Who are we talking about when we talk about flexitarians?

Flexitarians are becoming increasingly popular to study in social scientific consumer research and flexitarianism is often seen as a potential solution to the sustainability challenges related to high levels of meat consumption in rich countries. The paper examines popular, historical and scientific understandings of the term, and identifies and discusses three central challenges with how the term flexitarian has been applied in empirical research. First, there is no commonly agreed definition of who counts as a flexitarian. This makes it hard to ascertain shares of flexitarians across populations and makes it close to impossible to assess the accuracy of existing estimations. Second, there is a tendency to operationalize the term in ways that lead to large internal variations. This often leads to the inclusion of frequent meat eaters in the category, which risks leading to overly optimistic accounts of both the prevalence and the transformative potential of flexitarianism. Third, there is a lack of scientific discussion about the issues pertaining to the term ‘flexitarian’, which means that it is still unclear whether ‘flexitarians’ can usefully be viewed as a coherent consumer group. The paper contributes with a systematic discussion of the limitations and challenges associated with the term flexitarian(ism) and its use in empirical research. It concludes by discussing the potential implications for future research.