Vegetarians and vegans frequently discuss the best cities to live in or visit, because it’s easier to enjoy a place when there are restaurants and activities that match your preferences. WalletHub’s new study, “Best Cities for Vegetarians and Vegans,” uses a variety of sources and statistics to rank the 100 biggest American cities for affordability, diversity, accessibility and quality, vegetarian lifestyle and overall rank. Just in time for World Vegetarian Day on October 1 and World Vegan Day on November 1, here’s what WalletHub found.
The overall winners are:
1. Portland, Oregon
2. Los Angeles, California
3. Orlando, Florida
4. Seattle, Washington
5. Austin, Texas
6. Atlanta, Georgia
7. New York City, New York
8. San Francisco, California
9. San Diego, California
10. Tampa, Florida
WalletHub used 17 key indicators of vegan- and vegetarian-friendliness, including grocery costs, proportion of high-ranking plant-based restaurants on online review sites, farmers’ markets and community gardens per capita and the presence of local vegetarian fests and veg cooking classes. The data came from the U.S. Census Bureau, Council for Community and Economic Research, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Feeding America, Yelp, TripAdvisor, USDA Organic INTEGRITY Database, The Trust for Public Land, United States Department of Agriculture, GrubHub, Meetup and Vegan.com.
Related: These are the world’s top vegan cities
Some of the more social factors, such as festivals and meetups, as well as GrubHub’s list of cities with customers that are most likely to order veg dishes, factored into the vegetarian lifestyle rank. The top five there included a couple of surprises: Anaheim, California and Durham, North Carolina, in addition to the more expected San Francisco, Los Angeles and Atlanta.
Affordability had a roughly inverse correlation to veg lifestyle rankings. The top two most affordable cities — Laredo and Corpus Christi, Texas — ranked 98 and 93 on the vegetarian lifestyle index. The best chance of combining affordability with overall rank was Austin, which ranked fifth overall, 11th in affordability but still only 34th in vegetarian lifestyle.
Of course, vegetarians will want to know which cities were at the bottom of the list, so if they visit, they can stock up on vegan protein bars beforehand. Here are the least veg-friendly cities in the U.S.:
91. Memphis, Tennessee
92. Tulsa, Oklahoma
93. Stockton, California
94. Winston-Salem, North Carolina
95. Henderson, Nevada
96. Baton Rouge, Lousiana
97: North Las Vegas, Nevada
98. Greensboro, North Carolina
99. San Bernardino, California
100. El Paso, Texas
Image via Tony Webster
