Sustainability and meat consumption: is reduction realistic?

Abstract

Meat is critical with respect to sustainability because meat products are among the most energy-intensive and ecologically burdensome foods. Empirical studies of the meat-consumption frequency of Dutch consumers show that, apart from meat-avoiders and meat-eaters, many people are meat-reducers that eat no meat at least one day per week. Meat-consumption frequencies provide empirical evidence for different modes of "flexitarianism," including light, medium, and heavy flexitarians. In particular, the existence of heavy flexitarians suggests that the customary position of meat and other animal-based dietary products in the food hierarchy is not inviolable. To improve our understanding of meat reduction, cluster analysis adds information about differences across flexitarians. Given the enormous environmental impact of animal-protein consumption and the apparent sympathy of consumers for meat reduction, it is surprising that politicians and policy makers demonstrate little, if any, interest in strategies to reduce meat consumption and to encourage more sustainable eating practices.

Identification of data-driven Dutch dietary patterns that benefit the environment and are healthy

“…Such a cultural change would be much harder to achieve, but is required to adopt new sustainable and healthy dietary patterns. Maintaining existing dietary patterns may not be enough to reach the true potential of dietary change (Dagevos and Voordouw 2013;Gonzalez Fischer and Garnett 2016;Green et al 2015).…”

Reducing meat consumption in developed and transition countries to counter climate change and biodiversity loss: a review of influence factors

“…as a result of rearing, transportation and slaughtering practices) may lead to the voluntary avoidance of some or even all animal products in one's diet (e.g. Beardsworth and Bryman 2004;Beardsworth and Keil 1991;Dagevos and Voordouw 2013;Dibb and Fitzpatrick 2014;Graça et al 2015;Santos and Booth 1996) and are increasingly integrated into the commercial food system (Beardsworth and Keil 1991). This has been confirmed by Mäkiniemi et al (2011), who investigated differences between ethical and unethical food on the basis of their observation that there has been a substantial growth in ethical food consumption.…”

“…Several authors found that habits and routines are among the main barriers to reduced meat consumption (Lea et al 2006;Dagevos and Voordouw 2013;Graça et al 2015). Dibb and Fitzpatrick (2014) add that many of our day-today food habits are routine in that we eat often and without much deliberation.…”

“…It requires supportive government policies and practices, new and different business practices and civil society initiatives working in synergy (Dibb and Fitzpatrick 2014;Biesbroek et al 2013;Darnton and Evans 2013;Garnett et al 2015b;Thøgerson 2014;Westhoek et al 2011). While several authors still claim that ''advocating for reduced meat consumption as part of healthy sustainable diets has not yet translated into policies and practices from government to support consumer behaviour change'' (Dibb and Fitzpatrick 2014, p. 5;Dagevos and Voordouw 2013;Laestadius et al 2014;Bailey et al 2014;Westhoek et al 2011), it is evident that a variety of institutions have already started to take action and/or are preparing to do so. This includes governments in countries such as China, where the government is running a major campaign employing well-known U.S. actors such as Arnold Schwarzenegger (The Guardian 2016), and Germany, where reducing meat consumption is now included in the climate goals (BMUB 2016).…”

Sustainable Consumption Dilemmas

“…Our subject pool is a representative sample of the population of non-vegetarian households in the Netherlands because: (i) we started with a representative sample of Dutch households; (ii) we mentioned neither the topic nor the purpose of our study in our contacts with the respondents in the selection phase of the study; and (iii) 93% of the households who were invited for the initial survey, ended up participating in the experiment. For a general analysis of meat consumption in the Netherlands, see Gilsing et al [45] and also Dagevos and Voordouw [46]. Respondents were asked whether they were willing to participate in a study, and, if so, whether they were available during the entire period in which the study was implemented, whether they ate meat, and who was responsible for the household's groceries shopping.…”