No, it's not. I wouldn't even say it's 5%, let alone 20%.

You only have to walk into a supermarket to see this is nonsense, meat vs veggie options are like 10 to 1.

You're referencing one widely debunked survey (this is about the vegan part of it, but it applied to the whole study and the vegetarian percentage claim (of 14%, not 20%), is discussed and debunked later in the article):

https://fullfact.org/health/vegans-uk/

I know 1 vegan and 1 vegetarian, but I know at least 6 ex-vegetarians.

Since you're offering anecdotes as information, I'll also add that about 20-30% of my friends are vegetarian here in the UK. None are vegan, though.

I think it's a two-parter: There's a degree of social pressure within groups, but it's also a function of where you live. As part of a university-dense area there's a lot of eco-conscious vegetarians here - which makes it easier to market to vegetarians - so they have more options - which makes it easier to be vegetarian. Feedback loops.

I'm offering actual facts coloured by an anecdote, there's a big difference.

I live in Nottingham, which has two big universities. There are a few vegan cafes and bars around. I don't know how old you are, but a lot of my ex-veggie friends stopped being so in their 30s.

Depends why they are vegan. If it’s for environmental or even ethical reasons a small amount of cross-contamination may not be objectionable as long as they personally are not contributing to demand for meat.

The UK's vegetarian rate is more like 10% as far as I recall. Since cooking veggie burgers on the same grill as meat burgers doesn't lead to additional harm to animals, I hope and expect most vegans to be happy to go for it -- veganism is not an allergy.

I've known several vegetarians (not even vegan) who after being such for several years would frequently get significant stomach issues upon eating vegetarian meals cooked on surfaces used to cook (especially red) meat, so while its true that vegetarianism and veganism are not allergies, I think it may be significantly less accurate to assume this means that they aren't associated with digestive sensitivity to cross-contamination with meat products.

Veganism isn't an allergy, and it's not about maintaining perfect bodily purity. It's about making ethical choices.

Most people aren't going to worry about incidental "contamination".

I've met zero non-dieter vegans who have this stance...

One here. I'm concerned with being the cause of animal suffering and not concerned if my vegan food was cooked on the same surface as meat.

Sounds like a religion. I get not wanting factory farmed meat, but what's wrong with hunting meat for yourself? In the end we're all meat for something, even if it's just the worms.

I believe the argument is that if you were capable of subsisting without harming another living creature, then you should try to do that.

My understanding is that it's an ethical decision about not killing an animal (or some animals) or directly supporting the killing of an animal. Hunting would be in conflict with this decision. The consequences around an animal's killing are irrelevant here.

It then seems that if an animal is dead, and you are simply picking up small traces from a grill, vegans ought not to have an issue.

Where did you get these statistics? Wikipedia shows it much differently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism_by_country

> But Burger King is cooking the impossible burger on the same grill upon which they're grilling the meat.

Why is the corporate world so hopelessly stupid?

What I find more "hopelessly stupid" is being so uptight about the matter that you care if a few particles of animal matter made their way into your food from a shared grill. Even assuming the vegan moral framework, it does no additional good to separate the grills and you're not encouraging any more animal harm by reusing the other grill. It's not like a religion that bans eating certain foods, or an allergy, in which cases it's reasonable to want to 100% avoid ingesting a single mole of the stuff.

I'm not a vegetarian or a vegan, personally. I'm a hunter, a fisherman, and I buy beef by the half cow from a small ranch. All of that said, if Burger King is selling some food products and marketing them as vegetarian or vegan, but they are being cooked in animal grease, and surely that is what this means, well, then they're either stupid, they're liars, or they're hopelessly incompetent. And you see this sort of tone deaf nonsense coming out of corporations time and time again.

In the sense that they're not giving these customers what they want, they're being incompetent, but I think it's totally unreasonable in the first place to demand such total separation. Like caring if the same coffee machine was used for non-free-trade coffee grounds before you used it for your own grounds, or that a non-cage-free egg was made on the same grill earlier in the day when you ordered cage-free.

> but I think it's totally unreasonable in the first place to demand such total separation

I can't say I agree with this sentiment. This sort of thing happens in other food service outlets and it's never bothered me. The one that comes to mind is grocery stores having separate slicers for meat and dairy to accommodate those who keep kosher. I'm not Jewish, and neither am I a vegetarian, but I wouldn't call those who do keep such lifestyle choices unreasonable.

Also, the word demand here commands more than one meaning. If there is demand for such a separation, and money to be made from accommodating that demand, those practices will find their way into the market.

I did say religious concerns and allergies have more merit for full separation than vegan/vegetarian preference to have no animal matter touch the food. My issue is it's a waste of resources to have two grills just for this.

> I think it's totally unreasonable in the first place to demand such total separation.

Look it, no one is demanding anything. They're mis-representing their product. That's all that I'm saying. The end.

Everything else you're saying, your railing against the so-called "vegan moral framework," etc..., is, to me, just you grinding an axe.

> but they are being cooked in animal grease

They are flame broiled, not grilled. They aren't cooked in any type of grease.

If I'm working the burger station and I'm cooking an impossible burger at the same station as regular burger patties there will be transfers between one and the other, no? I didn't mean they were _literally_ cooking them in animal grease but rather figuratively.

OK, I can understand that's not the point you were making. I thought you were saying that because at many fast food places they are literally cooking them in animal grease.

Many fast food places (McDonald's, Wendy's) use a flat surface similar to this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Flickr_X...

Typical ground beef is 20% fat (80% lean), and if you cook it on that, the fat will melt, it will hang around on that surface, and whatever else you cook next will be cooked in animal grease left over from the beef patty.

If you flame broil, the burger sits on a wire mesh, and the grease drips away.

I'm not just picking nits. I'm really trying to make a sincere point that I think one method will have significantly less transfer (not zero) than the other.

To add to your comment, Burger King uses an automated broiler machine similar to this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSuLWkBt5MI

They are fairly large and probably expensive, so a separate broiler may not be an option.

If you have a care for the environmental impact, would not having an additional grill be a waste of resources and harmful to the planet?

It definitely would increase the friction of adoption. The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that....