Plant-based food choice selection when presented as a default

The main objective of this study is to understand the effect of a default nudge on peoples’ meal choices. To decrease the climate and environmental impact of the food system, there needs to be a shift away from animal source food to plant foods. Our main hypothesis is that when the default meal choice is plant-based, a larger proportion of participants will accept this default, compared with the proportion opting out of the default when it is meat-based and actively selecting a plant-based meal. A second hypothesis is that the climate and environmental impact of the group presented the plant-based default will be less than that of the group presented with the meat-based default. We collected data to test these hypotheses by implementing a meal-choice intervention for a campus Greek organization's group dinner, and for a graduate student training meeting. Half of the attendees for each event were informed that there would be meat-based meal, and asked if they wanted to opt-out to a plant...