Effectiveness of Strategies to Decrease Animal-Sourced Protein and/or Increase Plant-Sourced Protein in Foodservice Settings: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Background: Effective population-based strategies are required to move toward healthy sustainable diets that replace a proportion of animal- with plant-based protein. Food service can support this using a variety of strategies across the food supply chain.

Objective: This systematic review aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies to decrease animal protein and/or increase plant protein in foodservice settings on uptake, satisfaction, financial, environmental, and dietary intake outcomes.

Methods: Seven databases were searched in November 2020 with no restriction on study dates to identify peer-reviewed study designs conducted in commercial and institutional food services using any strategy to decrease beef, lamb, pork, poultry, eggs, fish, or seafood and/or increase legumes/pulses and legume/pulse-based meat substitutes or nuts and reported this review's primary outcome, uptake by consumers, either quantitatively or qualitatively. Secondary outcomes were satisfaction and financial, environmental, and dietary intake outcomes. Titles/abstracts then full texts were screened independently by 2 authors. The Mixed Methods Appraisal Tool was used for quality appraisal. Results were described using a narrative synthesis by strategy type. The protocol is registered with PROSPERO (CRD42021235015).

Results: From 20,002 records identified, 38 studies met eligibility criteria, of which 16% were high quality. Strategies included forced restriction (n = 4), menu redesign (n = 6), recipe redesign (n = 6), service redesign (n = 4), menu labeling (n = 7), prompt at point of sale (n = 7), and multipronged strategies (n = 4). Menu labeling, prompting at the point of sale, and redesigning menus, recipes, and service increased uptake of target foods in most studies with the largest consistent changes in menu redesign. Few studies explored secondary outcomes. Recipe redesign, prompting at the point of sale, and menu labeling strategies that measured satisfaction found a positive or neutral effect.

Conclusions: The most promising strategies are likely in menu redesign, followed by menu labeling and service redesign. Satisfaction appears to not be negatively impacted by recipe redesign, prompting at the point of sale and menu labeling. More studies are needed to evaluate financial, environmental, and dietary outcomes.

Keywords: Food service; Plant-based; Plant-forward; Sustainability; Vegetarian.