What Does The Term “Flexitarian” Really Mean?

As the negative impacts of meat on human, animal, and planetary health have become more widely recognized, there’s been a growing focus on the need to adopt more sustainable eating habits. Yet, globally, uptake of restrictive diets such as vegetarianism and veganism remains low. Instead, many consumers today consider themselves “flexitarians,” viewing meat reduction as a more moderate and feasible path towards dietary change.

Flexitarianism, however, is an ill-defined concept, both in popular culture and in the scientific literature. This ambiguity introduces huge uncertainties when trying to map dietary patterns. Thus, the purpose of this review is to trace the origins of the term “flexitarian,” examine the different ways that researchers have used and studied it, and highlight the problems this creates for identifying flexitarian consumers. Based on this, the authors suggest that researchers rethink how they classify people by diet.

The authors searched the Web of Science, a major academic database, for studies mentioning “flexitarian,” which turned up 260 articles. After screening these for studies investigating either the characteristics of flexitarians or prevalence of flexitarianism, and adding a few more they already knew of or found through citation tracking, they narrowed the list to about 50 articles for review.

The exact origin of the term “flexitarian” — most likely a combination of “flexible” and “vegetarian” — remains unclear. The authors found it used as early as 1981 in a newspaper advertisement for a cooking course, but the ad didn’t explain what it involved. Over the next few decades, the term showed up in various news articles and cookbooks. During this time, it was mainly used to describe a vegetarian diet that occasionally included meat or fish. The word “flexitarian” was added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2014 as “a person who follows a primarily but not strictly vegetarian diet.” This definition still stands today. Since then, the term has appeared in numerous cookbooks, lifestyle articles, and blogs.

Even though the flexitarian diet has gained widespread recognition in the past 10 to 20 years, the concept has remained fuzzy. Its definitions have included descriptors such as “semi-,” “occasional,” or “part-time.” These are inherently elastic and allow for different interpretations. Does flexitarianism entail eating meat once a month? Once a week? Every day but in small quantities?

This ambiguity is especially problematic when we take a look at the scientific literature. Although research interest in the flexitarian diet has grown, the term is just as ill-defined among academics as it is in popular culture. Studies have tried to estimate how many people are flexitarians in three main ways:

1. Self-reported meat consumption;
2. Self-identification as flexitarian; and
3. Segmentation analysis (grouping consumers with similar characteristics).

Depending on the method used, estimates of how many people qualify as flexitarians range from 11% to 66%.

Studies that measure self-reported meat consumption tend to apply very low thresholds for classifying individuals as flexitarians. For example, some studies count anyone who skips meat in just one meal a week, while others include anyone who says they’re currently attempting to reduce their meat consumption, whether or not they actually do it. Studies that rely on self-identification usually offer vague descriptions such as “I try to keep meat consumption low” or “I prefer to restrict my meat intake,” leaving considerable room for interpretation. Either of these approaches can end up including people who still eat meat quite often.

Studies that use segmentation analysis combine indicators of meat consumption with intentions and attachment to meat. While this approach can produce flexitarian groups with statistically lower meat consumption than other groups, it can still include individuals with high meat consumption if they express a strong willingness to reduce their intake.

Globally, we can see a gradual shift, both in the common use of the term and in the scientific literature, from flexitarianism as an almost-vegetarian diet to one that encompasses a much broader range of eating habits, including high meat-eaters. Because only a minority of people categorized as flexitarians across studies have meat consumption frequencies significantly below average, the authors believe that the term doesn’t represent what it’s meant to: a transition towards more sustainable dietary practices.

While some studies try to frame subgroups of flexitarians as “light” and “heavy” to tackle this issue, the authors argue that there still isn’t strong evidence that flexitarians form a distinct consumer group, separate from other meat-eaters, in the way vegetarians and vegans do. They also point out that, unlike veg*ns, flexitarians aren’t supported by long-established social movements, represented by interest groups and organizations, or reinforced through media representation. These are what help give veg*n identities more social weight and cohesion.

Ultimately, the authors propose focusing less on identity-based dietary groups and more on patterns of meat consumption and barriers to dietary change. Rather than doing away with the term altogether, flexitarianism can be used as a general descriptor of broader cultural trends, and it can represent more pragmatic, appealing, and inclusive strategies for sustainable eating compared to restrictive diets.

However, as the term has shifted from depicting near-vegetarianism to simply being willing to eat less meat, this review challenges the assumption that the growing interest in flexitarianism equals meaningful dietary change towards more sustainable eating habits. The authors note that shifting responsibility for climate action onto individual consumers is a common way to delay policy change, so overly optimistic claims about flexitarian eating could make that delay easier to justify. For advocates, this suggests that it’s worth looking past the label to what people actually eat, and continuing to push for the policy-level change that voluntary shifts alone are unlikely to deliver.