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

Background Decreasing meat and animal product consumption is a critical element of the EAT-Lancet directive to improve human and planetary health, but scalable, effective solutions remain elusive. Plant-based meat analogues (PMAs) are widely touted as a promising approach, but the extent to which PMAs reduce demand for meat remains unknown. Methods We examined whether offering more PMA-containing dishes on a restaurant menu decreases meat consumption, and whether offering a novel chicken-like PMA specifically decreases chicken consumption. In this preregistered, randomized controlled online experiment, 4,431 English-speaking American adults viewed the menu from Chipotle, a popular chain restaurant. We exactly reproduced the restaurant’s real menu, except that we randomly manipulated the number of PMAs (zero, one, or two). When one PMA was offered, it was sofritas, a PMA designed by Chipotle which does not emulate any specific meat. When two were offered, they were sofritas and “chick’nitas,” a fictitious PMA resembling chicken. As the primary outcome measure, participants chose a filling for their taco. Results Adding one or two PMAs to the menu did not meaningfully reduce the proportion of participants selecting animal-based meat. Offering one PMA (sofritas) versus none produced only a negligible 1.14 percentage point (pp) decrease in meat selection (95% CI [-1.02, 3.30], p = .30). For two PMAs (sofritas and chick’nitas) versus none, the estimated decrease was a negligible 2.14 pp (95% CI [-0.08, 4.36], p = .06). The availability of a chicken PMA may have slightly reduced demand for chicken (40.8% ordered chicken in the No-PMA Arm, 39.2% if only the nonspecific sofritas PMA was available, and 35.6% if chick’nitas was also offered). Conclusions Offering more PMAs did not meaningfully reduce meat consumption, and instead reduced demand for other vegetarian options. Overall, our findings do not support the hypothesis that expanding PMA offerings alone can meaningfully shift consumer choices away from meat.