Observational studyProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2019
Impact of increasing vegetarian availability on meal selection and sales in cafeterias.
Observational study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Interventions to reduce meat consumption by appealing to animal welfare: Meta-analysis and evidence-based recommendations.Appetite · 2021Pooled it
- The effect of increasing availability of vegetarian meals on their sales in worksite cafeterias: a stepped-wedge cluster randomised controlled trial.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2026Trial
- Testing the effect of a dynamic descriptive social norm message on meat-free food selection in worksite cafeterias: a randomized controlled trial.BMC medicine · 2025Trial
- Testing the effect of ecolabels on the environmental impact of food purchases in worksite cafeterias: a randomised controlled trial.BMC public health · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Low-cost climate-change informational intervention reduces meat consumption among students for 3 years.Nature food · 2023Trial
- Impact on alcohol selection and online purchasing of changing the proportion of available non-alcoholic versus alcoholic drinks: A randomised controlled trial.PLoS medicine · 2023Trial
- Trial
- Public support for policies to improve population and planetary health: A population-based online experiment assessing impact of communicating evidence of multiple versus single benefits.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2022Trial
- Impact of increasing the relative availability of meat-free options on food selection: two natural field experiments and an online randomised trial.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2022Trial
- Impact of altering the available food options on selection: Potential mediation by social norms.Appetite · 2021Trial
- Impact of decreasing the proportion of higher energy foods and reducing portion sizes on food purchased in worksite cafeterias: A stepped-wedge randomised controlled trial.PLoS medicine · 2021Trial
- Are meat options preferred to comparable vegetarian options? An experimental study.BMC research notes · 2021Trial
- Evaluating select factors and mechanisms influencing meat consumption in Baltimore City: an agent-based modeling study.BMC public health · 2026Article
- Exploring spillover effects beyond workplace dietary interventions using agent-based modelling.Public health nutrition · 2026Article
- Sustainable taste: a conceptual integration of sensory, sociocultural, and structural dimensions for interdisciplinary research and practice.Frontiers in nutrition · 2026Review
- The UK Food Environment: A Systematic Review of Domains, Methodologies, and Outcomes.Current developments in nutrition · 2025Review
- [Choice architecture in institutional food services: strategies to promote sustainable nutrition].Bundesgesundheitsblatt, Gesundheitsforschung, Gesundheitsschutz · 2025Review
- Article
- Can (dynamic) social norms encourage plant-based food purchases? a quasi-experimental study in real-world Dutch supermarkets.BMC medicine · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Shifting people in higher income countries toward more plant-based diets would protect the natural environment and improve population health. Research in other domains suggests altering the physical environments in which people make decisions ("nudging") holds promise for achieving socially desirable behavior change. Here, we examine the impact of attempting to nudge meal selection by increasing the proportion of vegetarian meals offered in a year-long large-scale series of observational and experimental field studies. Anonymized individual-level data from 94,644 meals purchased in 2017 were collected from 3 cafeterias at an English university. Doubling the proportion of vegetarian meals available from 25 to 50% (e.g., from 1 in 4 to 2 in 4 options) increased vegetarian meal sales (and decreased meat meal sales) by 14.9 and 14.5 percentage points in the observational study (2 cafeterias) and by 7.8 percentage points in the experimental study (1 cafeteria), equivalent to proportional increases in vegetarian meal sales of 61.8%, 78.8%, and 40.8%, respectively. Linking sales data to participants' previous meal purchases revealed that the largest effects were found in the quartile of diners with the lowest prior levels of vegetarian meal selection. Moreover, serving more vegetarian options had little impact on overall sales and did not lead to detectable rebound effects: Vegetarian sales were not lower at other mealtimes. These results provide robust evidence to support the potential for simple changes to catering practices to make an important contribution to achieving more sustainable diets at the population level.
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