Summary
Highlighting the critical nature of large scale dietary shifts towards plant-based foods in reaching climate and environmental goals, this survey assesses current behavior, knowledge, and potential for behavioral change within American consumers. The survey finds that while only 4% of consumers identify as vegan or vegetarian, an estimated half of these consumers are willing to eat more plant-based and/or dairy alternatives and cut down on their red meat consumption. Findings show that factors influencing this include cost, preference, and convenience of plant-based foods. Over half of Americans think that plant-based foods are too expensive to buy, and nearly half don’t like the taste of plant-based foods. Lower income households especially identify cost as a barrier, with 71% of lower income households citing fresh produce and plant-based foods as too expensive and therefore inaccessible. For those that do eat plant-based or are already amenable to dietary shifts towards this, both health and the environment are drivers of this behavior – 91% of consumers identify their health as motivation for eating plant-based foods, and 64% identify reducing global warming as important to them. The survey highlights a need to improve education around the link between food production and consumption in the United States, as 29% of consumers claim to never have been informed of the impact of food choice on climate, and 23% of consumers believe that beef has no impact on global warming whatsoever.
The impact of food waste on global warming is unclear to many consumers, with 6 out of 10 Americans believing that a reduction in food waste would lead to “a little” reduction in global warming. By the same token, those who are adequately concerned or alarmed about the climate crisis are much more willing to adopt a plant-based diet and partake in sustainable food waste practices – 77% of those labeled “alarmed” are willing to eat more plant-based meat, in contrast to only 39% of the total consumer population. The paper makes a clear argument for the need to widely inform and educate consumers on the link between food and climate as well as the gravity of the climate crisis itself. The findings imply that the largest benefits may be seen from educational campaigns and youth-targeted programs, market-based strategies fostering accessibility to plant-based foods, and policies targeting and enforcing sustainable food waste practices.