New article in PLOS CLIMATE on how to manipulate you.
I know, I know. They don’t mention the bugs in this one. But it’s obviously where this is headed.
How can carbon labels and climate-friendly default options on restaurant menus contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions associated with dining?
Here is the abstract:
In this study, we aimed to understand how restaurants can contribute to climate change mitigation via menu design. We investigated two types of interventions: changing the configuration of menu entries with variable side dishes so that the most climate-friendly option is set as the default and indicating the greenhouse gas emission of each dish via carbon labels. In an online simulation experiment, 265 participants were shown the menus of nine different restaurants and had to choose exactly one dish per menu. In six menus, the main dishes were presented with different default options: the side dish was associated either with the highest or with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions.
The other three menus consisted of unitary dishes for which the default rules did not apply. All menus were presented either with or without carbon labels for each dish option. The results indicated that more climate-friendly dish choices resulting in lower greenhouse gas emissions were made with the low-emission than the high-emission default condition, and when carbon labels were present rather than absent. The effects of both interventions interacted, which indicates that the interventions partly overlap with regard to cognitive predecessors of choice behavior, such as attentional focus and social norms.
The results suggest that the design of restaurant menus has a considerable effect on the carbon footprint of dining.
And excerpts from EurekAlert! Press Release
Menus for climate-friendly food choices
UNIVERSITY OF WÜRZBURG
The fact that a beef steak is significantly worse for the climate than a tofu schnitzel has probably become common knowledge by now. After all, cows are considered an enormous burden on the climate and a driving force for climate change, among other things because of their methane emissions. Nevertheless, Germans still consume an average of 55 kilograms of meat per year – according to the evaluation of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture for the year 2021.
Scientists at the Julius-Maximilians-Universität of Würzburg (JMU) have now investigated the extent to which restaurants can contribute to curbing the climate crisis by redesigning their menus. Specifically, the question was whether colour-coded information about the greenhouse gas emissions of dishes – so-called CO2 labels – and a changed standard option for dishes with interchangeable side dishes nudge guests to more climate-friendly dish choices.
And, of course, it’s the right thing to do for all the socially conscious reasons.
According to the psychologists, an important finding from this study is that people are obviously willing and able to consider the pressing problem of the climate crisis even in small everyday decisions such as ordering a meal. “This is by no means self-evident when we consider that in a restaurant we enjoy the food, the atmosphere and the get-together with others, so we do not want to think about existential threats like the climate crisis,” says Seger.
From a psychological point of view, the decision for climate-friendly food is not unexpected: “We assume that CO2 labels and changed standards convey certain social norms. After all, the imperative to emit as little carbon dioxide as possible is now established in large parts of the population,” explains Seger. Thus, when a restaurant discloses the CO2 emissions of the dishes it offers, guests realise that this standard also applies to food choices in restaurants. This is all the more true if these are additionally emphasised by corresponding colours: red for a lot of CO2, green for little greenhouse gas.
Social norms influence behaviour
“If a restaurant highlights the vegetable patty instead of the meat patty as a standard option in its burger menu, it communicates: ‘Guests at this restaurant usually order the veggie burger.’ In psychology, we call this a descriptive norm,” says Seger. This presumed knowledge of what others do in a certain situation – regardless of whether it is desired or accepted – can have a significant influence on behaviour.
Accordingly, Seger’s message to restaurant operators is: “Have the courage to include CO2 labels and different standard options in your menu. This way you can contribute to climate protection without having to change your offer fundamentally.”
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An exercise in Puritanical Zeal – those people hate your very existence and want to make you feel guilty for simply being alive and indulging a spot of Hedonism
And plenty philosopher types will assert that without Hedonism, What Is The Point?
It is something very deep and basic that us human types must have/do – or else we go crazy.
There is an alternative explanation, nicely illuminated by all the folks posting in here about eating ‘sea bugs’
Something else that’s very basic inside us all is a recognition of when ‘something is missing from our diet‘
When ‘something’ is missing, we go look for it
i.e. We take to experimenting with and eating ‘unusual stuff’
So it is with eating almost anything, and enjoying eating, stuff that comes out of the sea. When we enjoy the sea bugs (possibly probably other bugs) because our bodily system/metabolism rewards us for finding the missing nutrient. By making us ‘feel good’
For sea bugs, the missing nutrient is Iodine – and without Iodine inside of us, we really do completely fall apart.
Iodine has got to be The Number One Human Nutrient.
All the other halogens are really rather unpleasant.
So, us having a generous supply of Iodine works to displace those toxins.
Iodine is the goody, Fluorine ##, Chlorine and Bromine are the baddies
Is that why folks like living beside the sea and eating sea bugs/weeds?
Lots of Iodine in there and not so much on the land.
what a bummer, Soil Erosion strikes again
## I mentioned Fluorine a few days ago with the promise of ‘more’
Going back to, let’s say 1910. Fluorine became a hideous waste product of Aluminium production. This was/is The Alcoa Company and they wanted some way of getting rid.
Guess what, just like margarine was and soya is nowadays, it was re-branded as something good to eat and actually healthy. Some really tenuous and wildly imaginative connection was made with tooth decay.
This was perfect for Alcoa because, they were making Aluminium to make into soda-pop cans and the soda pop was destroying folks’ teeth.
Epic doncha think?
But, they had too much Fluorine/Fluoride to use in just toothpaste and mouthwash, so they started putting it in folks’ drinking water. And still do.
A well known figure in recent history also found a use for Fluorine/Fluoride – a guy with the initials AH
Now what AH did with fluoride was to forcibly dose the folks he’d incarcerated into concentration/prison camps with the stuff.
What happens then is that the folks become passive, dopey, non-aggressive and basically= stupefied.
(Fluoride has actually been used as an anti-depressant medicine, probably strictly as an anti-anxiety medication)
This worked a treat for AH because it drastically reduced the number of prison guards he needed.
Put that lot together (chronic Iodine deficiency allied to forcible Fluoride ‘treatment’) and what do you get?
Entire nations of passive, dumb, stupid and easily frightened people willing to give up their freedoms – while suffering enduring all sorts of physical & mental illnesses that they’d normally just shrug off.
While science, politics, social-relationships, marriages, baby-making all disappear into a new Dark Age…….
wrap up warm
You normally get chlorine in one of several different compounds rather than it’s pure gaseous toxic form. Common salt is essential, but usually over-consumed in a highly refined form without balancing with potassium chloride. Potassium and magnesium salts are also useful nutrients. Without the chlorine in stomach acid, we couldn’t efficiently digest food. Don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.
This kind of thinking really bugs me.
Surely the best way is to serve it only in luxury restaurants, frequented by the “elite”. The peasants would then follow eagerly. No?
I think we are headed out to a good steak house this weekend. I will keep the CO2 down by ordering my steak cooked medium rare.
Does whiskey consumption affect my carbon footprint? Can’t have a good steak without whiskey
I guess tofu might be edible if it’s wrapped in bacon.
Just focusing in on methanogen bacteria, a staple of the “anti-beef” argument, well, removing 100% of beef-able livestock from Earth would not affect the total terrestrial quantity of methane-producing bacteria a great deal. Quoting ScienceDirect: “Methanogens are exclusively Archaea, and are one of the most common anaerobic microbes in highly reducing conditions in close association with decomposing organic material.”
In other words, virtually anywhere you find anerobic conditions and decomposing organic material, you’ll find these little guys, and there are way more of them than the total population of beef-cattle. And probably a good thing, too. Methane is useful!
Get serious. Ok for gossip rags, not WUWT #@*& !!
Again we have free choice for now. Just say no to all the crap they have been clogging up our minds with Bugs, masks, social distancing, vaccines, etc. We have no other way to stand up for ourselves now except to do this NO thing. Let us eat cake, event that didn’t really happen
Waiter, where’s the fly in my soup?
“The fact that a beef steak is significantly worse for the climate than a tofu schnitzel has probably become common knowledge by now.”
From the same progressive movement that tells us wind and solar electric power are zero emissions. So they can ignore the energy inputs (with attendant CO2 emissions) required for mining, transporting, manufacturing, installing, maintaining and decommissioning massive wind and solar installations; they can ignore the massive requirement for energy intensive development of enhanced distributed electrical grids to collect all that energy; they can ignore the further energy/CO2 effects of the added requirement for either traditional spinning electrical systems or the addition of massive and highly expensive battery systems all built with fossil fuels; and they can ignore all of the adverse environmental impacts of the land/ocean impacts where these installations are built, but in the end they can claim “zero emissions”.
With meat they can do a rapid back flip and assume that cow farts and burps are a critical cause of disastrous climate change and assume anything that is not meat has no or trivial impact.
What they call “common knowledge” is not knowledge at all but rather, part of the religious dogma of the climate change cult.
Time for me to cook some bacon on my natural gas burner.
It is best to view all these pompous pronouncements from Climatistas as parody.
I’ve seen chain restaurants’ menus providing nutritional info with their menu items that list total calories, fat, carbs, etc. I usually select a meal high in fats and calories, as they then to taste better and are more satisfying than the alternatives. I think I’ll be selecting the “red for a lot of CO2” meals. 😉
“The fact that a beef steak is significantly worse for the climate than a tofu schnitzel ”
Fact? I’ve seen it said that eating tofu once or twice a week contributes 12kg to someone’s annual ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions.
I’m curious WHERE they ran these trials. In my area I doubt it would have the same results.
They can’t even figure out how to turn insects into fish food. But they want to make them a staple for people?
If you’re a restaurant owner, operator, investor, or worker who’s the least bit concerned about your income stream, please pay attention.
I hereby make a solemn vow that if I ever sit down in a restaurant I’ve never before patronized, and your staff hands me a menu that’s organized to instruct me on the climate impact or alleged carbon dioxide emission footprint of your dishes’ ingredients, I’m not only getting up and walking out without tipping, I might accidentally tip the table over. I’ll then tell all my friends that the food at your place really sucks, even though I will not stick around to order any. And I’ll feel my claim about your food will be only a tiny stretch of the truth, since you clearly don’t care about making tasty dishes for your customers, which is a restaurants primary function, as much as you care about saving the planet. which no restaurant in the entire world should ever think is it’s mission.
And you can take that to the bank, instead of my money.
“According to the psychologists, an important finding from this study is that people are obviously willing and able to consider the pressing problem of the climate crisis even in small everyday decisions such as ordering a meal.”
==================
The author haven’t been paying attention. According to surveys, the vast majority of people are unwilling to make personal sacrifices for global warming. If they do support action to save the planet it’s never something that they themselves should do or pay for, it’s government and industry who must take action that has no effect or cost to them personally. Moreover, people will often respond that they are willing to do what it takes, but they don’t do it when no-one is looking.
Why eat bugs? It take lots of capital, energy and biomass to grow enough edible bugs to make a difference in the food supply…..how could it be cost effective? The self sacrificing self righteous, dystopia reveling, high optic trend setters will have to pay big money for those bugs. At $80 per pound, I would have to earn $160 to buy them,
(https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/readers-respond/bs-ed-insects-letter-20160609-story.html).
For the price of 6 lbs of edible bugs, I grow 25% or more of my food budget for a family of 4. (also make great wine, honey, and hopefully pipe tobacco)
There is plenty of open land in urban and suburban areas and marginal lands elsewhere for people to grow their own food. Two acres can produce plenty of Chicken, eggs, milk meat, fruit and vegetables, beans etc.. and do it low cost year after year. Subsistence family farming is far better than eating bugs. On 0.85 acres of marginal land…my back yard, my wife and I produce 40 eggs/week, 20 bushels of apples, 4 bushels of peaches, a bushel of cherries, 10-15 quarts of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, Elderberries, black berries, 200 lbs of potatoes, many bushels of tomatoes peppers and many other vegetables and 80 lbs of dried beans…it costs me about $400 a year in chicken and garden costs. For every 1 pound of pinto beans I buy in the supermarket at $1.50 a pound, I have to earn $3.00. For every pound of dried beans I grow and consume, it costs me about 4 cents and 10 minutes of labor.
Hahaha
Clearly the best thing to do when presented with such a menu is to laugh heartily
then order the most “CO2 intense” non-bug item.
And ask to have it cooked ‘well done’.
The Diet of Worms was an early German attempt to instigate this sort of nonsense.
I thought that worms were the after life that made a meal of the remains?
sarc.
Eating your guilt…
I will cook what I want at home. There is no need for restaurants anyway. it’s nice some times, but not necessary.
But at the end of the day, maybe the restaurant owners will decide what goes in their menus. Profit will drive it.
The real problem is academics having these stupid research projects and those paying for them.
No way