Today, more and more travellers from around the world are turning towards plant-based diets, whether it’s for personal, ethical or environmental reasons.
As anyone who has tried it can attest, vegan and vegetarian cuisine can very often be delicious, hearty, healthy and satisfying. And while it has gotten easier to find good veggie options while on the move, sometimes it can be tricky. With that in mind, a new study has unveiled the top cities in the US for vegan and vegetarian food, meaning you can start brainstorming your next culinary adventure.
According to a 2019 Harris Poll commissioned by the Vegetarian Resource Group, approximately 10 million adults in the United States are vegan or vegetarian. Released by WalletHub, the new study compared the 100 largest American cities across 17 different categories, including average meal cost, the price of groceries for vegetarians, the number of restaurants serving meatless options, salad shops per capita, number of community gardens, frequency of juice and smoothie bars and fruit and vegetable consumption.
Scooping the top spot in the whole study was Portland, Oregon, a city that has enjoyed a long standing reputation as an alternative, multicultural and trendy hotspot not only vegan and vegetarian cuisine, but food and culture in general. The top ten was completed by Los Angeles, Orlando, Seattle, Austin, Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, San Diego and Tampa, while Scottsdale, Anaheim, Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Washington, Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Houston and Charlotte were also named amongst the best in the country. Scottsdale, Arizona was shown to have the highest share of restaurants serving vegetarian options at 20.14%, which is 12.5 times higher than Laredo, Texas, the city with the lowest at just 1.61%.
Scottsdale also claimed the title of city with the highest share of restaurants serving vegan options, while Newark, New Jersey is the city with the least amount of restaurants catering to vegans. San Francisco has the most community-supported agriculture programmes per square root of population, just over 20 times more than San Antonia, the city with the fewest. And if you’re on the hunt for a good salad shop, look no further than New York, which was shown to have the most per square root of population, while Laredo, Texas has the fewest. Cities in the bottom ten were El Paso, San Bernardino, Greensboro, North Las Vegas, Baton Rouge, Henderson, Winston-Salem, Stockton, Tulsa, Memphis and Laredo.
The full findings are available on the official WalletHub website.
Read more: Taste of Tinseltown: the best vegan restaurants in Los Angeles
