Consumption orientations may support (or hinder) transitions to more plant-based diets

João Graça,Monica Truninger,Luís Junqueira,Luisa Schmidt

doi:10.1016/j.appet.2019.04.027

João Graça, Monica Truninger + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2019.04.027

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Abstract

There have been increasing calls for triggering and sustaining a large-scale transition toward healthier and more sustainable food systems. To help materialize this transition, the present work aims to inform efforts for developing, marketing and promoting plant-based meals and plant-forward lifestyles, following a consumption-focused approach. The findings (Nparticipants = 1600, Portugal; 52.6% female, Mage = 48.30) allowed to identify trends and differences on three sets of variables – (a) current eating habits (i.e., meat, fish, and plant-based meals), (b) consumer willingness to change (i.e., reduce meat consumption, follow a plant-based diet, maintain the status quo), and (c) enablers for eating plant-based meals more often (i.e., capability, opportunity, motivation) –, considering consumer orientations toward consumption in general, and food consumption in particular. Taken together, the results suggested that some consumption orientations were aligned with the transition to more plant-based diets (e.g., food orientation toward naturalness), others were open to – but not yet materialized in – the transition (e.g., general orientation toward consumption as exploration), and still others were in tension with the transition (e.g., food orientation toward pleasure). The discussion calls for developing and testing pathways to reduce meat consumption and increase plant-based eating which capture and build upon a range of consumption orientations, rather than against them.

Highlights

There is growing consensus that the current food systems are in need of profound transformations to address pressing global health and environmental challenges that affect human thriving and development throughout the planet (Clark & Tilman, 2017; Willett et al, 2019)
The results suggested that some consumption orientations were aligned with the transition to more plant-based diets, others were open to – but not yet materialized in – the transition, and still others were in tension with the transition
In addition to addressing the main research questions, findings on how current eating habits and willingness to change related with demographic variables in this sample are available in the Supplementary Material

Summary

Introduction

Evidence suggests that many consumers are not yet willing to change their eating habits (Graça et al, 2015; Hartmann & Siegrist, 2017; Lentz et al, 2018), and common representations of ‘proper’ and ‘attractive’ meals often revolve around dish structures that comprise an animal portion as the ‘center of the plate protein’ (Bryant et al, 2019; de Boer & Aiking, 2017; Murcott, 2019) Against this backdrop, one of the challenges in terms of market and consumption seems to be on how to promote plant-based food practices in ways that appeal to increasingly greater numbers of consumers.

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