EA - How meat-free meal selection varies with menu options: an exploration by Sagar K Shah

Link to original articleWelcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: How meat-free meal selection varies with menu options: an exploration, published by Sagar K Shah on February 14, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.SummaryIncreasing consumption of meat-free meals can help reduce demand for factory farmed animal products and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. But relatively little research has been done on how meat-free meal selection is influenced by menu options, such as the availability of meat-analogue options or different types of meat.We conducted a preregistered reanalysis of data from a series of hypothetical discrete choice experiments from Brachem et al. (2019). We explored how meat-free meal selection by 1348 respondents (mostly German students) varied across 26 different menus, depending on the number of meat-free options and whether any options contained fish/poultry meat or meat-analogues. Menus consisted of five options (of which, two or three were meat-free) and were composed using images and descriptions of actual dishes available at restaurants at the University of Göttingen.While our work was motivated by causal hypotheses, our reanalysis was limited to detecting correlations and not causal effects. Specific limitations include:Examining hypotheses that the original study was not designed to evaluate.De facto observational design, despite blinded randomization in the original study.Possible non-random correlations between the presence of poultry/fish or meat-analogue menu options and the appealingness of other dishes.Analysis of self-reported, hypothetical meal preferences, rather than actual behavior.Meat-analogues in menus not reflecting prominent products attracting significant financial investment.Notwithstanding, our reanalysis found meat-free meal selection odds were:higher among menus with an extra meat-free option (odds ratio of 2.3, 90% CI [1.8 to 3.0]).lower among menus featuring poultry or fish options (odds ratio of 0.7, 90% CI [0.6 to 0.9]).not significantly associated with the presence of meat-analogues on a menu (odds ratio of 1.2 (90% CI [0.9 to 1.6])) in our preregistered meat-analogue definition. Estimates varied across analogue definitions, but were never significantly different from 1.Despite the many limitations, these findings might slightly update our beliefs to the extent we believe correlations would be expected if causation were occurring.The poultry/fish option correlation highlights the potential for welfare losses from substitution towards small-bodied animals from menu changes as well as shifts in consumer preferences.Given the study didn’t feature very prominent meat analogues, the absence of a correlation in this reanalysis cannot credibly be used to refute a belief that high-quality analogues play an important role in reducing meat consumption. But when coupled with the strong correlation on an additional meat-free option, we think the reanalysis highlights the need for further research on the most effective ways to encourage selection of meat-free meals. It remains an open question whether, at the margin, it would be more cost-effective to advocate for more menu options featuring meat-analogues specifically, or for more meat-free options of any kind.You can read the full post on the Rethink Priorities website, and also see the pre-print and code via the Open Science Framework..Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org.