This Is the Best American City for Vegetarians

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Oct 22, 2:51PM EDT · Published Oct 22, 7:30AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This Is the Best American City for Vegetarians — © marilyna / iStock via Getty Images

Often people get the terms vegan and vegetarian mixed up. A vegetarian is defined as “a person who does not eat meat : someone whose diet consists wholly of vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts, and sometimes eggs or dairy products,” according to Merriam-Webster. A vegan is described as “a strict vegetarian who consumes no food (such as meat, eggs, or dairy products) that comes from animals.” It is a distinction that many people who eat meat as a matter of course do not understand.
[in-text-ad]
The Vegetarian Resource Group sponsored a survey in 2019, in conjunction with the Harris Poll, of 2,000 U.S. adults age 18 or older and found that 4% identified as vegetarian and 2% as vegan.

To determine the best city for vegans and vegetarians, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data from WalletHub, which evaluated the 100 largest cities in the country using 16 relevant metrics in three key categories:

Affordability of groceries and restaurant meals
A combination of diversity, accessibility and quality (including share of restaurants serving vegan and vegetarian options and per capita numbers of salad shops, community gardens and vegetarian cooking classes)
Vegetarian lifestyle (including number of vegan and vegetarian meetups per capita)

[nativounit]
In compiling the data, WalletHub drew on 11 sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, USDA Organic IndianaTEGRITY Database, the Council for Community and Economic Research, Grubhub, Meetup and Yelp.

The West Coast is strongly represented on the list of finalists, with Portland, Los Angeles and San Francisco in the top five. Orlando and, in somewhat of a surprise, Boise, round out the top quintet. But in any city here, you can find a delicious plant-based meal when you want to go meatless, even for a day.

The best city for vegans and vegetarians is Portland, Oregon. On affordability, it ranked 29th best out of the 100 cities. For diversity, accessibility and quality, it came in third best.

Click here to see all the best cities for vegans and vegetarians.
[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.