US less vegetarian-friendly than UK?

[Star555]

Comparing menus at common fast food restaurants that are in both the US and UK (like McDonalds, Subway etc.) it seems the UK consistently has a larger number of vegetarian options or healthier meat (chicken/fish instead of beef/pork) options than the US. Given the diversity of the US population, especially in big cities like NYC and LA, I find it really surprising. The US certainly has more money so why not introduce more veg-friendly options on top of the usual hamburgers and hot dogs? Why is the UK "ahead" in this regard?

Tofurkey - I had this one Christmas (about 12 years ago). Dear god I can still taste it when I burp 🤢 worst thing I even put in my mouth.

It’s clearly dependant on supply and demand. We have a lake house in semi rural North Carolina, there a virtually no vegetarian options. When we lived in Raleigh, the capital, there were lots more vegetarian options.

Struggled in New York and Bluewater with my vegetarian friend.

Been going to European cities for long weekends for many years with same vegetarian friend and a vegan friend, and have found great / many vegetarian and vegan options.

I once went to a family event when visiting my US based sibling and her family. I’ve been veggie for pushing 40 years now.

I got melon... everything that wasn’t meat or fish had bloody bacon in it. Even the salad.

As someone else said, tend to survive on pizza. Can't even do that now as I'm gluten free, so God knows what I'd eat!

Travelling as a coeliac is bad enough, coeliac and vegetarian must be really hard. I miss the days where going out to eat didn't involve a ton of research. It's taken the shine off a lot of holidays.

My Aunt who is coeliac and lives in USA loves the UK she says it’s much easier to eat out here for gf options, yes my daughter is coeliac and veggie not easy at all.

My sister used to come home and demand Indian and Chinese takeaways.

The UK is ahead when it comes to catering for various diets, because a fairly large percentage of the population is of an Indian/other south Asian background, where a vegetarian diet is much more common. The US has a similar demographic but, to put it bluntly, doesn’t care much about catering for them, with the exception of big cities and the coasts.

I’ve been vegetarian since birth and grew up in a Southern European country where it was virtually unheard of - like a PP said, everything that was naturally veggie came covered in bacon or tuna. Eating out was a nightmare.

Whenever we’d travel to the UK, it was like being in paradise. You had a choice of vegetarian meals on menus. I tasted my first burger at a McDonald’s in London. Not fake meat, chickpea and lentil. I didn’t even know that was a thing. If you look at the UK in general, they always have a veggie option on the menu, including at school. On top of veggie south Asian children, there are those who follow a Halal diet, and many prefer to choose the safe veggie option. Back in my hometown, we have a large percentage of children whose parents come from Morocco, and it’s been an ongoing battle with the council to offer them an alternative to eg seafood at school - seafood is served most days at lunch. They simply don’t care, it’s one meal for everyone and it doesn’t matter if these kids can’t eat it.

Now back to the US, it is true that it’s easier finding veggie options on the coasts, big cities in general, and university towns. These tend to cater for a much more international and younger demographic, so you can find many different world cuisines and vegan/veggie or GF/dairy free alternatives.

At the end of the day, even in the US there will always be something veggie you can eat, but it will not necessarily be a substantial option. I remember going to a 4th of July country fair in the Midwest, where all I could eat was corn on the hob and a variety of deep-fried sweet pastries. Don’t get me wrong, I love corn on the hob, but when that’s the only thing you can eat for the whole day - whilst everyone is having sit down meals with 3 courses and numerous choices - you do feel uncatered for. Of course it was not unreasonable of them to provide such food, because 99% of the people visiting the fair were locals, who ate meat, so why would they bother with lots of alternatives which almost no one would’ve chosen.

@MouseholeCat

The fast-food market is much wider in the US so I don't think this is a straight comparison.

I live in a city of 120,000 in a red midwestern state, so hardly San Francisco. Within 10-20 minutes of my house, I can get veggie options from a whole ton of drive-thru or app pickups including Panera, Starbucks, Chipotle, Dunkin, Burger King, Carl Jr's, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, sandwich chains (Subway + Jimmy Johns, Firehouse) and local ramen, sushi or Chinese places where you can switch most dishes to tofu or veg. That's not even considering the 2 local delis with large veg and vegan options.

Because you have to drive to the restaurant, you're not limited by the fact there might only be one or two options... you can just drive 2 more minutes and you're at the place that has the exact thing you want.

But what if you don't want to survive on fast food?

@4PawsGood

According to this, 7% of people in the U.K. are vegetarian, 5% in the US. I suspect that’s pretty clustered in the US, being much more in coastal cities.

I’m surprised it isn’t higher in the UK. But in the UK I think even carnivores are a bit more open about eating vegetarian food. Or rather meals with no meat involved. What it means is the UK is actually a really good place to live as a vegetarian, and everywhere else seems difficult.

I'm vegan and found New York great for me 20 years ago - but I'd expect it somewhere like thatS

These days I use the Happy Cow app which should tell you the nearest good places for veggie food. It does rely on user input though but I've found it invaluable when abroad.

Is there a veggie version of that? Everything seems to be vegan these days (funny since I know precisely 0 actual real vegans these days).

California is v vegan. I think most places would rustle up a salad

For vegetarians Modern American type places used to be very salad and soup heavy but these days just about everywhere seems to have the impossible burger so that’s always a good option. Italian, Chinese and Mexican will always have plenty of choice. Big supermarkets typically have salad bars. Chain wise Subway, Jimmy John’s, Olive Garden, Chipotle, Burger King are all good bets. MacDonalds is crap but I lived in Chicago for years and always found I had tons of choice as a vegetarian. The only bad experience I had was when my flight was delayed from Albany airport, Starbucks sold out of sandwiches and the only other food option was a Chick-Fil-A! I appreciate vegan might be more tricky though.

I was a vegetarian for 20 years, most of that while living in the US and it was tough. We ate a lot of Indian and there were 2 vegetarian Chinese restaurants near us. Mainstream restaurants were a challenge. My last years there were in San Francisco and that was much easier.

But yes, there is a lot more variety and just better options in the UK. I remember being amazed at the vegetarian sandwich options here! A sandwich without meat would be pretty hard to find in the US but here there were like 6 options to choose from just at the petrol station, which was incredible.

We lived in Boston for a year, DD was vegan. Not to difficult to find cheap and cheerful food, there is an excellent Thai vegan cafe, Italian restaurants usually have a few options, there are good salad places and a great Indian restaurant. The huge student population creates demand for cheap vegan/veggie food. More upmarket places are much less vegan friendly, it was difficult to find somewhere to go for her birthday, for example. Vegetarian is easier, but even when she was veggie she didn’t like cheese, which would have eliminated a lot of the vegetarian options. I definitely think that the offering here is better than there.

@KidneyBeans OP was quoting a bunch of fast food options as their point of comparison so I was giving my experience living in the US in a non-coastal city. There are obviously non-fast food options too.

I don't eat at those options regularly. I buy from the extensive selection of veg and vegan options at our local grocery stores and if I need more niche stuff there are 3 health stores. We have a wonderful farmers market, multiple restaurants with lots of veggie and vegan options and there are delis too which I mentioned. Those are the places we commonly frequent.

Yes, if you go to the County fair or a Renaissance fair then it's slim pickings. Small towns can be tricky too. But honestly, comparable events and that size of community in the UK wouldn't have great options either.

@EileenGC I think you have hit the nail on the head.

The UK is ahead when it comes to catering for various diets, because a fairly large percentage of the population is of an Indian/other south Asian background, where a vegetarian diet is much more common. The US has a similar demographic but, to put it bluntly, doesn’t care much about catering for them, with the exception of big cities and the coasts.

Exactly, I thought this might be the reason. I feel like even though there is a large Indian/South Asian population in the US, the the US doesn't doesn't care to cater to them because these Asian people themselves are much more "Americanised" and don't create as big demand for veg as in the UK. The Indian families I know in the US are almost 100% Americanised they're fine with eating beef/pork, their kids play baseball (they have no clue about cricket), etc. Whereas in the UK, even the younger Indian immigrant generations have a stronger sense of Indian culture/identity (perhaps due to deeper assimilation of Indian culture in Britain e.g. in the UK the number one choice of takeaway seems to be Indian food, but in the US it's Chinese food).

I tasted my first burger at a McDonald’s in London. Not fake meat, chickpea and lentil. I didn’t even know that was a thing.

This is exactly what I was talking about in my previous post! Not disgusting synthetic meat imitations, but tasty natural veggie items are what restaurants should offer.

By plant-based foods do you mean "natural" vegetables, e.g. a portobello mushroom burger instead of a hamburger, or those rubbery artificial processed "fake meat" things?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant-based_diet

Not necessarily vegetarian or vegan, but including fewer animal products. And no, not tofurkey. None of the menu-developers we work with would consider that a 'food'.

The other difference in US restaurants is that consumers are increasingly eating vegan food even if they're not vegetarian or vegan, because it's delicious and they like it and it's increasingly available.

There are more and more Americans switching to vegetarianism and veganism too.

www.forbes.com/sites/janetforgrieve/2018/11/02/picturing-a-kindler-gentler-world-vegan-month/?sh=65b814792f2b
The number of U.S. consumers identifying as vegan grew from 1% to 6% between 2014 and 2017, a 600% increase, according to GlobalData. That’s still a pretty small portion of the total, but other data reveal growing interest in plant-based foods by consumers who don’t consider themselves vegetarian or vegan.

And no, not tofurkey. None of the menu-developers we work with would consider that a 'food'.
I'm glad I'm not the only one to be revolted by it!

This data is very interesting; I can definitely think of many people I know who are not strictly veggie but prefer to avoid meat on a regular basis, so even though they create demand for plant-based foods, they may not be officially included in the statistics for vegetarians.

I have struggled every time I have been to the US, I remember being completely unable to find a meat free sandwich or anything else portable and meat free to take on an internal flight at Chicago airport. I remember eating a.lot of starters as mains in Hawaii, and Texas was so tricky, even Austin, which has a hippy reputation. The issue is there are specialist vegetarian restaurants, but the mainstream restaurants don't tend to have a meat free option, which makes eating out as a group very difficult.

@TheBitterBoy

I have struggled every time I have been to the US, I remember being completely unable to find a meat free sandwich or anything else portable and meat free to take on an internal flight at Chicago airport. I remember eating a.lot of starters as mains in Hawaii, and Texas was so tricky, even Austin, which has a hippy reputation. The issue is there are specialist vegetarian restaurants, but the mainstream restaurants don't tend to have a meat free option, which makes eating out as a group very difficult.

A while ago I’d guess, given how amazing the food selection at O’Hare has been for years now. DH has been flying in and out pretty constantly for the last 10+ years and never struggled to find veggie food there. DD is at university in Chicago and eats mostly veggie.

I will say that the USA including Chicago is obsessed with putting cheese in sandwiches.
DS hates cheese and does struggle to find cheese free sandwiches.

I was so happy when I was in Canada and found plain tuna sandwiches like the UK, I didn't realize how much I had missed single ingredient sandwiches.

Yes cheese is everywhere although it’s very very easy to find non-cheese tuna sandwiches here in the US.

Was chatting to an American friend the other day about her son at university in Scotland. Every single meal he was provided while in Covid quarantine had cheese in it. As a non cheese eater he was in hell.

I had avocado toast in Dunkin Donuts the other day. That’s not something I ever expected to say :-D