The idea for this article was to gather as many relevant maps of the state of veganism in the USA as I could. Turns out, there are a couple of them and some of them have really interesting data! I love these kinds of posts because they can give you so much information in a very visual manner. On top of that, I’m sure you’ll learn some interesting new facts while looking at them. Hopefully, you enjoy it!
Table of contents
Restaurants Per Million People
First up we’ve got a map that shows how many vegan/vegetarian restaurants there are per million people. I’ve also seen this described as a “Democrats vs. Republicans”-map, for obvious reasons!
What’s interesting here is that Washington is the state with the most vegan/vegetarian-friendly restaurants per million people, 54 to be exact. However, because Washington isn’t technically a state we may have to give this one to Hawaii with 51 restaurants per million people.
At the bottom of the list is South Dakota with an incredible 1 vegan/vegetarian restaurant per million people.
I thought this one was cool as well. The Vegan Review used Twitter data to figure out which brands are most talked about in each state. They then made a cool map like the one you see below.
What caught my eye was how spread out the brands were. However, unsurprisingly half of the map is taken by the big brands we all know. Especially Oatly catches your eyes immediately. On top of that Beyond Meat, Impossible, Morning Star Farms, and Gardein also have a strong position.
What I thought was funny is that Tofurky, Just, and Quorn have 1-2 states in which they’re the most popular. They’re trying!
For those of you who don’t know: keto is a high-fat, low-carb diet that’s popular for a variety of reasons. First, keto is often stated to have weight loss benefits. Secondly, some people with chronic pains/illnesses say they can control their illness better on this diet. If true, that’s of course good news.
The downside is that high fat often means lots of animal products and saturated fats (which has its health drawbacks). But, we’re not diving into that right now.
Instead, I thought it was cool that there is a map out there that compares the popularity of vegan vs. keto diets in the USA. Unsurprisingly, this map correlates pretty well with the map we saw earlier (# of veggie restaurants per million people).
We’ve talked about states so far, but what are the best cities for vegans? Well, the people over at SmartAsset tried to figure that out as well. This is what they had to say about their research:
In order to come up with a ranking for best cities for vegans we looked at the number of vegan-friendly restaurants, reviews of vegan-friendly restaurants, number of farmers markets, population and cost of living.
Do keep in mind that this data is a bit older (2016 to be exact) but the only one of its kind (as far as I know) so we’ll have to work with what we have!
Surprisingly enough Pueblo, Colorado took the number one position. Here’s why:
Home to the Colorado State Fair, Pueblo combines a low cost of living and high average rating of vegan-friendly restaurants to make for a great place for vegan residents or vegan tourists.
Locals love The Daily Grind Cafe (4.0 stars out of 5 on Yelp), so if you are a vegan who is visiting be sure to check it out. One area Pueblo scores relatively poorly is in vegan-friendly places per resident. It ranks only 35th in that category with 4.9 vegan-friendly places per 10,000 residents.
Finally, I thought this was a fun one. The data gathered here comes from Veggly, a dating app for vegans and vegetarians. They made this map based on how many users they have in each state which shows which states are best for plant-powered love. Turns out, Virginia takes the crown where they have 671.05 users per million people. Second is Illinois (532.55 per million), and third is Oregon (529.69 per million).
We have to take these results with a grain of salt (this is basically just a map of how much a certain app is adapted throughout the USA) but it’s a cool and relevant one nevertheless.
Stefan has been vegan since 2019 and has been regularly working on his strength since the beginning of 2023. He’s on a mission to help other vegans get stronger and have all of them achieve the quality of life they deserve.
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