Bill Harvey: Strange fruit

It’s been a week to be reminded of the limitations of surveys.

As a vegan (but one with a Stilton and port problem), I managed to find an article of interest in Vegan News (stay with me on this one). A government survey had found that around 0.4% of the UK population was vegan, while one authorised by the Vegan Society had found a much higher number, approaching 1.2%.

What was interesting was how differently the surveys were set up – the former asked whether the subject considered themselves to belong to a category, such as vegan, lactovegetarian and so on. The latter simply asked how often they ate meat, fish and dairy and classified those responding ‘never’ as vegan.