This Is How Many Vegetarians There Are in the Netherlands (Fewer Than You Think!)
Meat substitutes and vegetarian menu options have become completely commonplace by now. Thankfully, the days when you had to comfort your hungry belly with mushroom risotto or a tough spinach quiche as a vegetarian are long behind us. But when you look at the figures, you’ll probably be just as surprised as we are: there really aren’t that many vegetarians in the Netherlands.
CBS researches pretty much everything in the Netherlands that can be counted or calculated. That includes how many people would rather stop eating meat. In the Netherlands, it turns out to be just 5 percent of all people aged 18 and over. Some do eat fish, which is another 3 percent. Being completely vegan applies to just 0.4 percent of all the Dutch people surveyed; converted into actual numbers, that amounts to 53,000 people. And most vegetarians have not eaten meat or fish for longer than a year, so it’s not just a passing whim.
Flexible
Many more people do eat meat, but not necessarily every day. Almost half of all people turn out to be flexitarians; they eat meat only four days a week. The research also shows that many people have started eating less meat—this applies to 35 percent of meat eaters. Twenty percent of people in the Netherlands eat meat every day.
Climate
Most flexitarians skip meat because it’s better for the climate. Vegetarians mainly do so because of animal suffering and factory farming; for this group, the climate is the second-most important reason. Health is also mentioned as a reason to eat less or no meat, and the final reason is: I don’t like the taste of meat.
