If we want to make a significant impact on carbon emissions, encouraging people to adopt a vegan diet or reduce their meat consumption is a great starting point. Vegan diets have been found to have approximately half the climate footprint of the average diet, and if the world were to shift to a vegan diet, food-related emissions could be reduced by up to 70 percent.
While convincing people to switch entirely to a vegan diet is challenging, there are researchers exploring ways to nudge meat-eaters towards vegetarian and vegan options occasionally. A recent study has investigated one such option, which seemed to increase the number of people choosing vegan food over vegetarian or meat alternatives.
The researchers hypothesized that labeling food as vegan or vegetarian, while helpful for those avoiding meat and dairy, may have a negative impact on those who do choose to consume it. To test this, they conducted randomized controlled trials.
The experiment took place during MIT Media Lab events, where attendees were asked to make meal choices. The participants, unaware that they were part of a study, had to choose between two meal options, each consisting of vegan, vegetarian, and meat options. The online participants filled out their choices using a Google Form, and were either shown a breakdown of the ingredients in both options or the same breakdown with helpful “vegan” or “vegetarian” labels on the foods.
As suspected, the study found that people tend to view the vegan labels negatively.
“In each field study, participants preferred option 1 (vegan) when it was unlabeled. However, when it was labeled, option 2 was preferred instead. The negative impact of labels was statistically significant in all field studies,” the researchers noted.
The authors also collected demographic information from the online participants and found that vegetarians and vegans were not more likely to consume meat when the labels were absent, even if it required a bit more effort to read the ingredients.
“The present studies demonstrate how a simple and cost-effective change to menus could help encourage consumers to reduce meat consumption and opt for more plant-based alternatives, without limiting their freedom of choice,” concluded the research team. “Specifically, our results suggest that vegetarian and vegan labels should be removed from menu items to guide US consumers towards more sustainable diets.”
The study has been published in the journal Appetite.
