Survey conducted by Nielsen, on behalf of Centro Vegetariano

For the first time ever in Portugal, Centro Vegetariano –http://www.centrove getariano. org - has promoted a statistically meaningful survey, in order to determine the number of Vegetarians in Portugal.

The main conclusions of this survey are the following:
- 5% of the population excludes one of the traditional food categories (meat, fish, dairy and eggs);
- 2% of the Portuguese people never eats meat (20% only occasionally) ;
- 1% of the Portuguese never eats fish; (23% only occasionally) ;
- The elderly (aged 55-65) are the ones who least eat meat and dairy;
- 30,000 Portuguese are actual vegetarians, with zero consumption of meat or fish.

This survey was carried out by Nielsen, world leading company for market surveys, throughout October 2007. This survey consisted of 2,000 interviews to individuals aged between 15 and 65 and living in mainland Portugal, who are a representative sample of the Portuguese population.

The questions asked were:
How often do you eat:
- Meat or meat products (ham, hamburgers, bologna, sausages, meat patês...)
- Fish or fish products (fish fingers, shellfish, fish patês,...)
- Milk or other dairy products like cheese, butter, yoghurts,…
- Eggs or products with eggs, such as pastry,…

The reply options were "Never", "Occasionally" and "Frequently" . Bearing in mind the conclusions displayed above, only the individuals who claimed never to eat the products in question were taken into account. This way it is possible to obtain results that are coherent with the commonly accepted definition of a vegetarian as someone who never eats meat or fish (or their by-products) . No mention whatsoever was made in this survey to the reasons leading to the food regime in question.

Other interesting data:
- Women are the ones eating less meat and eggs. Nevertheless, they are the heavier dairy consumers;
- Central Lisbon and Northern coast are the regions with less meat and egg consumption;
- 20% of the Portuguese population only eats meat occasionally;
- 23% only eat fish occasionally;

These results have a maximum related error of 2,2 for a confidence interval of 95%.

As far as we know, this is the first time such a survey is conducted near a representative sample of the whole population. Now we know there are already 30.000 vegetarians in Portugal.

Centro Vegetariano wishes to thank:
1. Company Efeito Verde – Lda, whose support made this survey possible.
2. Nielsen company, for this mindful endeavour.

http://www.evana. org/index. php?id=27036& lang=en