These are two articles on a new study by researchers at the London School of Economics which showed that people who ordinarily eat meat or fish were 56 percent less likely to order dishes in a separate ‘vegetarian section’ on a menu than those same dishes when mixed with meat and fish dishes.

In November 2017, in response to the FCRN’s report Grazed and Confused, the Eating Better Alliance brought together a range of researchers and civil society to discuss pasture farming and in particular its contribution to climate change. The meeting began with a presentation by Tara Garnett. It was organised because Eating Better was keen to have a discussion about the implications of this research for civil society messaging toward ‘less and better’ meat and dairy, and farming in pasture-based livestock systems.

FCRN member Toni Meier would like to share the document ‘Science meets Comics: Communicating and designing the future of food in the anthropocene ’ which explores the potential use of illustration and comic strips in changing the food system.

This paper describes an online choice experiment to understand consumer preferences around best-before dates, appearance, and packaging of food products; the paper specifically studies the demand for discounted ‘suboptimal’ products in the supermarket, and consumers’ willingness to use them in the home. 

Hivos, Slow Food Youth Network and Food Hub have published a guide with practical tips for “changemakers” in the area of food sustainability. 

FCRN members Prof. Dr. Susanne Stoll-Kleemann and Uta Schmidt (MSc.) have brought our attention to their recent article on reducing meat consumption.

This article in Science explores the importance of social norms as a factor in sustainable behavioural change. It notes that formal institutions can drive behaviours that positively influence, for example, environmental and public health outcomes (examples given include lead pollution and acid rain). However, in many instances, it is not possible to enforce collectively desirable outcomes. Social norms, so the authors argue, are a key entry point to meaningful change in relation to many global issues.

Researchers at CGIAR/CCAFS have written a report about different demand side measures aimed at changing food consumption so as to reduce GHG emissions. In particular, they placed their analysis in the context of the Paris climate agreement which aims to limit the increase of global temperatures due to anthropogenic climate change to below 2ºC.

The authors of this study looked at the impact of measures introduced by Scandinavia’s largest hotel chain to reduce food waste.  Plate sizes were reduced while signs were also posted encouraging customers to help themselves to food more than once (ie. signalling that they didn’t have to overload their plates the first time because they could always come back for more): the effect of these measures in combination was a 20% reduction in food waste.