Have you noticed your nearest and dearest looking healthier and sprightlier recently? Have the people around you who used to swear they’d never go plant-based become slightly less vociferously carnivorous? It may be because the UK is buying less meat than ever before.
A new report, the scintillatingly titled Family Food FYE (Financial Year Ending) 2024, part of the Living Costs and Food Survey, reveals that people in the UK are choosing to load their online baskets and takeaway delivery drivers with far fewer meaty items. In fact, we haven’t eaten this little meat since records began in 1974, when, as we wrote in 2023, Britons ate a gut-busting 1kg of meat a year, on average.
The Family Food report comes out every year and is based on the responses of about 4,205 UK households, who are asked to keep track of the food they buy to eat in the house, whether from the supermarket or the local Indian restaurant.
And although in grams per person per week, the amount of meat bought appears to have declined by only a salami-slice-sized 1.1 per cent since 2023 – from 857g to 848g – in fact the drop since 2021 is a sirloin-steak-sized 13.1 per cent. Meat takeaways, meanwhile, have fallen by a not insignificant chicken-bhuna-sized 8.6 per cent on 2023 levels – from 35g to 32g – and by a triple lamb pasanda-ish 25.6 per cent since 2021. Far cheaper, tastier and better for the planet to make your own anyway – such as one of MFM’s top 10 meat-free dishes of 2025.
And as purchases of meat decline, it’s unlikely to be a coincidence that the annual celebration of animal-free eating has had its best year yet. To paraphrase the apocryphal Mark Twain quote, rumours of Veganuary‘s decline have been greatly exaggerated.
The eponymous non-profit organisation commissioned YouGov surveys in 12 countries to see how many people gave up meat and dairy in the first month of 2026. Based on the online responses of more than 15,000 adults in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, Chile, Germany, Ireland and the US, it calculated that an astonishing 30 million people worldwide took part.
“There’s been plenty of talk in the media about interest in vegan fading,” said Wendy Matthews, chief executive of Veganuary. “But the story worth telling is the one unfolding in kitchens, not in the comment section. Millions of people chose kindness this January – for themselves, for animals and for the planet.
“Veganuary is now firmly mainstream and its continued growth is proof of what happens when people around the world put compassion into practice. We think that’s something truly worth celebrating and a powerful sign that conscious food choices are more than a passing trend.”