More people cutting back on meat would be good news for the planet, but humans have ingrained habits that are tricky to change. Fortunately, a growing body of research suggests that making changes to the places where we all pick what to eat – such as supermarket aisles, takeaway apps and restaurant menus – can nudge us towards the more sustainable options without us needing to really think about it. These kinds of changes may also attract more public support than policies such as taxes.
In a new paper, psychologist Ann-Katrin Betz and her colleagues at the University of Würzburg in Germany studied the design of restaurant menus. They tested how adding carbon labels indicating the greenhouse gas emissions per dish and changing the default menu options (those featured most prominently) to foods with a lower impact on the climate affected the choices people make when eating out.
The online study’s 265 participants were asked to select one dish from each of nine hypothetical menus, which featured different selections of options of dishes with high, medium and low emissions. Some had a default option of either the highest- or lowest-emission dish. For instance, on one menu the participants could order a coconut curry with either beef (high emissions), chicken (medium emissions) or tofu (low emissions).
