I hear more about veganism every day here at Brandwatch, whether it’s another colleague converting to Huel, or discussions of favorite recipes in our #dietary-requirements Slack channel.

Our CMO Will McInnes has got involved too, and we haven’t heard the end of it since. The fact that Will has gone vegan has become so much of a company meme that our CEO bought him a T-Shirt that says “VEGAN AS FUCK.”

My personal sense that interest in veganism is growing may have mainly been inspired by office chat and novelty attire, but there’s far more solid evidence that veganism is growing in popularity, including that we’re more likely now than at any time in the last 12 years to Google the word “vegan”.

Looking at that upward trend, I decided to use a number of the Brandwatch tools I have at my disposal to explore how vegan communities are presenting themselves online.

Brace yourselves for some vegan-heavy data from Twitter, Instagram, Reddit as well as some delicious Image Insights.

You are what you eat

For many, veganism is obviously more than a simple decision about what to eat on a given day. It’s a lifestyle, a set of principles, a stance – perhaps even part of their religious beliefs.

We used Brandwatch Audiences to find nearly 86,000 people on Twitter with the word “vegan” in their bio. Yup, it’s definitely popular.

We also found that alongside the word “vegan” many of those in our database had animals, civil rights and the environment as core parts of their biography.

Looking at what they’ve been tweeting about recently, we found a whole lot of anti-animal cruelty stories as well as appeals for dogs who need homes.

The self-identifying vegans we found had more than double the number of female authors than male.

#Vegan #PlantBased #Veganuary #Blessed

We also took a look at mentions of the hashtag #vegan on Instagram since the beginning of the year.

Browsing the posts, it was easy to see that on Instagram #vegan is almost just as much about lifestyle as it is about food. People are posting their “before and after” photos from when they began their new diet and exercise is also a key element, with gym selfies and mountain climbing photos tagged with #vegan.

Make up is another big topic with around 50k instances of “make up” or #makeup being mentioned alongside #vegan

Mentions of #Vegan peak on Mondays and around lunch time each day.