The Viral Advice to Wait 90 Minutes for Coffee Is Half Right. The Real Rule Is Different.
For roughly two years, one piece of caffeine advice has been repeated everywhere: wait 90 minutes after waking before your first cup.
News
More People Claim to Be Vegan Than Actually Are, According to a New Study
A major new study has found a striking gap between how many people say they follow a vegan diet and how many actually do, raising fascinating questions about identity, aspiration, and the future of plant-based eating.
You've probably met someone who calls themselves vegan but still eats cheese at parties.
Or maybe you've done a version of it yourself: eating mostly plant-based, leaning into the label, but not quite all the way there.
It turns out, this pattern is not just anecdotal. A sweeping new study has put hard numbers to it, and the results are genuinely worth talking about.
What the Study Found
The research is called "The Aspirational Plate: Mapping the Gap Between Vegan and Vegetarian Identity and Global Behavior," and it was published in April 2026 by Faunalytics, a nonprofit research organization focused on animal advocacy.
Researchers conducted a systematic review of 837 nationally representative data sources spanning 58 countries over a ten-year period from 2015 to 2025.
That is one of the most comprehensive looks at global vegan and vegetarian behavior ever conducted.
And the headline finding? People are significantly more likely to self-identify as vegan or vegetarian than to actually follow those diets.
The Numbers in Europe and North America
In Europe, an average of 1.65 percent of the population claims to be vegan. When researchers looked at actual dietary behavior, only 1.01 percent were maintaining a fully vegan diet.
In North America, 3.24 percent of people identify as vegetarian. Yet only 0.75 percent are actually following a vegetarian diet. That is a gap of more than four to one.
Researchers called this the "identity-behavior gap," and it exists not just in a handful of countries, but as a consistent global pattern.
Why Do People Over-Identify as Vegan?
This is the part I find most interesting, honestly.
The study does not suggest people are being deceptive. It is more nuanced than that.
There are a few things likely driving this gap:
- Social desirability bias. Veganism is increasingly associated with positive traits: being health-conscious, environmentally responsible, and ethical. People naturally want to align their self-image with values they admire.
- Aspirational identity. Many people are genuinely trying to eat plant-based more often. They may follow a vegan diet most of the time but slip occasionally. Calling yourself vegan feels like a statement of intent, not just a daily behavior.
- Definitional confusion. The line between "plant-based," "mostly vegan," "flexitarian," and "fully vegan" is blurry for a lot of people. Some may genuinely believe their diet qualifies, even when it does not by stricter definitions.
- Social pressure and community. Veganism is closely tied to community identity in many circles. Identifying with the group, even imperfectly, is deeply human.
None of this is unique to veganism, of course. The same gap shows up in people who identify as religious but rarely attend services, or those who call themselves environmentalists but fly frequently.
Humans are aspirational by nature. We identify with who we want to be.
The Data Gap That Should Concern Us All
Beyond the identity-behavior gap, the study flags something equally important: the world's data on veganism is wildly skewed toward wealthy Western countries.
A striking 87 percent of the nationally representative data analysed in this study came from Europe and North America.
Yet Europe and North America together represent only about 16 percent of the global population.
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, regions that are home to nearly 40 percent of humanity, had no representative vegan data at all in this review.
This is a serious problem.
It means that when we talk about "global" veganism, we are mostly talking about a relatively small and affluent slice of the world. The conversation is incomplete, and the movement's understanding of itself is built on incomplete information.
Why This Matters for the Plant-Based Movement
If advocates and researchers are working with data that overrepresents Europe and North America, they risk building strategies and campaigns that simply do not translate to the rest of the world.
Countries across South and Southeast Asia already have deep cultural traditions of plant-heavy eating, not out of ethical veganism as a label, but as part of everyday food culture. That context deserves far more attention.
So Does This Mean Veganism Is Failing?
Not at all. The study also found that vegan and vegetarian rates have "risen significantly" over the last decade.
More people are identifying with plant-based values than ever before. More people are reducing their consumption of animal products. The trend line is genuinely moving in a positive direction.
The identity-behavior gap is not a sign of failure. It may actually be a sign of progress.
When a lifestyle becomes aspirational, when people want to identify with it even before they have fully adopted it, that is a powerful cultural shift. It means the values have taken root, even if the daily habits are still catching up.
Think about it this way: someone who identifies as vegan but occasionally eats dairy is probably eating far fewer animal products than they were five years ago. That reduction is real. That progress counts.
We do ourselves a disservice if we treat the gap as a failure rather than as a window into how real behavior change actually works: slowly, imperfectly, and aspirationally.
What This Means If You Are Thinking About Going Vegan
If you are exploring plant-based eating yourself, I think this study is actually encouraging news.
It tells you that you are not alone if you are somewhere in the middle: not fully committed to a label, but genuinely trying to eat more plants, cause less harm, and live more in line with your values.
That middle ground is where most people actually live. And it is a worthwhile place to be.
If you're curious about making a shift, our guide on how to start a vegan lifestyle without feeling overwhelmed is a gentle, non-intimidating place to begin.
And if you're wondering what motivates millions of people to make this change, we've rounded up 20 reasons people are going vegan in 2026, from health to animals to the planet.
A Reflection: Labels and Living
Here is something I have been sitting with since reading this study.
We spend a lot of energy in the vegan space policing labels: who is "really" vegan, who is not, who qualifies, who is faking it.
But what the Faunalytics data actually shows us is that the vast majority of people who identify with veganism are doing so out of genuine aspiration, not deception.
Maybe the most useful question is not "are you fully vegan?" but "are you moving in the right direction?"
More compassion for the process, including our own, might be exactly what the movement needs.
If you want to explore the full research, the Faunalytics original study is a genuinely important piece of work. Well worth a read.
Free 7-Day Vegan Meal Plan
Grocery list included!
No spam. Cancel anytime.
