Understanding which driver dominates matters for policy. Climate-motivated dietary change in rich countries is mostly about making plant-based options cheaper, tastier, and culturally normal. In countries with long-standing vegetarian traditions, the main task is not to promote vegetarianism but to ensure the diet remains affordable and nutritionally adequate.

The climate case, with real numbers

The environmental argument for eating more plants rests on an uneven distribution of emissions across foods. Our World in Data, drawing on a major 2018 analysis by Joseph Poore and Thomas Nemecek in Science, reports average greenhouse gas emissions per 100 grams of protein, measured in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (kg CO₂e):

Protein source	kg CO₂e per 100 g of protein (global average)
Beef	About 25 (range 9 to 105 depending on production)
Lamb	About 20
Pork	About 6.5
Poultry	About 4.3
Tofu	About 1.6
Beans	About 0.65
Peas	About 0.4

Source: Our World in Data, "Environmental impacts of food," based on Poore and Nemecek (2018).

The beef range deserves attention. Emissions for beef run from about 9 to about 105 kg CO₂e per 100 g of protein, depending on how the animals are raised and what land is cleared for pasture. Beef from cattle grazed on land that was already pasture has a very different footprint from beef raised on recently deforested land. Averages hide that spread, which is why "beef is 20 times worse than beans" is a rough summary rather than a law of nature.

At the system level, Our World in Data reports that food accounts for about 26% of global greenhouse gas emissions, with livestock and fisheries making up about 30% of that food share. Livestock occupy more than three-quarters of agricultural land, yet provide 18% of the world's calories and 37% of its protein. The land numbers are the second part of the argument: moving food production toward plants frees land, which can store carbon or support wildlife.

What can dietary change achieve? A 2016 study by Marco Springmann and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences modeled the effect of shifting toward plant-based diets that follow dietary guidelines. The authors found that such transitions could cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 29% to 70% by 2050 compared with a reference scenario, with the high end corresponding to the most plant-based diets. The range is wide because it depends on how far diets change and how many people change them.

Two caveats keep the picture honest. First, individual choices add up only if many people make them, and the survey data above shows the strict vegetarian and vegan shares are small in most countries. Second, food emissions are only one part of a household footprint. For a ranked list of other high-impact choices, see our guide to reducing your carbon footprint. For the country-level view of where emissions come from, see countries with the highest CO₂ emissions.

Are meat substitutes better for the environment?

Plant-based burgers and sausages generally have a smaller carbon footprint than beef, since they skip the cattle that generate most beef-related emissions. They are, however, industrial products that require processing energy, and the details vary by brand, ingredient sourcing, and what the comparison product is. Compared with beans, lentils, or tofu, which sit at the low end of the emissions table, a highly processed substitute is not necessarily the best option.

The practical reading: swapping a beef burger for a plant-based burger probably lowers emissions. Swapping a bean stew for a plant-based burger probably does not. Life-cycle studies commissioned by manufacturers tend to compare against beef, so look for the comparison baseline whenever you see a percentage reduction claim.

What the evidence says about health

Health claims about vegetarian and vegan diets attract strong opinions, so it helps to separate what is well established from what is not. Major dietetic associations have concluded that appropriately planned vegetarian and vegan diets can meet nutritional needs at all stages of life. The standard exception is vitamin B12, which is not reliably available from plant foods and generally has to come from fortified foods or supplements. Iron, zinc, iodine, calcium, vitamin D, and omega-3 fatty acids are nutrients that need attention in a diet without animal products.

Much of the research linking vegetarian diets to better health outcomes is observational. People who choose vegetarian diets also differ from the average person in smoking, exercise, and income, so the benefit attributed to the diet may partly reflect those habits. Distinguishing a correlation from a cause is a recurring problem in nutrition science, as we explain in how correlation differs from causation. The gut is another active research area, and our article on the gut microbiome covers how diet shapes the bacteria that digest what we eat.

This article is educational, not medical advice. Anyone planning a major dietary change, especially during pregnancy, childhood, or illness, should discuss it with a physician or registered dietitian.

Plant-based eating, food waste, and farming

Dietary choice is one piece of a wider food system. A country's farming practices, waste, and trade patterns shape its footprint as much as its consumers' plates do. Our rankings of countries that waste the most food and countries with the most organic farming show how those factors differ from country to country. Renewable electricity matters for food processing and transport, covered in our ranking of countries with the most renewable energy.

Health outcomes and diet also vary with wealth and healthcare access, which is one reason that simple comparisons between countries can mislead. For broader context, see countries with the best healthcare systems and countries with the highest life expectancy. Life expectancy differences reflect sanitation, medicine, income, and many other factors, not just what people eat.

What dietetic bodies say about plant-based diets

The strongest institutional statement on health comes from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the largest US association of food and nutrition professionals. Its 2016 position paper, written by Winston Craig, Vesanto Melina, and Susan Levin and published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, concluded that well-planned vegetarian diets, including vegan diets, are healthy and nutritionally adequate and may help prevent and treat certain diseases. It describes them as appropriate for every stage of life and for athletes. The paper reports lower rates of ischemic heart disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, certain cancers, and obesity among vegetarians and vegans, and links this to low saturated fat intake and high intake of fiber-rich plant foods.

The same paper is explicit about the main practical limit: vegans need reliable sources of vitamin B12, such as fortified foods or supplements. The abstract is available through Andrews University's repository. Two caveats from earlier in this article still apply. The position paper dates from 2016, so newer studies may refine its details, and a large share of the underlying evidence is observational. People who choose plant-based diets differ from average eaters in other habits, so the diet may not account for all of the difference in outcomes.

Is the plant-based food market growing?

Survey shares and shopping baskets measure different things, so the sales data are worth reading next to the polls. The Good Food Institute (GFI), a nonprofit that tracks the alternative-protein industry, reported using SPINS and Euromonitor data that US retail sales of plant-based meat and seafood fell 7% in dollars to about $1.2 billion in 2024, with unit sales down 11%. Total US retail plant-based food sales fell 4% to $8.1 billion, with units down 5%. GFI described household penetration of plant-based meat as stable at about 13%, against about 40% for plant-based milk. The AgFunder News summary reproduces the figures.

Globally the picture was less negative: GFI reported retail sales of plant-based meat and seafood rose 4% to $6.1 billion in 2024. These numbers are a reminder of the survey results above. A sales category can stall while the share of people who call themselves vegetarian stays flat, and neither number says how many people are eating fewer animal products. Companies that sell substitutes largely depend on people who still eat meat, which fits the flexitarian pattern in Germany's data. Sales are also only one input to the climate argument, since a household can reduce its footprint by cooking more beans and lentils without ever buying a branded substitute.

Why the same question gets different answers

Small differences in wording can move a survey result by several percentage points, and understanding how is the best protection against misleading headlines. The table shows the common question types and what each can and cannot support.

Question style	Example wording	What it measures	Typical weakness
Self-label	"Do you consider yourself a vegetarian?"	Identity	Includes people who eat fish or poultry
Food-based	"Which of these foods do you never eat?"	Behavior	Misses occasional lapses and context
Purchase-based	"Do you buy plant-based alternatives?"	Shopping habits	Counts meat-eaters who sample products
Frequency-based	"How often do you eat meat?"	Degree of reduction	Harder to compare across countries

Sample size sets a second limit. A poll of about 1,000 people has a margin of error of a few points, which is larger than the entire vegan share in many countries. Our explainers on why sample size changes confidence and what a confidence interval really means show how to read those margins. A 1% result and a 3% result from two polls of 1,000 people may come from the same underlying population.

How to read any "most vegetarian countries" list

When you meet a ranking like this one elsewhere, five questions help separate evidence from decoration:

1. Who ran the survey and when? A named pollster and a year are the minimum.
2. How many people were asked? Samples near 1,000 cannot resolve differences of a point or two.
3. How were the terms defined? Self-labels and food-based questions are different measurements.
4. Is it vegetarians, vegans, or both combined? Some sources merge them, some separate them, and some quietly swap one for the other.
5. Is it a share or a headcount? India leads on headcount partly because of its size.

Applied to the sources above, the answer to "which country has the most vegetarians" is India, on both share and headcount, with the important qualification that Pew's number records identity, not diet. For vegans, no country can be named with confidence.

What this means

The most useful takeaway is humility about the numbers. The best-documented fact is also the oldest: India's vegetarianism is a long-standing tradition, concentrated in particular religious communities, and shaped by the line between strict practice and partial restriction. In the wealthy countries where veganism is growing fastest in the public conversation, strict adherence remains a small minority, between about 1% and 3% in the US and UK surveys, while a much larger group is changing its habits partially.

That has a practical implication for climate and health policy. If most of the movement happens among flexitarians, the largest gains come from making the plant-based option the easy default for people who still eat meat, rather than from converting committed meat-eaters wholesale. The data cannot yet say which approach works best, but it can say who is already moving.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Which country has the most vegetarians? A: India has the highest self-reported share of any country in this comparison. In Pew Research Center's 2019-20 survey of 29,999 adults, 39% described themselves as vegetarian, and 81% followed some restriction on meat. Because India is so populous, it also has the largest number of vegetarians. Pew left the definition of vegetarian to each respondent.

Q: Which country has the most vegans? A: No country can be named with confidence. Israel is often cited at about 5% vegan based on self-identified survey figures, but the pollster and year were not identified in the coverage reviewed. Gallup's 2023 poll found 1% of US adults vegan, and the Vegan Society and Ipsos found 3% vegan or plant-based in Great Britain in 2024.

Q: Why do surveys of the same country disagree? A: Surveys differ in definitions, sample sizes, age ranges, and wording. In Britain, a Censuswide survey for Finder put vegans at about 4.7% in 2024, while the Vegan Society and Ipsos reported 3% vegan or plant-based. Small shares are also noisy: a poll of about 1,000 people finds only about ten vegans at a 1% rate.

Q: Is a vegetarian diet better for the climate? A: Generally yes, per unit of protein. Our World in Data, using Poore and Nemecek (2018), shows beef averaging about 25 kg CO₂e per 100 g of protein, against about 0.4 to 1.6 for peas, beans, and tofu. A 2016 PNAS study found plant-based transitions could cut food-related emissions by 29% to 70% by 2050. Results depend on how far diets change.

Q: Are vegan and vegetarian diets healthy? A: Appropriately planned vegetarian and vegan diets can meet nutritional needs, according to major dietetic associations, but vitamin B12 generally requires fortified foods or supplements. Much of the evidence on health benefits is observational, so some of the benefit may reflect other lifestyle differences. This is educational information, not medical advice, and individual needs vary.

Q: Are plant-based meat alternatives better for the environment than beef? A: Usually they have a lower carbon footprint than beef, because beef is among the highest-emission foods per gram of protein. They are processed products, however, and are not necessarily better than minimally processed legumes such as beans and lentils. The result depends on brand, ingredients, and the comparison baseline.

Q: How many people in Germany are vegetarian or vegan? A: The 2024 Ernährungsreport from Germany's agriculture and food ministry, based on a Forsa survey of about 1,000 people aged 14 and over, put vegetarians and vegans together at about 10%. A separate 39% said they regularly buy vegetarian or vegan alternatives to animal products, which is a purchasing measure, not a diet measure.

Sources

• Pew Research Center, "Eight-in-ten Indians limit meat in their diets, and four-in-ten consider themselves vegetarian" (July 8, 2021): pewresearch.org
• Gallup, "Vegetarianism, veganism" (2023 Consumption Habits poll): news.gallup.com
• Vegetarian Resource Group, "Comparing Polls on the Number of Vegetarians/Vegans" (May 11, 2021): vrg.org
• Our World in Data, "Environmental impacts of food" (based on Poore and Nemecek, 2018): ourworldindata.org
• Springmann et al. (2016), PNAS, "Analysis and valuation of the health and climate change cobenefits of dietary change," DOI 10.1073/pnas.1523119113: oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk
• Poore and Nemecek (2018), Science, "Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers" (summarized via Our World in Data above).
• Germany, BMEL Ernährungsreport 2024 (Forsa survey, May 2024), as reported by Deutsches Ärzteblatt: aerzteblatt.de
• Craig, Melina, and Levin (2016), "Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Vegetarian Diets," Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: digitalcommons.andrews.edu
• Good Food Institute 2024 sales data, as summarized by AgFunder News: agfundernews.com
• Vegan Society, "How many vegans" infographic (Winter 2024): vegansociety.com

Related Reading

• Countries with the Highest CO2 Emissions
• Countries with the Most Renewable Energy Percentage
• Countries with the Most Organic Farming
• Countries with the Best Healthcare Systems
• Countries with the Longest Life Expectancy
• Countries That Waste the Most Food