Why is it so difficult to get numbers of vegans in the world?

[bigbossomni]

is there a way to block you jebus? I'm tired of seeing your narcissistic posts

[Jebus]

What do you mean by vegans? All vegans? Some vegans? A majority of vegans? How would you even know?

By that I mean its a common theme with vegans.

How did you come to that conclusion? How many conversations have you had with vegans about their perception of vegan recidivism.

Though I'm not sure how you tell if someone is "fully committed" that seems to me to lead to excuse the data by creating a no true scotsman fallacy.

I have no benefit from either outcome. I am simply curious about the true number. Whether or not someone had planned to remain vegan for life or just did it to please his ex-girlfriend while they were together is a very valid question.

The failure rate in the study was highest within the few months but people continued to drop out even after years.

I missed this but I am assuming that the vegetarians had a much higher recidivism rate than vegans. Did the study do the time breakdown for both groups or was this lumped together? It seems to me that the sample size would be too small to have any significant timeline results.

And "vegan" isn't a popular label and, in fact, the general public doesn't have a high opinion of "vegans":

We all know what the public thinks of vegans. I suggested that "ex-vegan" was a popular self identification label.

[brimstoneSalad]

He got the figure a bit wrong by conflating vegetarian and vegan, the figure for vegans is 70%:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201412/84-vegetarians-and-vegans-return-meat-why

So the success rate is 30% which is still low. But he is right, vegans "write off" the low success rate.

One of the problems is lack of support.

There's too much focus on getting people to go vegan, but when a vegan has trouble and wants to get help, at least historically, there has been very little in the way of support. We need more balance between conversion and support, since it should be much easier to keep somebody vegan than to convince somebody to go vegan.

I've even seen vegans be hostile to somebody who was having trouble and slipping up, or having doubts. That's very bad advice for retention. We need to tell them they're doing great, and that it's OK to mess up sometimes and keep trying, and we need to address doubts seriously and not assume they're just being negative intentionally.

I'm surprised recidivism isn't higher than that given the hostile environment to doubt that has persisted for so long. It pushes people away when they have questions (usually nutritional ones, e.g. there's an unfortunate tendency for vegans to overload on carbs), and it's not that hard to answer 99% of them.

[carnap]

How did you come to that conclusion? How many conversations have you had with vegans about their perception of vegan recidivism.

I've had numerous conversations with vegans over the years...the comment is just a statement of my personal observation.

I have no benefit from either outcome. I am simply curious about the true number. Whether or not someone had planned to remain vegan for life or just did it to please his ex-girlfriend while they were together is a very valid question.

The study tracked why people stopped and why the started the shift....so the study already contains the "true number".

And I'm not sure if they separated out the longevity information by vegetarian vs vegan, you can see the more detailed findings here:

https://faunalytics.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Faunalytics-Study-of-Current-and-Former-Vegetarians-and-Vegans-%E2%80%93-Secondary-Findings-.pdf

We all know what the public thinks of vegans. I suggested that "ex-vegan" was a popular self identification label.

Why would ex-vegan be a popular label if "vegan" isn't well regarded?