Vegetarianism!

What’s Vegetarianism?

Starting with a definition from our beloved Wikipedia:

“Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, and the flesh of any other animal), and may also include abstention from by-products of animals processed for food.”

As a personal disclosure, I have started my road to vegetarianism from the end of 2017. However, most of the time I have been pescatarian, and being Portuguese should allow for some sort of excuse to this. Hopefully…

Last year (2018), me and my girlfriend, who’s vegan, were travelling in Southeast Asia - very confident that it would be easy to find feasible meal solutions, considering the reports from our friends who travelled the region. This confidence got a fierce reality check!

Starting in Singapore when we passed by a place in Chinatown named “… Vegetarian”, we decided to enter and couldn’t help but get surprised while reading “Vegetarian Chicken”, “Vegetarian Pork”, etc. Basically, no vegetarian options…

After Singapore we visited Malaysia, where also didn’t feel the vegetarianism culture was largely widespread.

Finally, last stop: Bangkok, Thailand! If you go on a stroll in the famous Khaosan Road, I believe you won’t find more than 2 places with a vegetarian Pad Thai version on the menu.

This adventure, led me to the question:

What’s the country with most Vegetarians?

Below you will find a map which answers to that question!

And the winner is… India! This actually turns out to be quite funny since on that trip we were eating quite some Indian cuisine, namely on the Little India neighbourhood in Penang, Malaysia.

This may not have been a huge surprise considering that India is majorly Hinduist, which imposes greater restrictions on meat consumption than Christianism, for example. Wealth factor would have an impact too, but that’s not the focus of this article.

Now, what may be more interesting is that the 2nd place is shared by 3 countries, which are very different among themselves:

• Brazil
• Switzerland
• Taiwan
  

I must admit Brazil came to me as a shocker given the large culture of BEEF in the country through the famous “Churrasco” or “Rodízio”. However, this seems to be very real and part of a boom in the shift away from meat-consumption.

In Switzerland it seems the reasons are closely linked to the high cost of meat and also with the vegan-trend factor that is currently flourishing in Europe.

Finally, Taiwan seems to borrow its reasons from both these countries: religion (Buddhism) and the fashionable part of being a vegan (from the West)!

As a final note, it looks like Burger Kind just launched its Rebel Whopper (Whopper’s vegetarian option) in Europe.

Vegetarians by Country Table

Sources

Data Source: most of the data used was taken from Wikipedia, with few exceptions: Wiki: Vegetarians by Country

Code Source: GitHub Page

Cover Image Credits: © Alexander Raths | Shutterstock