Food service organisations are well placed to make a big dent in greenhouse gas emissions just by reducing how much meat they serve. The World Resource Institute’s Coolfood Quick Guide shows them how. And it’s remarkably simple.
Whether it’s the vehicles we drive, the goods we buy, or the waste we throw away, every one of us contributes to the human impact on the environment, so it makes sense that we each join in with forms of action that can halt or reverse climate breakdown. But that expectation is meaningless unless we give people the tools and knowhow to change.
That’s where we find Edwina Hughes, working at the intersection between knowledge and action.
As Head of Partnerships and Engagement for Food Initiatives at the World Resources Institute, Edwina is tasked with helping actors address emissions in the international food system.
“I think that food accounts for more emissions than people know,” Edwina tells us. Producing around one quarter of all greenhouse gases, the sector is one of the largest emitters globally.
Food, Inglorious Food
Together with her colleagues on the WRI’s Sustainable Diets team, Edwina has published the Coolfood Quick Start Guide, a free guide designed to communicate what she calls “the art of the possible” – the reason the WRI considers itself a “think-and-do tank”.
This snappy, colourful seven-page guide is intended to be “accessible and positive”. Its 18 “no regret” strategies are based on real-life cases designed to nudge consumer behaviour, not by preaching the virtues of climate-friendly lifestyles, but by handing food serving organisations effective ways “to create opportunities” for diners to make plant-rich, more environmentally friendly choices.
Our CityChanger is quick to point out that this is not part of a mission to eliminate animal-based products from human diets, but to develop eating habits and food systems more in tune with sustainability goals and planetary health.
We’re kind of a geeky organisation, and we’ve figured out what it is we need to do to the food system to make it align with our ambition to actually live on the planet successfully into the future.
The guide is specifically written to support organisations that serve food at scale, whether that’s commercially or in places with large canteens – like restaurants and food halls, universities, prisons, schools, and workplaces such as municipalities and manufacturing plants.
Its advice breaks down barriers to change with easy-to-implement strategies that help “track towards” a 25% decline in overall emissions from food by 2030 – especially those seeking to reduce scope three emissions – in alignment with the Paris Agreement.
Simple Guidance with Sense
Every one of the ‘no regret’ strategies works on the behavioural science principle that “you can change things in people’s environment that will have a massive impact on what they choose to eat”, Edwina explains.
She is aware of the assumption that “this is all about plants, this is all about veganism, and it’s all about vegetables”. But the guidance has been selected so as not to alienate anyone – even meat eaters.
“Some people will always love eating meat, and that’s fair enough, but maybe we can convince them that they don’t need to have it all the time? It really is about thinking about how we can create a shift effectively while people still feel happy with what they’re eating.”
The techniques are split into six categories for organisations to pick from: product, presentation, people, promotion, price, and placement. Edwina briefly walks us through them.
Reduce Meat Quantities
“I’ve got a couple of favourites. You can reduce the amount of ground beef in a burger or lasagne, for instance, and you can blend it with mushrooms without compromising on flavour or mouthfeel.”
Taste is the biggest factor in a customer’s choice of meal, our CityChanger says, which is why Coolfood emphasises flavour rather than health benefits as a driver. “People want to know what they’re going to eat is delicious, and that pretty much trumps everything else.”
Similarly, in dishes where meat is only a constituent part like curries and stir fries, it can usually be reduced to make room for a higher ratio of veggies without people feeling cheated.
Change the Menu
By emphasising the sensory and enjoyable experience, the marketing industry has developed plenty of tricks to influence what and how we eat. The Coolfood guide shows that these can now be leveraged to favour the ‘right’ choices.
Sometimes it’s just about flipping the things that have worked to apply that logic to get people to do something much more virtuous.
Menu engineering, for one, can be used to nudge people’s choices.
Edwina informs us that it’s important to retain popular meat dishes on menus – like schnitzel or steak – but we can reduce the probability of them being selected by putting veggie options first on a menu or doing away with separate meat and vegetarian sections altogether. Offering a higher ratio of plant-based meals over those containing meat also works.
Language and images that make plant-rich food appear more colourful, appealing, succulent, and flavoursome can also add appeal, as can the chance to save money. (Meal deals that favour meat-free choices are known to have an impact.)
Plant-Rich Dish Training
Food service organisations regularly tell Edwina that one of the biggest barriers to change is a lack of training in cooking tasty and diverse low-meat options.
“We exist in a culinary tradition that really puts meat at the top of the pyramid,” she explains. There’s a professional stigma to address here too: “Chefs are taught to cook meat first and then there is a sliding scale. Historically vegetables came below pastry chefs.”
The landscape is changing, though. “If you look on Instagram, you see all these amazing chefs creating fabulous vegan options.” While out of the scope of the guide, Edwina is happy to see it happen. What the guide does acknowledge is that, when chefs are trained in preparing delicious veggie dishes, they feel like they’re contributing to the cause – and that spurs them on.
Front-end and waiting staff can also take the lead, by recommending plant-based meals over meat options when asked. This may be as much about company policy as having the relevant training.
Behind the Scenes
Despite its simplicity, this quick guide is based on comprehensive research: around 350 reports on “environmental research, data about emissions from food”, and of course behavioural science.
It is a highly distilled version of the WRI’s much longer Food Service Playbook for Promoting Sustainable Food Choices – or Playbook in short – which itself offers “90 techniques to shift consumption”. Each of the 18 no-regret techniques were whittled down from these as the best examples for food services to focus on in terms of viability and practicality.
The original Playbook offers additional methods, although the effectiveness of some of these have not yet been fully tested by the industry.
To illustrate one of these additional strategies, which tells us that the setting we eat in can influence our choices, Edwina references Eddie Rockets, a restaurant in Ireland. It replicates an American diner from the 1950s, playing on our senses: the vibrant red leather seats and ketchup in bottles, the smell of onions. “Everything is priming you to pick a burger and chips. It’s almost the anticipation of the meal rather than the flavour of what it’s going to be that makes you decide what you want.”
Nothing’s stopping us using the same methods to promote plant-based foods.
The Playbook also cites research that suggests atmospherics – lights and sound – can create a more stressful situation which causes diners to make faster decisions and “go for the default” – meat. Softer, slower music and even neutral sounds like bird music are more likely to shift diners’ choices to plant-rich dishes.
Plugging Gaps in the Market
The fast turnover and business models of some eateries means they do not or cannot make fresh food in-house; instead, they buy ready-made dishes in bulk. For them, adding emerging options like blended burgers to the menu is a bigger, more complex process. They’re reliant on supply chains, and, if they don’t sell these products, restaurants and food halls can’t offer them.
The biggest challenge of scaling the Coolfood guide’s ideas, therefore, may be the chicken-and- egg situation of what comes first: supply or demand.
This is where consumers do have to take some responsibility. “You have to create the market, but also the producers need to know that there’s demand there,” Edwina clarifies. That means we as consumers should be vocal about what we want to eat.
If you do a celebration of plants and beetroot and chickpeas, that could be fantastic. But if you’re still serving a lot of meat at the same time, you’re not going to see the emissions reduction.
It’s worth remembering, though, that change can be incremental, and that’s the beauty of the no- regret techniques. Before introducing new plant-based foods, there’s plenty that can be done to promote existing options, even if they’re in a minority. If effective, that would increase demand, and that’s a market an enterprising supplier could exploit. Those ahead of the game may cash-in big.
What’s Next?
Edwina tells us that demographics matter, which means indiscriminate implementation of the techniques cannot always be fully effective.
Men and certain cultures still “predominantly eat meat”, she explains, while individuals who say they “eat less meat or no meat” are more often found to be college educated women. Therefore, the strategies should be selected with the target market in mind and the outcomes of the strategies used will differ.
But the Coolfood guide never promises to be a magic wand. Not all the strategies will work in all places for all people, but it’s a significant leap forward. And by trying, we learn more about what works.
As for arguments that people might use for continuing to eat just as much meat, our CityChanger urges some caution.
“People sometimes hope that if they choose organic meat, that it will automatically be better for the environment. Actually, it requires far much more land.” Clearing land for rearing animals is one of the biggest causes of deforestation. So, it’s a trade-off. Eating organic meat for the sake of the climate – if that’s really our aim – means reducing our intake even more: “If you are going to eat less and better, you need to eat way less to eat way better and still get a climate reward!”