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PSYCHOLOGY

Modelling diet choices

Nature Sustainability volume 2, pages 661–662 (2019)Cite this article

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Meat is an important source of greenhouse-gas emissions, but not enough people are giving it up. A new model integrates diets, land use and climate change to explore the potential and implications of mass adoption of vegetarian diets.

Livestock production — especially ruminant animals, such as cattle and sheep — is responsible for around 18% of global greenhouse-gas emissions3, so reducing consumption of meat can play an important role in addressing climate change. Workplaces such as WeWork are beginning to implement a variety of policies to accomplish this. Less coercively, the Department of Management, Society and Communication at the Copenhagen Business School makes vegetarian food the default option, but allows people to opt-out and order meat if they wish4. This policy was effective and popular: in its first six months, 90% of food orders were vegetarian and most people supported continuation of the policy4.

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  1. Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA

    Jonathan M. Gilligan

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  1. Jonathan M. Gilligan
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Correspondence to Jonathan M. Gilligan.

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Gilligan, J.M. Modelling diet choices. Nat Sustain 2, 661–662 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0354-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-019-0354-7

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