Ah, yes, the vegan diet. The bane of many Americans, the target of so much ire and so many jokes. Yes, people really do hate vegans. Perhaps because being vegan is actually freaking expensive. There’s also the perception that vegan food sucks, when maybe a lot of people just suck at making it. It’s also associated with hippies, urban hipsters, and, worst of all, California. But unlike Joni Mitchell, very few people are that state’s biggest fan. So it might actually be surprising to learn that Nevada has been ranked number one as the most vegan state. Well, it’s the state that’s most interested in vegan food.
KCR Radio Station, San Diego State University’s radio station, shared a study that used internet search traffic as its main metric, pushing Nevada to the number one spot of all 50 states in the country. However, Nevada still has very high rankings when also looking at the number of vegan restaurants, the number of animal welfare groups, and vegan meetup groups.
While the state home to Sin City might never strike someone as vegan-friendly, Nevada does have some incredibly high tourist rates. By their own estimate, around 52 million people visited Nevada in 2024. It makes some sense why they would have fairly high internet search traffic for vegan-friendly restaurants.
Interest in veganism is declining overall though
If you use different metrics, you get some interesting results as well. When looking at the ratio of vegetarian and vegan restaurants per million people, you find that D.C., Hawaii, Oregon, New York, and California claim the top five spots. We can also use the sales of vegan products to help estimate interest and population size of vegans. However, sales of vegan products are down. Beyond Meat and other companies that produce vegan meat alternatives are seeing a decline in sales, which could be in part due to veganism being under attack from various cultural and political forces.
However, The Guardian makes an interesting case, saying that people working more and generally having less money to spend on such products is the primary cause. It’s difficult to sell new people on a lifestyle that is more time consuming. For instance, how long does it take to cook tofu scramble versus just cracking some eggs? 25-30 minutes versus less than 10 minutes. While people should be free to eat how they want, it’s hard not to see why this niche diet is declining in interest.
