Researchers said changing packaging on meat and dairy-free products, which often proudly tout their vegan status, could result in more people selecting them.
People are more likely to pick a meat-free option if it’s not labelled vegan, a study suggests.
Foods described as “healthy”, “sustainable” or “plant-based” are all more appealing, according to the University of Southern California.
Its research saw more than 7,000 people asked to choose between a vegan food basket and one with meat and dairy.
The former was randomly labelled “vegan”, “plant-based”, “healthy”, “sustainable” or “healthy and sustainable”.
The experiment found people were more likely to select it when the focus was on its benefits (such as “sustainable”) rather than its content, though “plant-based” was still more popular than “vegan”.
I think a lot of the problems we have around eating or not eating meat are with identity. You can’t just enjoy a vegan meal, or eat less meat. You have to make it your identity: You are a vegan and you swear off all meat products. And you must evangelize or you’re not a good vegan.
Conversely, just 12% of the population - mainly males between 50 and 65 - eat half the beef in the country. Why? Because they identify as manly manly men and manly men eat meat. Any suggestion that they eat less, even seeing other men eating less meat, attacks a core part of their identity.
These sorts of identities make it harder for people to change their behavior, and are making it harder to reduce meat consumption to the levels we need.
Was that in the study or did you just make that part up?
It’s not in the study I linked to, but here’s another study that shows this I’m not making it up.
You’ve established both points independently, but not the correlation between them.