Dit is een hele bekende: Kleinere borden = minder verspilling.
Ik voeg hem hier toe omdat ik automatisch begon te denken over wat dit zou betekenen als je dit fenomeen toe zou passen in bijvoorbeeld een prullenbak waarbij “rest” het kleine bakje is en “gft” de grotere, zouden mensen dan eerder geneigd zijn minder rest afval te produceren?
Schaalaanpassing naar wat de gewenste werkelijkheid is.
The picture above illustrates an experiment by GreeNudge. By reducing plate sizes in hotel restaurants by 2”, they were able to reduce food waste by as much as 22%. Importantly, guest satisfaction stayed the same — patrons barely noticed the difference.
REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF MEAT IN A DISH WHILE INCREASING THE AMOUNT OF PLANTS
What determines how much someone eats at a meal? Their hunger? Their nutritional needs? How tasty they find a dish? While these factors do play a role, some less obvious aspects also have a power- ful influence on how much we eat. For example,
it seems we take cues on what is “enough” food,
not necessarily from how hungry we are but from how much is originally served to us (Marteau et al. 2015). Research suggests that changing the portion sizes of meat and plant ingredients in a dish will influence how much of each is eaten, and that this happens without diners realizing that they have consumed a different amount from normal or feel- ing unsatisfied with what they have eaten (Labbé et al. 2018). This phenomenon is known as “unit bias,” which means diners tend to believe the original por- tion size they are given is the appropriate amount, even if this is so large it leaves them overfull (Geier et al. 2006).
Cut down the amount of meat in the dishes you serve and increase the amount of plant-based ingredients to compensate (Reinders et al. 2017). Rather than using meat as the centerpiece of a meal, consider it as a “condiment” or flavoring on an otherwise plant-rich dish, or experiment with ways to blend plants (e.g., mushrooms) into dishes that contain ground meat, like lasagna or tacos. This approach not only helps reduce a meal’s meat content but also can improve the taste profile, as proved by consumer taste tests (Guinard et al. 2016). Another option is to offer plant-rich starters or hors d’oeuvres, to encourage diners to fill up on these before offering them a choice of main dish (in hopes they will then order less meat as they already feel full). In self-service establishments, consider plates that demarcate portion sizes of different ingredients. These will help diners recognize how much meat to serve themselves (Sharp et al. 2014). You may also wish to consider offering preportioned cuts of meat to encourage diners to take smaller servings when filling their plates (Rozin et al. 2011), or intersperse meat options with plant-rich items in food displays or plate arrangements to reduce the overall amount of meat served while the volume of food remains constant.
The Dutch nongovernmental organization Greendish tested the effect of reducing the portion sizes of meat and fish by an average of 12.5 percent and doubling the amount of plants served per dish (i.e., from 75 to 150 grams) on the food choices
of nearly 4,000 diners in three restaurants in the Netherlands. Greendish found that diners given reduced-meat dishes ate 31 percent more veg- etables and 11 percent less meat or fish than those who were served “regular” portion sizes. When the two groups were asked to rate how satisfied they were with the ratio of meat to plants in their meal, both sets of diners said that they had been served “exactly enough” of the meat or fish portion, indi- cating that reducing the amount these ingredients did not lower diner satisfaction (Greendish 2018).
Further reading
Greendish. 2018. “Van Der Valk: SME in à la Carte Restaurants.” https://greendish.org/en/van-der-valk-case-study/.
Reinders, M.J., M. Huitink, S.C. Dijkstra, A.J. Maaskant, and J. Heijnen. 2017. “Menu-Engineering in Restaurants—Adapting Portion Sizes on Plates to Enhance Vegetable Consumption: A Real-Life Experiment.” International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 14 (1): 41. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-017-0496-9.
