You know you're an adult when you realize how very badly cartoons lied to us growing up. Brussels sprouts are delicious; you can work wonders with kale if you want; lust might fill your heart at the thought of a properly prepared eggplant. In short, we tend to want the green goods now (even Thor's mother urges him to eat a vegetable in Avengers: Endgame).
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There are lots of good reasons to tilt your dietary scales toward plant-based foods, including if you still plan on eating meat, fish, and poultry. If you're having trouble motivating yourself, though, psychologists at Stanford University have a suggestion for when you hit the produce aisle: Remember just how delicious vegetables are.
The Stanford team wanted to figure out ways to market a healthier diet to consumers. It turns out the answer was right on the menu. When vegetarian dishes come with specific, taste-focused names or descriptions like "twisted citrus glazed carrots," "tavern-style," or "garlic-roasted," we choose to include up to 29 percent more vegetables on our plates.
Even giving ourselves more vegetarian options in the first place can increase our appetites for non-meat foods. A new study from the University of Cambridge found that doubling already available plant-based options in a dining hall, often just one in a spread, "increased the proportion of plant-based purchases by between 40 to 80 percent." Of course, as a species, we're super susceptible to making choices based on what we hear about a thing. Keep an eye out for a cool factor when it comes to entomophagy — that might be the biggest change to our collective diets yet.
