A study employing hypothetical restaurant menus suggests that climate-friendly default options and labels indicating the carbon footprint of each dish may influence diners’ dish selections and the resulting environmental effects. Ann-Katrin Betz and colleagues at Julius-Maximilians-Universität Wu¨rzburg, Germany, present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS Climate.
Previous research has shown that an individual’s food choices substantially affect their personal carbon footprint. However, most studies examining factors that influence environmentally relevant food choices have focused on purchasing of groceries eaten at home.
To broaden understanding, Betz and colleagues explored how restaurant menu design might influence diners’ climate-relevant choices. They created nine hypothetical menus in order to test two design approaches: carbon labels indicating the amount of greenhouse gas emissions associated with each dish, and—for dishes with components that could be modified—setting the default component to either a low- or a high-emission option.
In an online study, 256 volunteers each selected one dish from each of the nine hypothetical menus, which varied in cuisine, presence of modifiable dishes, climate friendliness of default options, and presence of carbon labels. One example of such a dish was a couscous salad that could be ordered with beef (high emission), shawarma (poultry; medium emission), or falafel (low emission). This appears to be the first published study to simultaneously explore the effects of default options and carbon labels on food choice.