Sensible intermediate goals for reducing meat at universities

En route to 50% plant-based, I'd like to see, for example, a complete vegan protein available at every lunch and dinner.

University dining is a popular target for promoting plant-based options by nonprofits and student-led groups, e.g, New Roots Institute, Upgrade Dining, Plant-based Universities (PBU), Better Food Foundation, Food for Climate League, Greener by Default, and Humane World. PBU explains its focus by arguing that universities

have significant cultural capital, and their actions have a great influence over the broader ethical views and sustainable practices in society. They educate the leaders of our future and are the very institutions where much of our research and understanding of the climate crisis emerges.

I’ve noticed lately, while talking with folks at New Roots, Greener By Default, and Upgrade Dining, that campaigns are trying a diverse array of strategies, e.g., the 5C plant-based mission club campaigned to get rid of shrimp from Scripps’s Dining hall, Plant-based Caltech hosts events where they provide free vegan food, Harvard University Plant Based is working with dining services on changes to choice architecture, etc. I like this because I’m interested in seeing what ambitious, creative young people come up with when they target culture and institutional change, which likely means noticing specific details about specific places and building from there. We can worry about scaling up later.

Nevertheless, I think it might be good to have some common goals to rally around. PBU is aiming for 100% plant-based catering, while Stanford, UCLA, and Berkeley have all committed to 50% plant-based offerings. That’s great! But a lot of schools are not going to be ready for that. And even if they would be in ten years or whatever, it might help to pave the way with some intermediate goals. Here are mine.

Complete, vegan proteins available at every lunch and dinner at every main dining hall

If the vegan entree is cauliflower, great! But there should be rice and beans, tofu, quinoa, quorn,¹ or Beyond/Impossible meat to accompany, all of which provide the nine essential amino acids.

Pictured: not a complete protein even if it’s yummy 😃 (source: Wikipedia)

This is also a fine opportunity to educate students about a complete protein and where to get it — maybe start with a big arrow that says “complete protein here”?

Were I an activist pitching this to dining services, I’d frame it explicitly in terms of inclusivity and diversity, which are the terms Caltech discusses its plant-based offerings in.

Breakfast is harder, and a lot of college students probably skip it anyway; but if I were working on that, I’d try go get buckwheat pancackes on the menu, which have the added benefits of being gluten-free and heart-healthy.

Campus dining should be formally incorporated into campus-wide sustainability goals

I recently learned that a small college with which I am very familiar is not actually tracking dining emissions as part of its efforts to achieve ‘net zero’ emissions by 2035. So for them, the goal is net zero except for this one domain that just happens to account for 25-30% of all carbon emissions.

I don’t know whether the same is true at other schools; I do notice that Cornell’s and Yale’s pages on their net zero commitments don’t mention dining or food whatsoever. If I were a student-activist, I’d start digging into this.

Transparency about dining contracts and purchasing agreements

Many advocates in many contexts have reported difficulties in getting a straightforward answer from various dining services about how much meat was purchased, served and thrown away in a given period. A common theme in these conversations is NDAs embedded into the contracts between universities and their providers, e.g. Sodexo & Aramark. I view this lack of transparency as totally incompatible with the universities’ nonprofit mission and research focus. I’d start by asking universities to stop signing contracts with NDAs that cover, or could be argued to cover, quantities purchased. Consortiums like MCURC or the Ivy League could help establish a unified bargaining position.

Long-term, I’d love to see universities publish regular reports on what students are eating and throwing out, what percentage of food gets composted vs. sent to a landfill, and the associated environmental impacts of those choices. Think of all the research papers!

Vegan entrees should not just be the regular thing but with meat subtracted

There should generally be an attractive substitute. Apparently this is a problem at a lot of places. That makes sense (kind of) if you think vegan food is “for the vegans” and you just need to accommodate them with something. But I like what chef Kirk Haworth says about his his plant-based restaurant serving mostly omnivores: “It shows that plant-based food isn’t just for vegans. About 95% of our guests eat meat or fish elsewhere. That’s important because I don’t want people to come here for ideology — I want them to come for flavour.” This is exactly the mindset shift I want to see take root in university dining services.

These are what I’ve come up with so far. What other stepping stones come to mind?

1. I generally prefer the term vegan to plant-based, especially when talking about mycoproteins like quorn that are in fact not plant-based 😃 There seems to be emerging consensus that ‘plant-based’ is better marketing than ‘vegan,’ but fortunately I am in the lovely, luxurious position of not trying to sell you anything so I can say VEGAN! all I want 😤😤😤😤