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A Menu for Change: Promoting sustainable diets

This report from the Behavioural Insights Team, a global social purpose company, outlines 12 strategies for governments, retailers, producers, restaurants, campaigners and consumers to promote sustainable diets.

The 12 strategies are:

Make sustainable food appealing

  • Use carbon taxes to encourage food producers to reformulate their products, e.g. by minimising content of higher-carbon ingredients.
  • Market plant-based foods as enjoyable and aspirational, rather than as healthy or abstemious. 
  • Use games and promotions in food stores and apps.
  • Build campaigns around positivity rather than guilt or negativity.
  • Use high-profile influencers to share messages (e.g. TV chefs).

Make sustainable food normal

  • Lead by example in public catering, e.g. by offering more plant-based options in hospitals, schools, and government canteens.
  • Rebrand plant-based foods with a mainstream identify, e.g. by avoiding associating them only with femininity.
  • Show plant-based options with meat options on menus and in supermarket aisles.

Make sustainable food easy

  • Use eco-labels and supermarket ratings to nudge both customers and retailers towards greater environmental sustainability.
  • Promote “rules of thumb” and other easy tips and recipes, to make changing diets more easy.
  • Suggest changes to more sustainable options at key moments, such as one-click substitutions at online grocery checkouts.
  • Make sustainable options more prevalent, more prominent, and the default choice. 

Read the full report, A Menu for Change: Using behavioural science to promote sustainable diets around the world, here. See also the Foodsource resource What interventions could potentially shift our eating patterns in sustainable directions?

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