A nationwide poll published this week has found that 28 per cent of people in the UK identify themselves as ‘meat-reducers’ – and yet restaurants are not doing enough to embrace this trend.
The study by Censuswide looked at the reasons why people are reducing their meat intake in their diets and found that concerns around the environmental impact was high on many people’s lists.
This new survey was commissioned by vegetarian restaurant guide More Than Carrots and surveyed 2,000 UK adults about their dietary preferences. It is further evidence of the growing trend for vegan, vegetarian and ‘flexitarian’ lifestyles in the UK.
The results show that the plant-based trend is even higher among Londoners, with 32 per cent of big smoke inhabitants cutting meat from their diets.
In addition to this survey, a second poll was also carried out among meat-reducers in order to better understand the motivations for making these lifestyle changes. Of 2,000 Brits who identified as meat-reducers, 26 per cent said they are avoiding meat due to its carbon impact on the planet. A further 15 per cent cited aiming to help reduce deforestation as their reason.
Help with eating out
With so many flexitarians wanting to choose plant-based options when hitting the UK’s restaurants, it is surprising then that more than one in five – 22 per cent – of those surveyed said they felt eating out was difficult and that there was a lack of meat-free options on menus.
Almost three quarters said that they have or would avoid a restaurant that lacked meat-free menu options.
Anna Taylor is CEO of The Food Foundation. She said to the Huffington Post UK: “There is a growing demand for more vegetables and less meat among UK consumers, mainly due to an increasing awareness of the benefits to both our health and the environment.
“The eating-out-of-home sector plays a critical role in making delicious tasty dishes full of vegetables as accessible as possible and enabling people to achieve their health-related and environmental goals.”
To help tackle this and support Brits wanting to adopt a meat-free diet, More Than Carrots has launched a new league table of London restaurants aimed at making choices easier for veggies and flexitarians when dining out in the capital.
Annette Burgard, the guide’s founder said to Business Green: “To help them, we are providing the first guide that enables diners to directly compare restaurants, and visit the ones that make it easy for them to choose the most appealing veggie option.”
The league table shows that an impressive 25 per cent of London restaurants are vegetarian! To see the league table visit the More Than Carrots website.
Need some help with reducing your meat impact? Take a look at our Vegan Starter Kit which includes Eating Out Tips.
THIS BLOG WAS WRITTEN IN 2018
