What’s in a name?
It seems rather a lot when it comes to our food choices.
According to new research, meat-eaters are significantly less likely to pick plant-based foods if they are labelled as ‘vegan’.
The study in question featured two groups of US university students, who were offered a choice of a ‘vegan hummus wrap’ or a ‘Greek salad wrap’ (with the latter containing dairy feta) on an RSVP event form.
Ingredients for each were listed on the forms – but for half of the participants the hummus wrap was labelled as ‘vegan’, whereas it was left unlabelled for the others.
Results found that 36% of students chose the vegan option when it was marked as such. However, when it wasn’t labelled as ‘vegan’, 60.7% picked it.
A second field study showed similar findings with 33.9% choosing the marked vegan option and 63.8% selecting it when it wasn’t marked.
Researchers then widened their study to the broader US population and found that consumers were ‘significantly less’ likely to choose an option labelled ‘vegan’ or ‘vegetarian.’ However, it’s worth pointing out that vegans and vegetarians still chose meat-free items when labels were removed, meaning it’s unlikely that this factor impacts their decisions.
The study, called ‘the negative impact of vegetarian and vegan labels’, was conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.
Off the back of this, authors of the study now say these findings indicate that labels should be removed from food products, in order to encourage more people to choose meat-free options.
‘Removing these labels may provide an extremely simple and low-cost means for restaurants and other institutions to reduce their environmental impact, with minimal changes to menus, and without impacting consumers’ freedom of choice’ said study authors Alex Berke and Kent Larson.
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