“Research report: adding a plant-based option (or two) does not meaningfully reduce meat consumption in an online, Chipotle-like setting” by Seth Ariel Green 🔸, Jessica Hope, Jacob_Peacock, MMathur🔸

This post summarizes a new preprint from the Humane and Sustainable Food Lab at Stanford titled “Taking a bite out of meat, or just giving fresh veggies the boot? Plant-based meats did not reduce meat purchasing in a randomized controlled menu intervention.” The paper reports on an online RCT where participants were asked to select taco fillings from one of three menus designed to mimic the options at Chipotle. They could choose from both meat- and plant-based options. The randomized treatment was whether participants saw one plant-based option (veggie & guacamole) two (veggie + ‘Sofritas,’ an existing plant-based meat analogue (PMA) that you can get at Chipotle)  or three (veggie + Sofritas + ‘Chick’nitas,’ a hypothetical chicken-analogue PMA).  The treatment was embedded in a series of decoy questions about choosing pens and t-shirts to obscure the purpose of the study. The main outcome was whether people chose [...] --- First published: September 8th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/sXQrBxHuBxyxdkMp3/research-report-adding-a-plant-based-option-or-two-does-not --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO. ---Images from the article:Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.