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Summary
- Eating less meat and dairy is a significant way to reduce carbon emissions, but it can be a tough sell due to personal identity and cultural norms.
- Health and nutrition arguments are more effective at inspiring dietary changes than climate and sustainability messaging.
- Local, positive, and authentic narratives around food can be key in encouraging people, particularly Loyal Nationals, to make changes in their diets.
- Trusted messengers, local communities, and practical, can-do framings are essential in facilitating behavior change around meat and dairy consumption.
- The project focused on Moston, Manchester, where residents rarely felt included in wider climate conversations, demonstrating the importance of engaging diverse communities in climate action.
Quotes:
- Climate change doesn’t motivate people to eat less meat. Some people understand the argument, but in itself it’s not enough to cut through a sense that eating meat is normal. People struggled to believe they could cut out meat entirely, but slow reductions were more palatable. Health and nutrition were better arguments than climate. But of all the aspects of diet and food we explored, people spent the least time talking about eating less meat.
- Don’t say ‘sustainable’ or ‘plant-based’. Terms like this felt like middle-class or marketing language, about which participants were sceptical. Plain talking works best: if you mean “eat more vegetables”, say so.
Read the full post at Climate Outreach.
