Source page: McKinsey & Company
Commentary
Why consumers are vegging out
Consumer | Retail | Food
December 1, 2022 – For many consumers, eating plant-based alternatives to meat has more to do with personal health than the environment, find senior partner Jessica Moulton and colleagues. According to a recent survey, eaters across the United States, France, and the United Kingdom cite health, taste, and other factors as primary reasons for consuming plant-based products. In Germany, however, animal welfare and the environment rank highly as reasons to go plant-based.
To read the article, see “Hungry and confused: The winding road to conscious eating,” October 5, 2022.
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Visual form
Cross-country motivation bar chart.
Layout / body structure
The chart is laid out as a country comparison across reasons for eating plant-based products, so the reader moves through motive categories and compares how those motives differ between the United States, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
What is being compared
It compares consumer motivations for choosing plant-based products, especially health, taste, environmental concerns, and animal welfare across countries.
Measurement system
The chart uses survey shares by reason and by country, with category labels identifying the motivation and the bars or segments showing how strongly each motive is represented.
Visible structure inside the graphic
The internal structure comes from repeated motive categories paired with country-specific values. The side-by-side arrangement makes it easy to see where health dominates and where environmental or animal-welfare motives become more important.
Main takeaway from the visual
The chart shows that plant-based demand is not driven by one universal story. In the United States especially, personal health sits above environmental reasoning, while Germany stands out as a place where animal welfare and environmental concerns carry more weight.
Key standout values or extremes
The strongest visual contrast is that consumers, especially in the United States, favor plant-based products more for their own health than for environmental health. Germany is the clearest counterexample in the comparison because animal welfare and the environment matter more there.
Controls / sequence, when applicable
This is a static chart image with no in-chart controls to operate.
Companion media, when applicable
There is no separate companion audio or video; the chart image is the full visual on this page.