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Downtown-Antelope-26 t1_ium7007 wrote

im vegetarian but it’s not in my twitter bio… it’s a dietary choice not a personality trait. i think profile bio is probably a really poor indicator of prevalence

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mikevago t1_iun9jwc wrote

And the stereotype is that vegans can't shut up about being vegan.

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RightBear t1_iuner9t wrote

I remember that was parodied by "Scott Pilgrim vs the World" in 2010 (the vegan character had superpowers thanks to his pure dietary choices).

I wonder if the reaction to the first wave of obnoxious veganism is reflected in the dip between 2010 and 2012.

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Tacosaurusman t1_iunok0j wrote

You just drank half and half baby.

Freeze! It's the vegan police!

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DaydreamingRobot t1_iuqsnk4 wrote

You’re calling vegans obnoxious in the comment section. Way to shoot your mouth off killer, we hear you loud and clear.

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authorPGAusten t1_iun4emc wrote

It matters what you are trying to show. Probably a good indicator of how proud of said dietary choice

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I_am_Godfather1 t1_ium9ik8 wrote

A dietary choice? I thought it was a religious requirement for certain religions. Why would you be vegetarian but not vegan if ur not following those religions?

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Downtown-Antelope-26 t1_iumaj88 wrote

it can be a religious requirement, but that’s not the only reason to be vegetarian. even if you are making the choice to be vegetarian because of your religion… it’s still a dietary choice? i don’t quite understand how those are mutually exclusive.

i’m vegetarian because i don’t want animals to die unnecessarily (edit: + environmental impact of meat is insane) and i can live quite happily and healthily without eating meat. (also, being vegetarian is not a religious requirement in judaism, but it definitely makes keeping kosher a lot easier!!)

i’m not vegan because i’m chronically ill and in recovery from an eating disorder. for me personally, restricting my food options to that extent would impact my physical and mental health.

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Opuseuw t1_iumtv8d wrote

"I have decided not to eat meat" is a choice concerning your diet. The reasons for that choice could be widely different. Off the top of my head, the reasons could include: animal welfare, taste preference, cultural or religious reasons, health reasons, etc.

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Tashus t1_iun7pz7 wrote

>animal welfare, taste preference, cultural or religious reasons, health reasons, etc.

All these plus environmental impact.

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flunky_the_majestic t1_iumvul3 wrote

Personal Preference: Lots of people think it's gross to eat a muscle or organ from an animal, but enjoy milk, cheese, and eggs. This may also include moral reasons about the animals.

Health preference: Some believe a vegetarian lifestyle is healthier, since it may reduce carcinogens associated with meat consumption while maintaining more protein options.

Health Limitations: some conditions such as gout, allergies, and tick-borne diseases make it difficult or impossible for some people to maintain their health on a meat diet. But eggs, cheese, and milk may still be an option for them.

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ianbalisy t1_iumz5xy wrote

Vegetarian atheist here, there are a lot of reasons why people eat vegetarian but not vegan. One of the main ones is realizing that opting completely out of the animal derived foods market means you have next to zero influence on the well-being of livestock animals—we shouldn’t have to rely on dollars spent to equal action on animal welfare, but we live in a late stage capitalist economy where little else matters.

For example, not buying honey from good producers generally means bee keepers looking to nut tree pollination for revenue, which means bees are shipped to California from wherever they are, in incredibly stressful conditions, are doused with antibiotics and other chemicals multiples times, and die in huge numbers annually. Buying honey isn’t going to prevent that, nut tree pollination happens every year—but if honey producers who care for their bee colonies properly and increase local flora diversity by focusing on wildflower honeys don’t have to look to the nut tree industry for revenue, that’s a positive in my book.

Personally, animal welfare and environmental impact (see data on water footprint for eating meat compared to other protein sources) are the two main reasons I eat vegetarian, but there are plenty of other reasons that don’t necessarily lead to eat vegan.

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BigMtnFudgecake_ t1_iun7sy9 wrote

This might not be entirely related to what you're getting at, but I hit a wall when I was trying to be vegan and realized the extent to which animal products are in everything. It became this weird slippery slope and trying to shift my consumption habits to account for that was just too much.

Wool, leather, and stuff like that is obviously "off limits" but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Lots of beer/wine producers use animal products when producing alcohol (see Barnivore) and then some people start talking sugar that is processed using bone char or whatever. Hell, I even knew a hardline vegan person who accidentally bought something that had silk in it and he returned it.

At some point, I realized that I just wanted to try to do my part to reduce consumption, emissions, etc. without basing my entire lifestyle around it. Also, hitting ~2000-2500 calories a day on a vegan diet without leaning on highly processed foods and/or spending all day in the kitchen is not easy.

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ianbalisy t1_iunbeu8 wrote

Separate but definitely related. It is incredibly difficult to address all the animal harm related to everything we use or consume, and as much as organizations and other people might want you to think so it’s not entirely an consumer’s responsibility to ensure things are produced ethically. It is incumbent upon the producer to ensure production is ethical—logistics and retail, etc, are a separate issue too.

Without implying shame or anything, “becoming” vegan is also a fairly common way for people to just excuse themselves from any further critical thought on what they consume—e.g., how certain crop production affects local ecosystems. There’s just a ton to evaluate beyond just eating plants, because our food production processes are so heavily industrialized and damaging.

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CheckOutUserNamesLad t1_iumxinr wrote

I know a couple people who get indigestion when they eat meat but not eggs or dairy, so they choose vegetarianism.

Some vegetarians also want to limit their environmental impact, but also realize that social eating is limiting and getting enough of certain nutrients is difficult if you're vegan, so their compromise is vegetarianism.

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Humoer t1_iul969o wrote

I do think that's very interesting as it shows, i believe, the normalization of vegetarianism and its loss of function as a group defining characteristic/signal to outsiders.

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FuehrerStoleMyBike t1_ium3bhv wrote

thank you for not missing the point like half of this comment section.

I agree that its a very interesting graph and I agree with your assumption.

I think the main issue is that there is a part of vegan movement that is very exclusive (like people only wanting to date other vegans, only live in shared flat with vegans etc.). So there is an increased need to recognize each other.

As a vegetarian youd probably get attacked form both sides - the hard core meat-eaters asking why you are condeming their lifestyle and the hard core vegans wondering why you dont pull through. So you dont really gain anything from that except possible backlash.

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wetcalzones t1_iumq77f wrote

Not even a vegetarian, but I've been attacked for even suggesting that we maybe should just eat less meat as a proportion of our diet. People are lame.

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XxhumanguineapigxX t1_iumuio7 wrote

My university lecturer called something similar an "environmental diet" and it swayed most of the class!

I haven't 100% dropped anything, but it's extremely rare I have red meat and won't have lamb or pork. I have a "reduced meat" diet that's mostly chicken, and have started growing my own veggies and seasonings in my own garden. I also cut down on heavy rainforest killers like most chocolates and coffee, and "attempt" to cut down on palm oil products (that shit is EVERYWHERE).

There's no way of easily explaining it to most people tho, so I'm just an average carnivorous gal.

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SnipesCC t1_iumz0mc wrote

I generally say it's easier to convince 7 people to do meatless Mondays than 1 person to go full vegetarian/vegan. And that has the same reduction in total meat consumption. I'm not fully vegan, but a lot of my meals are, and I've been replacing eggs with Just Egg a lot lately. I may go fully vegan one of these days, especially as the substitutes on the market get better and better.

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SnipesCC t1_iumy3a2 wrote

I've been a vegetarian for over 25 years. Had tons of meat eaters bother me about it, harass me, and make fun of me. Had a total of 1 vegan ask me why I wasn't vegan. And I'm friends with a lot of vegans, so I'm in the vicinity of them all the time.

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FuehrerStoleMyBike t1_iun1qi6 wrote

I am not going to argue that obviously more harassment comes from meat-eater side (which makes sense as they make up about 90% of people). But your experience still pretty much proves my point that there is nothing to gain by self-describing yourself as vegetarian on twitter. Even in your progressive bubble you got asked about it - you can imagine that itd happen more often on an anonymous social media plattform then in your circle of frends. So nothing to gain as a vegetarian --> no self-disclosure. Why do people self-discribe as vegan? For the clout. No clout - no self-description.

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SnipesCC t1_iun2we3 wrote

I don't describe myself in any ways for the 'clout'. And my friend asking me why I wasn't vegan wasn't harassment. It was a question. Compare that to the boss who was made me buy steaks for the company BBQ, dispite knowing how much that would upset me. Or talking about how wonderful his German Potato Salad was, knowing it's the only meat product I actually miss. Or the people making animal noises like mooing while eating to bother me. A simple 'you've been a vegetarian for such a long time, why not go full vegan' is nothing.

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FuehrerStoleMyBike t1_iun7qwj wrote

I feel like were talking at cross purposes. I never said anything about you. I made an assumption on how vegans behave on twitter and why (which is the purpose of this thread).

Your friends are obviously nice people (and your boss isnt) - but that doesnt really apply on twitter where you interact with strangers. People on twitter care about being recognized as vegans, while they dont care too much about being recognized as vegetarians - thats what the data suggests and what we should discuss about.

To me your experience of getting hate from meat-eaters while your vegan friends dont care was a good example of how even in the best case (the best case being you in a progressive circle of friends) you dont gain anything by self-describing as vegetarian. Then I transposed your real life scenario onto twitter and my argument was that twitter just makes everything worse - so your experience of being a self-describing vegetarian on twitter would be even worse than it is IRL.

As were both vegetarians with a big circle of vegan friends I think were allies here and shouldnt get on each others throats.

btw I have a very good recipe for vegan german potato salad (the one with vinegar/oil) - basically from my grandma but changed a bit to make it vegan (she didnt taste the difference and if grandma doesnt taste it nobody does) if you are interested.

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SnipesCC t1_iunaaj3 wrote

If you have a link, I would appreciate it. My mom tried making it without bacon, and it just wasn't the same. But it's been decades, replacement meat products have come a long way.

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thegapbetweenus t1_ium2sfm wrote

Or a lot of (moral) reasons for being vegetarian, if you are consequent, would lead you to become vegan.

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SickMemeMahBoi t1_iumwmyz wrote

This is the point people miss, it's not about our feelings or being superior or anything, I went vegan for the environment three years ago, stayed vegan for the animals.

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SnipesCC t1_iumzayi wrote

I did the same the other way around. Became vegetarian for the animals, stayed both for them and because of the environmental factors. I didn't know a lot about the environmental effects of the beef industry on global warming as a 12 year old in the mid nineties.

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Alas7ymedia t1_iumz2eq wrote

You are assuming a linear behaviour for human decisions, but in the same way that a person would eat a cow but not a horse, some people draw the line at fish, others at eggs, and so on.

As a vegetarian myself, I have read that the economic, health and environmental benefits of not eating meat draw a curve with an optimal point right before becoming full vegetarian; going vegan can easily feel like going too far since the price of ingredients and carbon and water footprints start going up again when you start to diversify your diet to replace the things you liked before and that is before considering the social impact of not sharing other people's food.

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thegapbetweenus t1_iunhvma wrote

>You are assuming a linear behaviour for human decisions

Not really, but I get your point. At the same time we both are assuming people are rational optimisers (my point is just a logical one). A popular believe in economics, but I would strongly argue against it.

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BrotherMichigan t1_ium1efz wrote

I would love to see a cross-correlation with other such signals, like the inclusion of gender pronouns when the user is neither transsexual nor in any danger of being misgendered.

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SnipesCC t1_iumzjc5 wrote

It's not terribly surprising that people who care about animals and the environment also care about other people more than average.

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Miketogoz t1_iulo9r2 wrote

I just see it as vegan being a too much of a foreign word in 2010 and after it became a wide known concept, lots of vegetarians actually realized they were vegans.

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pumpkin_fire t1_ium1uvu wrote

Who didn't know what veganism was in 2010? It was absolutely a well known concept. Scott Pilgrim vs the World the movie came out in 2010 and has a whole subplot mocking vegans, and it was in no way some obscure concept back then. It had already been a mainstream concept for decades by that point. The Simpsons episode where Lisa discusses veganism with Paul McCartney came out in 1995, and no-one was like "what the fuck is veganism?".

I'm very curious how old you were in 2010.

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Miketogoz t1_iumplar wrote

17yo if you are interested in. I'm not saying the concept didn't exist, just that it wasn't as hip as it is now. I don't really remember seeing vegan dishes at restaurants, just vegetarian ones.

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I_am_Godfather1 t1_ium9efm wrote

Vegetarianism is based on religion. Veganism on animal abuse prevention

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excitato t1_iumt6ni wrote

Not exclusively. My wife is vegetarian for moral reasons and likes cheese (among other things), so she has little interest in becoming vegan.

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stan-k t1_iulzzqj wrote

What happened in 2011? I feel the most interesting data point is missing.

Interesting graph, but hard to interpret. Any guidance on interpretation would be useful.

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TJinAZ t1_iumzmu4 wrote

2011 was the meatpocolypse. It was…. horrifying.

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Orcle123 t1_iumtdg4 wrote

others mentioned, but if this is pulled from bios of users, people use being vegan now as a sort of clout chasing/ideological superiority thing. Im not saying that every case of it being used is false, I just know plenty of people that have stuff like that in their bios for clout but dont follow it.

it would be infinitely more difficult to actually confirm who actually was vegetarian/vegan but would be a much more accurate graph rather than scrubbingbios (and if there is overlap or swapping between those groups based on people not knowing what separates the two)

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authorPGAusten t1_iun4iz7 wrote

2011 doesn't exist. We never had a 2011. We just keep it there for graph consistency

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MuffinMagnet t1_iulc5n6 wrote

I thought this wasn't true in general. I found this interesting survey https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-of-vegetarians-and-vegans-in-the-u-s-increasing/

Here it finds, of the few studies that census-weight, and of those to ask both whether people identify as vegetarian and vegan in the same survey, that there is typically around 2% vegetarians and around 0.2% vegans.

Admittedly these are a touch out of date now, and numbers are increasing but I trust these more than sampling twitter.

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Rare_Southerner t1_iumo1kk wrote

This graph is not about being vegan or vegetarian, it's about writing it on your twitter bio.

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MuffinMagnet t1_iupgt59 wrote

Both the title and the y-axis says that the goal is to estimate prevalence from self-ascribed Twitter bios. I'd say author is claiming to do more than simply report on the Twitter bios, they are saying this is an estimator of prevalences. I'm simply providing some evidence to other folks that this not a good estimate of prevalence in the general population.

For your point. There still isn't evidence to say that the self reporting aspect is at fault here. We know the end result is off, but you'll need more evidence to claim whether it's because Twitter users are a good representation of the population, and the bios are over-reporting, or whether the bios reporting is representative, but the Twitter population is not (...or both).

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IIIMurdoc t1_iulb58l wrote

Isn't Twitter in a massive scandal for possibly using (or allowing) massive bot armies for the purpose of shaping public opinions to match a very specific political ideology?

Because if so, I would expect twitters numbers to show oddities like this all over the place.

It's no wonder they started locking down their APIs as the oppinion bots ramped into overdrive

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[deleted] t1_iumdtmg wrote

No, there are more vegans who are more than willing to tell you until the cows come home that they're vegan than vegetarians.

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pmpmd t1_iumuhtw wrote

The cows are willing to come home since the vegans will leave them alone.

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SnipesCC t1_iumzssf wrote

Not necessarily. Lots of vegans won't leave the cows alone. They will go pet the cows and give them scritches.

But do not pet the fluffy cows!

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ivovis t1_iumrb9u wrote

Who would have thought the more vocal group would have higher numbers?

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[deleted] t1_iulpuh0 wrote

[deleted]

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I_am_Godfather1 t1_ium9g64 wrote

Nah. Vegetarianism is religion based while vegan is more like an anti animal abuse

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prismaticbutterfly t1_iun09jx wrote

no?? vegetarianism doesnt have to be religion-based source: i am vegetarian, and have many vegetarian friends (none of them are religious)

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SnipesCC t1_iun03kg wrote

While some vegetarianism is because of religion (especially Hindus, Buddhists, and Sikhs), the difference between them is mostly eggs, milk, and sometimes honey and lanolin.

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MrArko t1_iunclqr wrote

ofc. If you want to end Animal suffering, you don't make them suffer a little by consuming Milk/Egg, you just go vegan.

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AdGeHa t1_iumtqrf wrote

What sounds better on a bio…?

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Near_Void t1_iuvn43f wrote

This graph shows how mich vegans talk about being vegans

Whereas vegetarians dont really care that much

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user-110-18 t1_iulxjxe wrote

This is based on whether the user lists the information in their bio, so it’s not representative of the population. I suspect many users do not populate their bios at all.

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FuehrerStoleMyBike t1_ium2taf wrote

so what

it speaks of self-described vegans. It doesnt want to find out how many vegans there are it wants to find out how people behave on social media concerning this topic. Anybody who misses this should just leave the subreddit cause its sad.

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user-110-18 t1_ium3kge wrote

The headline is misleading. It implies that the account holder was asked if they were vegan or vegetarian. Many of the other commenters clearly interpreted it this way.

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FuehrerStoleMyBike t1_iumcebo wrote

The meaning of self-descriptive is serving to describe oneself : being or providing a description of oneself.

How is writing it in your twitter profile not "providing a description".

Also one glance at the actual data wouldve solved this missunderstanding. Pointing on others who made the same "mistake" is also a very weak excuse. You make a wrong claim on something that nobody asked for and now you want to push away responsiblity.

So id rephrase and say that you misslead yourself by assuming things before commenting while you had the possiblity to avoid this.

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sirbonobox t1_iumqxtw wrote

Veganism spouses activism and some go as almost a religion. Not surprised.

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Jusmatsta t1_iun1quw wrote

Social trait, not a dietary one.

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nattc74 t1_iun66o5 wrote

Being vegan is a moral stance. Being vegetarian is just a dietary choice. Eggs and dairy still contribute to animal abuse.

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iamthemosin t1_iunuasa wrote

Talk to your kids about vegans, because I don’t want to talk to your kids.

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AdInternational7530 t1_iuoi0vl wrote

Just curious but isnt a vegan to a vegetarian the same as a square to a rectangle? Not to be nitpicky but technically wouldn’t the vegetarian trend line always be equal to or above the vegan one?

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TywinASOIAF t1_iumgp48 wrote

Of course vegans are the more extremist so they are more likely to put that on their profile than a vegeterian.

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isSlowpokeReal t1_iunp6ec wrote

If a vegetarian but sometimes just don’t mention it. It’s not a huge part of my identity. Whereas being a vegan changes the way you can enjoy social events significantly, so I can understand why people consider it a bigger part of their identity.

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apeawake t1_iunro16 wrote

Incoming: chronic fatigue, anemia, autoimmune disorders, etc.

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Gone247365 t1_iunry3f wrote

How do you know if someone's a vegan? Don't worry, they'll tell you.

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RobbyRich84 t1_iumtsck wrote

It's because every vegan has to tell you they're vegan. It's in the rules.

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muks_kl t1_iuletd8 wrote

Im glad you used Twitter for this. It’s such a representative population sample. /s

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FuehrerStoleMyBike t1_ium2oc5 wrote

wanna be smart ass

if op wanted to answer the question "how many vegetarians/vegans do we have" you might have a point but obviously thats not the case.

This data explores how people display their lifestyle. It finds that there are differences in how people use social media. Its a totally valid display of data with its own fields of appliances.

the "/s" is the cherry on top - how can you miss the point this hard?

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lajoswinkler t1_iuliekk wrote

I bet <5 % of those people are vegans. People, most notably younger ones today, have no bloody idea vegetarianism exists at all. They are basically vegetarians, but use the term "vegan" to describe themselves. It's hilarious.

Downvoting, hypocrites? Nice.

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