Increasing awareness levels regarding issues such as climate change and animal welfare, along with other factors such as personal health, are continuing to drive people to embrace veganism. Once a fringe movement, it is now firmly mainstream, something that is being reflected by increasing vegan options in restaurants and supermarkets. Some cities are more vegan-friendly than others and a recent report shows the places that have the most options for people on a plant-based diet.
The Vegan Word conducted an analysis of vegan listings website Happycow and came up with a list of the cities with the most vegan restaurants per 100,000 inhabitants as of December 2023. Asian tourist hotspots ranked highest, with Phuket, Ubud on the Indonesian island of Bali and Chiang Mai in Thailand making up the top three. Two U.S. cities - Portland, Oregon and Atlanta, Georgia - as well as three European cities - including the English seaside resort Brighton, Dutch capital Amsterdam and Portuguese capital of Lisbon - also rank among the top eight.
The makers of the study acknowledge that theirs isn't the only way to measure how vegan-friendly food options are in a given city, as the methodology doesn't capture vegetarian and vegan-friendly restaurants as well as the general suitedness of different local cuisines for vegans. They note how vegan-friendly cities such as London are notably missing, due not to a lack of vegan restaurants but to particularly large populations.
