Washington: The argument over consuming less meaty and more plant-based foods has been in news for a long time. However, people still hesitate to gorge on ‘meat-free and vegetarian’ diet pondering whether the taste would satiate the palate or not. “The language for meat, and beef in particular, just sounds so much more delicious,” dietician Daniel Vennard.
“People don’t create positive associations with how it’s going to taste and don’t feel it’s very indulgent,” Vennard noted, while adding that labels such as ‘meat free’, ‘vegan’ and ‘vegetarian’ are mostly not preferred by consumers. A study by the Better Buying Lab, in which Vennard has provided a solution to the above problem stating that less focus should be given on the meat-free or health aspects of plant-based foods, which tends to make consumers feel like they are missing out on something, while priortising the flavor of the food, so that it becomes more ‘appealing to the inner food critic within all of us’. The aim is not to turn everyone into a vegan or a vegetarian, whereby people would only prefer to intake plant-based foods, as red meat production is responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, Vennard added.
According to World Resource Institute, if an average person on Earth swapped out 30 per cent of the beef, lamb and goat meat with plant-based options, almost half of the greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced from agriculture by 2050. “Which is pretty significant,” Vennard said, “because agriculture accounts for about 25 per cent of the world’s global greenhouse gas emissions.”