Statistics for number of vegetarians in a given country?

Question

Are there good, reliable statistics anywhere for percentages of vegetarians in particular countries?

This would be particularly useful when considering 'vegetarian tourism'. I live in the UK, which I believe has an unusually high proportion of vegetarians, but in several foreign countries I've visited (especially eastern European ones), the vegetarian option is often along the lines of "meat and potatoes without the meat". It would be nice to know where to expect this and where not.

In particular, which countries, percentage-wise, have most and fewest vegetarians?

Answer 1

The vegetarian society has some statistics about the UK percentage of vegetarians.

Their most recent figures come from Department of Health and Food Standards Agency (FSA) - National Diet and Nutrition Survey which records that vegetarians seem to consist of around 2% of the UK population.

Statistics for countries is patchy, especially as the few surveys there are do not have a consistent definition of what it is to be vegetarian. For instance the People of India Survey suggests that 31% of India is vegetarian but then adds that another 9% would be vegetarian except that they eat eggs.

Wikipedia has statistics collected by country from various sources. There the UK is listed as being 2-12%, the US is 3%, Europe varies by country but is mostly between 2% and 10% and India is at 29-40%.

Answer 2

Since it seams your concern is really about having vegetarian options in restaurants rather than about pure demographic data, here are two resources that I use when traveling:

Happy Cow is basically yelp for vegetarian and vegans.

Vegan Food Is Everywhere is an interactive map of vegan food offerings.

But if you do want the demographic data, Wikipedia has a page with data for you.