Public meals as a platform for culinary action? Tweens’ and teens’ acceptance of a new plant-based food

Abstract

A plant-rich meal pattern is widely considered to be one possible solution for a shift towards a more sustainable food culture that considerably decreases food-related greenhouse gas emissions globally. The public meal, in particular school meals, can ideally become a platform for developing multisectoral cooperation through culinary action, transforming food from being a commodity to part of a strategic solution with societal outcomes. The aim of our study is to support a shift toward more sustainable meal solutions within the public meal sector. The objective is to introduce the check-all-that-apply (CATA) method in a large real-life consumer study, using only one food product, during a lunch break, and still account for the variation in perception between consumers. The objective is also to explore strategic multi-sectoral insights for introducing new foods to a larger population for a shift toward a plant-rich meal pattern. In this study, we established a cooperation between a small-sized food company, four schools and a university in Sweden. A plant-based sausage roll based on minced grey peas was developed. The likes and dislikes of 800 t(w)eens being served the grey pea roll were checked using hedonic values and CATA questions and compared with an ideal. To understand which CATA terms were persistent (meaning relevant, liked and just-about-right across consumer clusters), results including frequency scores, consistency, mean impact on liking, just-about-right scores and agglomerative hierarchical clustering were combined in an extended statistical processing. Our results show that unique/novel and natural were the only persistent CATA terms; these terms should therefore be interesting candidates for further improvement regarding classification and conceptualization of plant-based products in public meals. The CATA term vegetarian, on the other hand, can both increase and decrease liking scores.