There is a very Italian scene that tells this story well: the family lunch, the table already set, someone still asking “and what are you eating?”, with the same air with which in the nineties they wondered if the Internet was a serious thing. For a long time the vegan choice was treated like this, as a fixation to be explained, a phase, a logistical complication between the first and the second. Then the numbers started to walk on their own. Without making too much noise, without the need for proclamations, without turning every shopping cart into a rally.
In 2014, 0.6% of Italians declared themselves vegan. Today they are 3.2%. Put like that, it seems like a small percentage, almost to be dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders. And instead it reports growth that has more than quintupled in just over ten years. Meanwhile, the total of those who follow a vegetarian or vegan diet reaches 8.5%: 5.3% declare themselves vegetarian, 3.2% vegan. Another 4.9% say they have been in the past. The majority of Italians remain omnivorous, of course: 86.6%. But within this apparently stable data, something more subtle is moving. 20.5% declare that they would be in favor of choosing a vegetarian diet, even though they fear not being able to actually put it into practice.
That’s where the data gets interesting, even if in a low voice. Because dietary change, in Italy, rarely comes as a sudden conversion. It comes more often as a hesitation in front of the refrigerated counter, as an attempt on Monday, as curiosity towards a vegetable dish ordered away from home, as a growing discomfort in front of certain production systems. It even comes within that slightly fearful, very human phrase: “I would do it, but then how do I do it?”. It won’t be the epic of the revolution, that’s fine. It looks more like a folded receipt in your pocket. But it stays there.
The vegan is no longer an extra
For years the vegan has been transformed into a perfect speck: the one who ruins dinner, the one who reads the labels, the one who asks if there is butter in the sauce, the one who seemed destined to survive on the menus with a sad salad and two tomatoes thrown there out of pity. A comfortable figure to make fun of because it allowed everyone else to feel normal, centered, practical. The classic national condominium mechanism: when something changes, it is first ridiculed. Then you can find it at the supermarket near your house.
Today the data on vegans in Italy says otherwise. He says that that choice left the perimeter of the narrowest niche and entered everyday life. It remains a minority, of course, and no one should inflate it to the point of making it seem like a cultural majority. The useful point lies precisely in the measure: veganism grows without becoming hegemony, it enters habits without erasing gastronomic tradition, it forces restaurants, companies and families to deal with a more visible demand.
This does not mean that Italy has stopped being the country of ragù, of barbecues, of Sunday lunch where grandmother measures affection in portions. It means that another world is growing alongside that world, made up of plant-based alternatives, more flexible dishes, total sacrifices for some and partial reductions for many. The key word, perhaps, lies precisely here: not in the purity of the gesture, but in its diffusion. There are those who eliminate everything, those who try for a period, those who reduce, those who buy plant-based products without feeling part of any tribe. And the market, as always, arrives where it smells change. With the poetic delicacy of a full cart in the promotions aisle.
Social perception, meanwhile, is split. 78.7% of Italians consider being vegetarian a choice to be respected. 55.1% even consider it admirable, because it is linked to the protection of the environment and animals. Then the other face remains, the one that mutters. 31.4% consider it above all a trend, 31.2% associate it with fanaticism and intolerance towards those who make different choices, 22.1% consider it harmful to health. In short: respect yes, applause with caution, suspicion always ready on the table. This is also very Italian. I’ll let you do it, but I have to make a comment.
Consensus for intensive farming collapses: +8% of Italians against it in just one year: what is changing
The data that really shifts the discussion, however, comes from the relationship with animals. In 2026, 79.1% of Italians declare themselves against intensive farming for food use. In 2025 it was 71.4%. In just one year, opposition grew by 7.7 percentage points, almost eight. And it is a significant leap, because it does not concern an already convinced militant minority, but rather a very large portion of public opinion.
Here the question extends beyond the plate. Opposition to fur reaches 81.9%, that to animals in circuses at 80.5%, vivisection is rejected by 78.7%, hunting by 70%. Intensive farming enters this same emotional and moral zone: no longer just production, efficiency, price, availability of meat on the shelves. More and more people look at them as a problem. Maybe they continue to eat meat, maybe they still buy animal products, maybe they have no intention of becoming vegetarian or vegan. But something jars.
And it is precisely this friction that best describes the present. A significant part of Italians do not change their diet, but they do change their opinion. He continues to live within omnivorous habits, yet shows discomfort with the way those habits are sustained on an industrial scale. Is it a contradiction? Yes, and in fact it resembles real life a lot. We all know how to make clear choices when they are abstract. Then comes the shopping, the short time, the price, lunch out, the family, the laziness, the hunger at eight in the evening. Ethics, unfortunately, often have to argue with the refrigerator.
This doesn’t make the change any less real. In fact, it makes it more credible. Because the growth of vegans in Italy and the collapse of consensus towards intensive farming do not travel on two separate tracks. They talk to each other. On the one hand there are those who make a clear choice by eliminating foods of animal origin from their diet. On the other hand, there are those who remain within a traditional diet, but are starting to look more annoyed at the supply chain, the treatment of animals, the environmental impact, the distance between packaged products and real life.
The old joke about the vegan who “will tell you after five minutes” holds up less now, also because it is often omnivores who want to talk about the topic. They do it perhaps to defend themselves, to downsize, to say that they buy “only good stuff”, “only from their trusted butcher”, “only every now and then”. All sentences that show one simple thing: the relationship with meat, milk, eggs and derivatives is no longer as peaceful as before. He has lost innocence. And when a habit loses its innocence, it may continue to exist for a long time, but it must begin to justify itself.
A less lonely choice
The vegan boom in Italy must be read within this climate, without turning it into a competition between enlightened people and cavemen. The growth from 0.6% to 3.2% does not mean that the country has become vegan. He says that a once lateral choice has become more recognizable, more practicable, less isolated. He says that today those who decide to follow a vegan diet find more products, more prepared restaurants, more information, more people with whom to share doubts and solutions. It also finds more noise, more marketing, more confusion, of course. Every change, as soon as it becomes salable, is immediately packaged with a cute label and a slightly offensive price.
However, a cultural fact remains: fewer and fewer people dismiss the topic as a whim. The vegetarian choice is respected by almost eight out of ten Italians and considered admirable by more than one in two. At the same time, the share of those who fear not being able to change their diet shows that the desire to reduce the impact of their way of eating also exists outside the already converted audience. Many stay put out of habit, out of fatigue, out of organization, out of fear of complicating their lives. It’s the gap between sensitivity and practice, that gray area where a lot happens before the numbers get really big.
Perhaps the Italian food change is proceeding exactly like this: fewer proclamations, more cracks. A crack in the judgment on intensive farming. A crack in the idea that eating meat every day is the only possible model. A crack in the caricature of the vegan as a professional dinner disturber. A crack even in the supermarket, where the vegetable shelf no longer seems like a department for kind aliens who came to Earth with a canvas shopping bag.
The silent boom is all here. Not in overtaking, not in mass conversion, not in the promise of a suddenly coherent country. It lies in a small number that is growing a lot, in an opposition to intensive farming that is becoming very widespread, in a majority that is still omnivorous but is starting to look at their plate with less automaticity. The revolution, when it passes through the shopping cart, makes no noise. It creaks.
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