INTERVIEW - Ecolabels and Other Tools to Promote Sustainable Diets
Brian Cook is a Senior Researcher at the University of Oxford with an interest in all aspects of food systems. He leads the Health Behaviours work package of the Livestock, Environment and People (LEAP) project that studies behavioural interventions to help people make healthier and more sustainable food choices. He led the development of Oxford’s online virtual supermarket platform to allow researchers to test behavioural nudges and environmental labelling on consumers’ choices.
BEHAVEN — Hi Brian, thank you for joining us today! Can you introduce yourself very briefly to start with?
BRIAN COOK — Of course. I'm Brian Cook, I'm a senior researcher at the University of Oxford and I am leading a consumer behaviour work package in a Wellcome Trust funded project called Livestock Environment and People (LEAP). That's a broad collaboration across the University looking at the health, environmental, social and economic aspects associated with what we eat, with a special focus on meat and dairy consumption.
You recently did some research on the positioning of meat-free products in supermarkets. Can you tell us more about it?
Sure. We worked with Sainsbury’s back in 2019 to test the effect on sales of moving their meat alternatives, such as veggie sausages and veggie burgers, from the veggie aisle to the meat aisle. We tried that in 20 stores and then compared the results with 88 control stores. What we found is that it led to a significant increase in meat-free sales, a 31% uplift in intervention stores compared to only 6% in the control stores. The meat sales also went down in both control and intervention stores, but those results were not statistically significant.
So it was effective but we're still not entirely sure why there wasn't a reduction in meat sales. There are a lot of questions remaining but at least it adds evidence to the fact that positioning can be an effective strategy.
So people bought more meat-free products, but also bought meat, right?
That’s right, meat sales declined in all stores but there wasn’t evidence that the intervention actually affected meat sales. We weren’t able to look at specific substitutions that people might have been making. And that's one of the ongoing questions. What role do these meat-free products play in the overall transition towards meat reduction? We are looking at studies of what vegans of vegetarians eat, and they don't seem to rely on these products. These products seem to be more of a transition or are an added part of the diet for meat-eaters. We know that, for big companies like Quorn, 75% of their customers are meat-eaters. And obviously, if only vegans and vegetarians were interested in these products, supermarkets wouldn't be all jumping on board. It's the meat-eaters and the flexitarians that they want to reach with these products.
That's interesting. In your projects on meat consumption and meat reduction, do you manage to link both the health aspect and the environmental aspect of the products?
We do at times, and that's one of the trade-offs that come up all the time. These meat substitutes are not always seen as the healthiest. For example, they could be high in sodium. There's also a kind of ‘halo effect’: people hear that meat may be bad for you and the environment so when an alternative is proposed such as a veggie burger, people can assume that it’s an ideal solution in all aspects, rather than just being better. People can assume that they must be completely healthy and environmentally sustainable. They lose sight of the idea that what’s important is that they're at least a bit better than the meat option, although often they’re much better, especially in terms of environmental impact.
Let’s talk about ecolabelling. In one of your studies you found that people tend to buy more products when they are labelled, but do you know if people actually understand these labels?
So first, there’s a whole range of complexity across different kinds of labels. We've conducted focus groups, experiments in virtual supermarkets and in cafeterias to understand their impact a bit better. We placed customized ecolabels on products, and we observed the extent to which people changed their purchasing patterns.
We tested quite complicated ones to start with and, not surprisingly, they didn't work too well.
We then tested labels similar to the Nutriscore, with an A to E scoring, and traffic lights. We designed a specific one that was just a picture of a globe, with the traffic light colours and the A to E score. In our virtual supermarket tests, it reduced the environmental impact of people’s shopping baskets compared to the no label condition, and we're using this version in our field trials in the cafeterias.
We also tested labels that would signal products with the ‘better’ (green indicator) and ‘worst’ (red indicator) environment scores based on the environmental impact of the products. In our virtual supermarket, the green indicator label scored worse than anything else, it performed even worse than the control! But the red indicator worked well. Interestingly, the green indicator is also the one that would be the easiest for companies to use. It's actually similar to the ones that are currently out there, but it didn't seem to work for us. Of course, these results came from a virtual supermarket test so we don’t know whether they reflect what we would find in a real-world setting.
It’s difficult to know to what extent people are truly understanding these scores, but these types of ecolabels seem to be simple enough for people to understand. They appear to have had an impact on the products selected in our virtual supermarket at least. We also found that younger people, females, people who support the environment, and people who eat less meat are much more likely to respond to these labels.
We don't know how transferable these results are in a real-life context yet, and we’ll try to find out more in the following studies. But the good news is that there seems to be promising signs that they do influence people towards purchasing or selecting more sustainable choices!
That's very interesting. How could ecolabels be improved in your opinion?
There are 400 or so different sustainability labels at the moment, and there's a whole range of issues and dilemmas to consider to improve their functioning.
On our labels, we use different environmental indicators and consider the impact of the products in terms of greenhouse gases emissions, scarcity weighted freshwater withdrawal, eutrophication, and land use. Some of the scores are a bit surprising because products that you typically think as high or low in greenhouse gas emissions, don't do very well on water for instance.
We obviously need information from the supply chains to be able to calculate these scores. We're principally using research from our Oxford colleagues Joseph Poore and Michael Clark to help with that.
We then need to figure out what we're actually trying to nudge people towards. Are we just trying to nudge people away from the highest impact meat, beef and lamb, towards other meat or plant proteins? Are we trying to encourage a shift of products within categories, for example, from the high impact almonds to the lower impact almonds?
And finally, we think about the best ways to display these ecolabels. Is it better to place them on the packaging? This can be very competitive seeing that there's not much room on there. Are we going to add it to the existing nutrient labels and risk confusing people? Are we going to figure out a way to combine the health and environmental scores? Ultimately, there are different ways to display these other than on the packaging, such as on apps, menus or on online grocery shops.
Is novelty in labels a promising way to increase effectiveness, such as the ‘globe’ ecolabel you mentioned?
100%. I think considering the idea of social identity is also crucial. In my experience, if you want to get people to shift their behaviour, it’s helpful to get them to shift their identity. Although that’s not an easy task. For instance, when using the 'V' label [vegan label] on a product, you’re probably not going to get any uplift from people who aren’t vegans. People who don’t consider themselves vegan or vegetarian may not go to the veggie aisle as it’s ‘not for them’, which is why it’s interesting to put meat alternatives in the meat aisle. It not only exposes meat-eaters to the alternatives but it helps to normalise these alternatives too.
As an ecolabel concept, a globe is much more accessible, understandable, and doesn’t appeal only to vegetarians, vegans, or flexitarians.
What about combining the health and environment labels, have there been any trials looking at this?
We conducted a study looking at offering health in addition to environmental labelling on food products but it was a very preliminary test so we can’t make any firm conclusions about how effective this would be in the real world. We provided both types of information rather than a composite single score which is something I think we ultimately need to make simpler for consumers.
It’s definitely challenging to come up with the best approach around environmental scores given all the different indicators you need to consider. And combining it with health information on top of that could be a massive challenge but something that needs to be considered.
Encouraging the consumption of meat-free products can look different in different parts of the world. Do language and culture play a role in this?
That’s something we're currently looking at. If I were to make some guesses, I would say that the impact of creative naming, which uses references to the names of local products, is along the lines of ecolabelling. It might not have the highest impact but it’s still very promising. Strategies such as creative naming of plant-based foods and ecolabelling are lower risk strategies for retailers and manufacturers to adopt. They have their own complexities, for sure, but in comparison to pricing incentives or reducing the number of meat products sold in stores, they’re seen as lower risk.
The question is: do they have a long-term impact on sales? Do you only get a nice bump in sales over the first month or can their effects persist over time?
Lastly, do you think social norms would come into play in the way people shop? For instance, if you could position the products on the shelves from the ones with the worst environmental impact to the ones with the best environmental impact, would you expect people to be influenced by the purchases of others?
I think that could be the case, yes. Shifting social norms can really contribute to shifts in diets, whether they’re made more salient through positioning or availability. They could also be subtly conveyed through labels. Some of the work done at Stanford looked at dynamic norms in meat reduction. Rather than just saying “60% of people are now trying to reduce the amount of meat they're eating”, it's focusing on the process of change. So they tested messages such as, “In the last five years, 30% of people have tried to incorporate more plant-based products in their diet.” This hints at how people may be struggling with the change but conveys a rising trend. This could be a promising strategy especially in counter normative behaviours such as meat reduction where it’s not currently the norm.
The only problem would be to convince supermarkets to do that. It’s easier to promote the sales of plant products than to encourage people to not buy meat. Supermarkets don’t want to sell less of anything and they don't want to dissuade people from buying any of their products.
Sustainability, environmental issues and climate change are the hardest of problems to solve because they represent a very abstract, global, future, uncertain risk, which is not the kind of thing that tends to motivate us. We need a shift in consumption culture over time to move the needle, and a lot of these labels are useful in that regard but obviously won’t solve the problem on their own.
More information about Brian’s work: https://www.leap.ox.ac.uk