Vegan offerings in German university canteens have almost quadrupled within ten years. The rising share of purely plant-based food went hand in hand with a decline in vegetarian dishes more than in meat-based ones, according to an analysis by the University of Konstanz and the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW Berlin) published on Monday.
The researchers examined around 3.7 million menu offerings from 340 university canteens over a period of ten years. What was recorded was the food on offer, not the actual eating and buying behaviour of the people using the canteens. In 2015, 54.3 percent of the main dishes offered were plant-based, that is, either vegetarian or vegan; by 2024 that figure had risen to 65.1 percent. According to the analysis, the vegan offering developed particularly dynamically.
The share of vegan main dishes rose from 10.7 to 39.7 percent, almost quadrupling. Over the same period, it was above all the share of vegetarian main dishes that fell, from 43.6 to 25.4 percent, while the share of meat-containing main dishes declined from 39.9 to 30.3 percent. Fish dishes remained consistently rare at around five percent.
Vegetarians eat no meat and no fish, but do eat animal products such as milk, cheese or eggs. Vegans avoid all animal-based foods. University canteens are therefore, according to the experts, among the institutions that made the shift towards more plant-based food "early and clearly." That shift cannot be explained by price developments alone, even though plant-based dishes are cheaper than animal-based ones.
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