Less than 0.8% of Americans are vegans, meaning they do not consume any animal products. Vegetarians, those that don’t eat meat, are also surprisingly rare. Between 1994 and 2009, between 97% and 99% of the US population ate meat.
This may be surprising considering recent reports that the US is going through a healthful food revolution and that the number of vegetarians is increasing. This misperception is due to the fact that some people claim they are vegetarian but actually aren’t. In a poll by CNN, 60% of self-proclaimed “vegetarians” said they had eaten meat, fish or poultry in the last 24 hours.
A week later, CNN called these same “vegetarians” and asked what they had eaten in the past day. This time, 66% of them had eaten meat. Wonder if they know the definition of “vegetarian”?