How Language Can Advance Sustainable Diets

The World Resources Institute's Better Buying Lab convened over 50 academics and food industry practitioners in the United States and United Kingdom to explore how changing the language used to describe food can encourage consumers to shift from meat-heavy diets to more sustainable, plant-based diets.

• Producing meat, particularly from ruminants such as goats, sheep, and cattle, results in higher greenhouse gas emissions and greater land and water usage compared to the production of plant-based foods. Consequently, reducing meat consumption in favor of plant-based foods in high-meat-consumption countries can lower the pressure agriculture places on natural resources.
• Changing the language used to describe food is a low-cost, potentially high-impact strategy for shifting consumer diets. Research indicates that food descriptions influence choices and that many plant-based dishes currently have names that do not appeal to meat-eaters, though this field of research is still in its early stages.
• The Better Buying Lab organized two workshops with more than 50 academics and food industry practitioners to determine the most impactful research questions for improving plant-based food language. These workshops resulted in five guiding questions for future research and a set of recommendations for ensuring findings are adopted by society and business.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). How Language Can Advance Sustainable Diets. https://www.wri.org/research/how-language-can-advance-sustainable-diets

Chicago

World Resources Institute. How Language Can Advance Sustainable Diets. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/how-language-can-advance-sustainable-diets.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=How Language Can Advance Sustainable Diets |url=https://www.wri.org/research/how-language-can-advance-sustainable-diets |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendhow, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{How Language Can Advance Sustainable Diets}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/how-language-can-advance-sustainable-diets}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }