Designing the veggie transition

Abstract

Floods, long periods of drought, wildfires, and natural disasters are becoming more frequent, in more extreme proportions. Our current food system is a major contributor to this. In particular, the livestock industry. This is due to the amount of land and water that the livestock sector uses, and the emission of greenhouse gasses. In order to work towards a livable planet for future generations, this project addresses how we can reduce the impact of our food system. One of the most promising ways to reduce the impact of our food system is to switch to a more vegetarian or plant-based diet.

This project focuses on the professional athletes who train at the Olympic training center Papendal and eat in the restaurant at Papendal. This is a unique situation where Papendal controls what the athletes eat. Although the plant-based market is growing enormously and more people are interested in reducing their meat consumption, hardly any vegetarian meals are sold in the restaurant. The manager of the sports restaurant at Papendal has no insight into what keeps athletes from choosing the vegetarian evening meal and what can be done to run a vegetarian menu in the future successfully.

A survey with athletes at Papendal was conducted to identify the barriers and attitudes of athletes towards vegetarian food. This research showed that most athletes are open to reducing their meat consumption. However, the main reasons that prevented them from doing so were that they had not thought about it, did not know what they should eat to get all their protein, and did not like the taste.

In this project, a strategy was designed to help Papendal work towards the vision of a successful vegetarian menu in the sports restaurant, where the goal is that half of all meals sold will be vegetarian in six years.

Several models were used to design this strategy, including behavioral change models and a model for achieving organizational change. The motivation technique called nudging was addressed to motivate athletes to change their behaviour. This motivation technique gradually steers consumers in a particular direction, at all times used for good purposes such as public health or sustainability.

Two roadmaps and two nudges were developed in detail as a final design. The organizational change roadmap helps Papendal work towards an optimal workplace for designing and implementing nudges. Furthermore, the other roadmap shows what type of nudges Papendal can implement over the years. Containing three horizons, each with a different focus of the behaviour change model.

Two nudges are designed in detail. To inspire Papendal what these nudges in the first horizon can look like. The first is a deck of playing cards containing information and visuals about the topic of vegetarian and plant-based food, which allows athletes to get in touch with this topic in an accessible and fun way. Next, a playful cube is designed with similar information on the sides. The cube can be placed on the dinner tables, attracting athletes' attention to increase awareness around this topic.