Shifting to a more sustainable and ethical plant-based food system will require individuals and societies to critically evaluate how they think about food. However, eating habits are regularly governed not by deliberate choices, but ‘defaults’ to the easiest option. Thus, it may be possible to encourage plant-based eating through how food is displayed to consumers — for example, by making the vegan choice simpler. Having a vegan default means that non-vegan options are still available, but that customers would have to make a conscious decision to opt-out of an automatic vegan option, and opt-in to a meat selection.   

One important context in which defaults could be implemented is in dining areas, like cafeterias and restaurants. This study investigated the effects of a vegan default in university cafeterias, analyzing changes in the consumption of meat and vegan options. The research found that a vegan default resulted in a significant increase in the uptake of plant-based dishes and a significant decrease in meat servings. However, the default also drove some customers away. Both of these findings are important to consider, but may also be a result of this study’s specific methods. 

The study took place over three months, at three cafeteria food stations at different universities in the United States. On each day, a station was assigned either the no-default condition, or the plant-based default condition. The no-default condition had the vegan and meat options displayed side-by-side at the food station. Conversely, the plant-based default had only the vegan option on display, with the meat option listed as ‘available on request.’

Importantly, many previous studies have compared food sales between a vegan default and a meat default, without including a no-default condition. The no-default condition here helps to understand the effects due solely to adding a plant-based default — rather than the effects of removing a meat default. This is arguably more applicable to the majority of dining contexts, that don’t have explicit defaults. 

Overall, the vegan default had a significant effect on food sales. The researchers found that on plant-based default days, there was a 58% rise in vegan dishes served, and a 57% fall in the number of meat dishes served, as compared to the days with no default option. 

On average, there were also 26% fewer servings in total on default days, which may have been due to customers going elsewhere for non-vegan food. However, even assuming that this reduction was entirely due to customers getting meat dishes elsewhere, there would still be a 21% reduction in servings of meat dishes overall because of the plant-based default intervention. 

These findings together suggest that there are pros and cons to vegan defaults. While they may be effective in changing eating habits in a direction that is better for animals and the planet, they may also push away customers more interested in non-vegan food. This is a compromise that many in the food service industry may find difficult to accept and that could pose financial challenges. 

However, it’s hard to know how the findings of this study transfer to other contexts. On one hand, it’s possible that student populations are more receptive to trying vegan food than the average person, which might mean defaults are less effective elsewhere. On the other hand, this study randomized when and where the default option appeared, and the cafeterias also had other food stations that continued to display non-vegan food; in reality, a default that was consistent across all food stations over time might reduce the number of customers going elsewhere for food. Ultimately, more work may be required to understand how the findings here generalize to other contexts, and the relative pros and cons of plant-based defaults. 

In all, vegan defaults show promise in changing consumer behavior, and they may play an important role in shifting food industries and demand towards more sustainable and ethical plant-based systems. More work is needed to understand if and how plant-based defaults can be used to encourage plant-based eating, without alienating a significant proportion of the customer base.