Are vegetarianism and veganism just half the story? Empirical insights from Switzerland Stefan Mann Department of Socioeconomics, Agroscope, Ettenhausen, Switzerland, and Raluca Necula UASVM Bucharest, Bucuresti, Romania Abstract Purpose – Per capita meat consumption in Switzerland has been rather consistent for decades, although the percentage of vegetarians has risen to 14 per cent according to a recent survey. This study tries to resolve this apparent contradiction Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on household consumption data from Switzerland and focuses on the distribution of consumption rather than on average amounts, using descriptive statistics and a mixed-effects model which explains the coefficient of variation between single consumer consumption amounts. Findings – Vegetarianism and veganism are not only overestimated through surveys but also associated with a segment of the population that is consuming increasing amounts of meat. This dual development leads to a stable per capita meat consumption. Originality/value – Our results indicate that greater scientific attention should be paid to this segment of heavy meat eaters. Keywords Meat, Vegetarians, Veganism, Distribution of consumption Paper type Research paper 1. Introduction Few segments of the food industry receive as much attention as the meat market. The practice of killing animals to enrich our diets has persisted since the origin of mankind, but it appears that an increasing number of people are becoming less and less comfortable with it (Martins et al., 2013; Leitzmann, 2014; Oreskovic et al., 2015). Many philosophers have made repeated cases for vegetarianism (Fox, 2006; DeGrazia, 2009; Singer, 2011; Jenkins, 2012; Raphaely and Marinova, 2014; Rachels, 2016), sparking scientific interest in the movement. Berndsen and van der Pligt (2004) and Riley (2004) found that a large segment of the population—one that by far exceeds the number of vegetarians—considers meat consumption to be problematic. According to Lea and Worsley (2003), most consumers recognize the health benefits of eliminating meat from their diets but still enjoy eating meat and continue to do so. Audebert et al. (2006, p. 239) reported a similar finding: “Red meat hedonism was the best predictor for most of the likings for red and white meat images.” In fact, certain segments of the population are not affected by the trend of vegetarianism at all. When Vanhonacker et al. (2013) created consumer segments with respect to sustainable food choices, they called one segment “unwilling” and another “ignorant”. Following Sobal’s (2005) and Crnic’s (2013) attempt to describe the cultural core of meat consumption in modern society, Piazza et al. (2015) described the underlying attitude of these consumers as one in which meat consumption is considered “necessary, natural, normal and nice”. At the opposite end of the spectrum, vegan diets seem to be on the rise (Kessler and Michalsen, 2016), mostly for altruistic reasons (Janssen et al., 2016; Kessler et al., 2016). Following the emergence of its Western definition in the middle of the 20th century (Watson, 1944; Cross, 1951), several journalists have declared that veganism has become a mainstream BFJ 122,4 1056 The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at: https://www.emerald.com/insight/0007-070X.htm Received 14 August 2019 Revised 15 November 2019 Accepted 29 January 2020 British Food Journal Vol. 122 No. 4, 2020 pp. 1056-1067 © Emerald Publishing Limited 0007-070X DOI 10.1108/BFJ-07-2019-0499