I interviewed dozens of ex-vegans and discovered the real reason so many quietly go back to meat

I’ve lost count of how many conversations I’ve had over the years that started like this:

“So… I used to be vegan.”

It’s often said quietly, even sheepishly. Usually followed by a quick justification. “I was low on iron,” or “It just wasn’t sustainable,” or “I missed cheese.”

As someone who volunteers at farmers’ markets and cares a lot about food systems, I’ve always been curious about the journey people take with food, especially one as morally and socially loaded as veganism. So I started asking more questions.

Over the last year, I interviewed over forty former vegans—some were vegan for a few months, others for over a decade. They came from different backgrounds, health philosophies, and reasons for going vegan in the first place.

But what I discovered wasn’t just a list of nutritional deficiencies or failed willpower. The real reasons people go back to eating meat are a lot more complex—and far more human—than I expected.

Let’s talk about it.

It wasn’t always about health, but it often ended there

Not everyone I spoke to became vegan for health reasons, but nearly everyone who stopped pointed to some version of it.

One woman, a former yoga instructor, told me, “I wasn’t sleeping well anymore. I was cold all the time. I thought maybe I was just burnt out, but when I added eggs and fish back in, I felt grounded again.”

Another, a twenty-something software developer, said he didn’t even notice his declining energy until he reintroduced meat. “It was like someone switched the lights back on,” he told me. “I didn’t know how foggy I was until I wasn’t.”

Of course, this doesn’t mean veganism can’t be healthy. Many people thrive on it with careful planning and supplementation. But in my interviews, most people weren’t making perfectly calculated choices—they were navigating stress, jobs, travel, kids, and unpredictable routines.

As Dr. Julia Rucklidge, clinical psychologist and nutrition researcher, has noted: “Nutrition is the foundation of mental health, and if your brain isn't getting the raw ingredients it needs, no amount of therapy will fully compensate.”

That stuck with me. Because for a lot of ex-vegans, it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in the ethical or environmental reasons anymore—they just couldn’t keep feeling like they were running on empty.

The lifestyle started feeling… constrictive

Several people told me they never expected how much of their social life would revolve around food.

One ex-vegan described her Friday nights with friends like this: “We’d go out, and everyone would be having burgers or cheese plates, and I’d be interrogating the waiter about the salad dressing. I started dreading going out.”

Food is connection. It’s family, rituals, holidays, spontaneous road trips. And for many, being vegan meant constantly negotiating or explaining themselves—sometimes to strangers, sometimes to their own parents.

A study published in ScienceDirect found that vegans often experience social challenges, including the need to negotiate their dietary choices in social settings, which can lead to feelings of isolation and the need to assert their identity.

“I just wanted to eat what everyone else was eating,” one man told me. “Not all the time, but enough that it didn’t become my identity.”

This came up a lot. People didn't mind the food—they minded being the odd one out. The daily dance of asserting values while not alienating the people around them.

One woman even described it as a kind of “moral performance.” She said, “It felt like I was always on stage, being a Good Vegan. It stopped feeling like a choice and started feeling like pressure.”

Identity crises were more common than you’d think

Here’s where it got really interesting.

A surprising number of people I spoke to described going back to meat as something closer to an identity reckoning than a food choice.

It makes sense. For many, being vegan isn’t just a diet—it’s a worldview. A moral code. A community. Letting go of that, even just privately, created a strange kind of grief.

One man said it felt like leaving a religion. Another told me she felt like a “traitor to her past self.”

Several described lying or avoiding the subject altogether. They didn’t want to get into debates. They didn’t want judgment. Some were even still publicly identifying as vegan while secretly eating animal products at home.

That emotional dissonance wore people down.

People often adopt belief systems to align with their values, but when their lived experience creates friction with those beliefs, they experience cognitive dissonance—and it’s deeply uncomfortable.

That discomfort? It was the common thread in nearly every interview. Most ex-vegans didn’t want to be seen as hypocrites, weak-willed, or uninformed. So they kept quiet.

The online discourse made it harder

“I was afraid to say anything online,” one person admitted. “If you say you're vegan, you get accused of being preachy. If you stop being vegan, you get accused of betraying the movement.”

Social media didn't help.

A number of people cited vegan influencers who made them feel like perfection was the only acceptable standard. One woman mentioned that she didn’t want to be called out for eating honey, so she just stopped engaging in vegan spaces altogether.

Another person said something that stuck with me: “It felt like I couldn’t be mostly vegan. It was all or nothing.”

That binary mindset—either you're in or you're out—left little room for experimentation, nuance, or evolution. It also created a kind of fear: fear of failing publicly, of disappointing others, of being labeled.

So instead, many people just… disappeared.

A study published in ScienceDirect found that engaging with the social media information environment influences psychosocial predictors of behavior regarding veganism in the offline world.

Most didn’t go back to eating how they did before

This part surprised me too.

Very few of the ex-vegans I interviewed said they returned to their old ways of eating. In fact, most still avoided dairy, processed meats, or fast food. Many still ate mostly plant-based. A few even identified as “flexitarian” or “plant-forward.”

It wasn’t that their values had disappeared. It’s that they were trying to make space for both their ideals and their actual bodies. Their actual lives.

One woman put it beautifully: “I realized I could still eat in a way that reflects my values without being perfect. I just had to give myself permission to listen to my body.”

This reminded me of something I read years ago by eating psychology expert Isabel Foxen Duke: “All or nothing thinking is the enemy of sustainable behavior change.”

That’s what I saw, again and again. People trying to build something sustainable. Something honest. Something that wouldn’t break under the weight of external expectations or internal rigidity.

So what’s the takeaway?

After all these conversations, here’s what I’ve come to believe:

Most people who stop being vegan aren’t lazy or selfish or uninformed. They’re navigating something deeply personal. A quiet, complex negotiation between values, biology, social connection, and self-trust.

And most aren’t abandoning their ideals. They’re simply trying to hold them in a way that doesn’t burn them out.

If you’re someone who’s wrestled with this—or is wrestling with it now—maybe the question isn’t “Am I doing this right?” but rather:

“What kind of relationship with food allows me to show up in my life with energy, clarity, and compassion?”

That answer will look different for everyone. And that’s okay.

There’s wisdom in listening to your body, even if it tells you something unexpected.

There’s grace in changing your mind.

And there’s strength in building a way of eating that nourishes not just your body, but your whole self—even if it doesn’t fit neatly into a label.