The Language of Sustainable Diets: A Field Study Exploring the Impact of Renaming Vegetarian Dishes on U.K. Café Menus

A field experiment conducted in a UK-based café chain found that renaming vegetarian dishes to emphasize taste, origin, or appealing plant-based descriptors significantly increased sales compared to labels highlighting the absence of meat.

• In a field experiment at a UK-based café chain, renaming plant-based menu items to emphasize taste or origin (such as "Cumberland-spiced") or using appealing descriptors (such as "Field-grown" or "Garden") led to a significant increase in sales compared to labels that highlighted the lack of meat, such as "Meat-free" or "Vegetarian".
• The study demonstrates that food service providers can encourage consumers to choose plant-based options, thereby helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by simply altering the language used to describe dishes on menus.

APA

World Resources Institute (n.d.). The Language of Sustainable Diets: A Field Study Exploring the Impact of Renaming Vegetarian Dishes on U.K. Café Menus. https://www.wri.org/research/language-sustainable-diets-field-study-exploring-impact-renaming-vegetarian-dishes-uk-cafe

Chicago

World Resources Institute. The Language of Sustainable Diets: A Field Study Exploring the Impact of Renaming Vegetarian Dishes on U.K. Café Menus. n.d. https://www.wri.org/research/language-sustainable-diets-field-study-exploring-impact-renaming-vegetarian-dishes-uk-cafe.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=The Language of Sustainable Diets: A Field Study Exploring the Impact of Renaming Vegetarian Dishes on U.K. Café Menus |url=https://www.wri.org/research/language-sustainable-diets-field-study-exploring-impact-renaming-vegetarian-dishes-uk-cafe |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitutendlanguage, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{The Language of Sustainable Diets: A Field Study Exploring the Impact of Renaming Vegetarian Dishes on U.K. Café Menus}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, url = {https://www.wri.org/research/language-sustainable-diets-field-study-exploring-impact-renaming-vegetarian-dishes-uk-cafe}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }