Image: Veganuary press kit.
Roughly 25 million people around the world tried vegan this January, according to new figures released today by Veganuary.
The charity, which runs the try-vegan-for-January campaign, has published its 2024 campaign review, and it's a big one. For the first time it commissioned YouGov to survey adults in nine countries (the UK, US, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, Austria, Switzerland and Chile) during January, then scaled the results up using each country's population.
Veganuary's CEO Ria Rehberg explained how they reached the number:
To capture the wider number of people embracing positive dietary change, we commissioned YouGov surveys in several of our core campaign countries. Based on these results and the current population estimates for each country, we have calculated that roughly 25 million people worldwide chose to try vegan this January.
She added: "My heart sings when I think how many animal lives saved this equates to, paired with positive impacts on the environment and health."
To be clear, 25 million is an estimate built from surveys, not a list of names. Veganuary changed the way it measures participation this year and no longer only counts email sign-ups. On its new count, it directly supported more than 1.8 million people through its free resources (the emails, recipes, videos and social media).
The rest of the review is just as encouraging:
At least 2,100 new vegan products and menu options were launched globally in January. A record 300 businesses and organizations signed up to the Workplace Challenge, more than 115 of them in the UK. And the campaign picked up more than 10,000 international media mentions.
What we love about Veganuary is that it's an invitation, not a lecture. A month is long enough to find the products you like, learn a few go-to recipes and notice how you feel. Plenty of people never go back. And the evidence is on their side. Last year an Oxford study published in Nature Food found vegan diets produce 75% less climate-heating emissions than high meat diets, and the Stanford twin study showed a vegan diet improves heart health in just eight weeks.
Just look at how far it has come. In 2019 a record 250,000 people signed up for Veganuary. That became 400,000 in 2020, then 582,000 in 2021, before passing 700,000 for the first time last year. This January 8 million people also watched Netflix's twin experiment hit the global top 10. We said going vegan would be the biggest trend of 2018. It turns out we were underselling it.
See you next January. Or, better still, every month in between.