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. 2020 Aug;1(8):485-488.
doi: 10.1038/s43016-020-0132-8. Epub 2020 Aug 13.

Order of meals at the counter and distance between options affect student cafeteria vegetarian sales

Emma E Garnett  1 , Theresa M Marteau  2 , Chris Sandbrook  3 , Mark A Pilling  2 , Andrew Balmford  4
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Order of meals at the counter and distance between options affect student cafeteria vegetarian sales

Emma E Garnett et al. Nat Food. 2020 Aug.

Abstract

Altering the order in which meals are presented at cafeteria counters has been proposed as a way of lowering meat consumption, but remains largely untested. To address this, we undertook two experimental studies involving 105,143 meal selections in the cafeterias of a British university. Placing vegetarian options first on the counter consistently increased their sales when choices were widely separated (>1.5 m; vegetarian sales as a percentage of total meal sales increased by 4.6 and 6.2 percentage points) but there was no evidence of an effect when the options were close together (<1.0 m). This suggests that order effects depend on the physical distance between options.

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