@afewbugs @ElliesSurviving less wealthy people are more likely to eat veggie. It's also cheaper.

Veganism is a social justice movement, and I think that makes the difference here on the fediverse.

@afewbugs @ElliesSurviving

While comments like this are often well-intentioned, it's a myth that vegetarian and vegan diets are generally accessible only to economically privileged people, and therefore more common among those with higher incomes. In fact, research consistently shows the exact opposite to be true. Even in the USA, where meat consumption across the board tends to be exceptionally high compared to most other countries, those with incomes near or below the poverty line are about twice as likely to be vegetarian or vegan compared to those with above-median incomes (and, for that matter, those with near-median incomes).

> In terms of income, vegans and vegetarians are most likely to be earning below $30,000 a year while the diets are rarer among high earners.

https://www.statista.com/chart/14989/who-are-americas-vegans-and-vegetarians/

As for why veg people are statistically overrepresented on this platform, my guess is that it has more to do with politics. Mastodon's user base skews overwhelmingly left / liberal, and looking at the data from that same study, those who self-described as "liberal" were like 2 - 5 times more likely to be veg than those who self-described as "conservative" or "moderate". (This gets into another pet peeve of mine — the stereotype that left / anticapitalist / countercultural politics are mainly the purview of affluent "coastal elites", when in fact those ideas are more popular among the very poor and stigmatized minorities — but I'm getting carried away at this point... 😅)

#Vegan #Vegetarian

@afewbugs @ElliesSurviving except for those of us who are... distinctly less wealthy than average

for myself: the combination of not being all that well off, not having any cooking ability at all, not having a decent supermarket within walking distance (i don't drive, and public transport is crap here), and having what seems to have become pretty severe IBS (with particular issues with plant-based protein, it's turned out) means that if i were to try being vegetarian, even, i'd rapidly end up with nothing to eat. i wish i could, but... i can't :-(