Gen Z is growing up in a world shaped by climate change. As a generation, these young people could play a crucial role in the shift towards more sustainable, plant-based diets. Yet despite the potential benefits for both human health and the planet, little is known about how to encourage young people to change their eating habits. To address this knowledge gap, VUB Professor Tom Deliens and PhD researcher Maxine Vanhove have recently launched a study exploring how to encourage Gen Z to embrace plant-based food.
Tom and Maxine are both affiliated with VUB's Department of Movement and Sport Sciences and are researchers in the MOVE research group: 'Movement and Nutrition for Health and Performance'.
What exactly are you hoping to investigate?
Maxine: “We want to find out how to encourage 14- to 18-year-olds to adopt more plant-based diets. First, we need to understand their current eating habits and the factors that influence their food choices. We then want to work with young people to develop potential interventions and assess how effective they are. By involving them directly in designing these interventions, we can make sure they better reflect their needs.”
Why is this research important? Are there particular concerns about this generation
Maxine: “They are the consumers of tomorrow, which makes them a particularly important group when it comes to promoting healthier and more sustainable eating habits. Plant-based food choices can benefit both our health and the planet. Eating habits are also easier to change at a younger age. Adolescence is a time when young people are developing their values, forming their identities and establishing habits. By introducing interventions at this stage, we have an opportunity to influence their choices. That's also why we want to involve parents and schools. After all, both play a major role in shaping young people's eating habits throughout much of their childhood and adolescence.”
“Eating habits are easier to change at a younger age”
Is Gen Z more environmentally conscious than previous generations? And is that reflected in their eating habits?
Maxine: “It's still too early to say. We've just completed the first phase of the research and are now developing our questionnaires. What we already know is that today's younger generation is very aware of climate change and how serious it is. But awareness doesn't necessarily translate into changes in behaviour. Previous research shows that taste remains one of the main factors driving their food choices.”
Tom: “Our previous research also found that young people are more inclined to eat plant-based foods than older generations. Whether that's specifically motivated by environmental concerns, we can't say for certain. But we do see that Gen Z appears more open to making the shift towards plant-based eating.”
Most Gen Z teenagers probably don't do much of their own food shopping or cooking. Doesn't that mean their parents have a major influence on what they eat?
Tom: “Absolutely, and that's precisely why co-creation is central to our research. We want to involve all the relevant stakeholders, including parents, school leaders and teachers, in developing intervention strategies. These are all people who play a part in adolescents' everyday lives. Our co-creation sessions may well reveal that we need to focus more on the home environment. After all, at that age, it's often the parents, rather than the teenagers themselves, who decide what's on the dinner table.”
Maxine Vanhove
You don't have any results yet, but do you have an idea of the biggest obstacle to eating more plant-based food?
Maxine: “I don't think there's one single major obstacle. Eating behaviour is influenced by a whole range of factors, including our environment, social influences and individual preferences. If we want to achieve meaningful changes in behaviour, we need to address as many of these factors as possible.”
What exactly do you mean by eating more plant-based food? Does that mean eating less meat, choosing vegetarian meals more often, or adopting an entirely different diet?
Maxine: “Our aim isn't to turn teenagers into vegetarians or vegans overnight. We simply want to encourage them to eat more plant-based foods. We're following the principles of the EAT-Lancet Commission, an international group of scientists exploring how to provide healthy diets for a growing global population without putting excessive pressure on the planet. The idea is to encourage a gradual shift towards more plant-based eating patterns. That could mean eating more fruit, vegetables and pulses, for example, while cutting back on red meat.”
Tom: “In an earlier study, we analysed dietary trends between 2010 and 2020 to see how eating habits had evolved. We expected to find an increase in vegetarian and vegan diets, but that wasn't the case. The proportion remained virtually unchanged, with vegetarians and vegans together accounting for less than 5% of the population. But when we looked more closely at the data, we noticed something interesting: the proportion of flexitarians had increased, while the proportion of people following an omnivorous diet had fallen slightly.
In other words, people are more willing to make moderate changes to their eating habits than to adopt a radically different diet. That's something we're deliberately taking into account in this project. We want to encourage people to eat more plant-based foods without pushing them towards a strictly vegetarian or vegan diet.”
Research is often used to influence policymakers. Is that your ambition too?
Maxine: “Our main focus is on teenagers and their parents. Influencing policy is much more difficult. What we really want is to develop interventions that can encourage healthier and more sustainable food choices at school, at home and during leisure activities.”
How will you involve schools in the research?
Maxine: “We're aiming for a representative sample of around 20 schools across Flanders. We've divided schools into three categories based on their location: rural, urban and somewhere in between. We're also taking different types of secondary education into account, distinguishing between general (ASO), vocational (BSO) and technical (TSO) education. This is important because we want to build as broad a picture as possible of Gen Z's eating habits, including those of young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Previous research has shown that students in vocational education are, on average, more likely to come from lower socio-economic backgrounds, yet this group is not always adequately represented in research.”
How long will the research take?
Maxine: “Four years. During the first three months, we'll collect data through questionnaires and conduct interviews with school authorities and parents. We'll then need enough time to analyse those interviews thoroughly before moving on to the co-creation phase.”
Tom, what's the biggest challenge Maxine should be prepared for?
Tom: “In our previous study, which we're just wrapping up, we developed interventions aimed at students in higher education. One of the main lessons was just how difficult it is to change people's eating habits. I think we'll sometimes need to approach the challenge from a different perspective, perhaps by looking more closely at the wider systems that shape food choices. That could help us achieve a greater impact with this younger age group than we did with university students.”
Have you built in ways to measure whether eating habits actually change? Will you be following up with participants regularly?
Tom: “Not in the sense of tracking their natural eating habits over time. We'll start with a cross-sectional analysis to identify what motivates young people to eat plant-based foods and what holds them back. The aim isn't to follow the same individuals over several years to see how their behaviour changes naturally. Instead, we're linking that initial research to an intervention study. We want to find out whether the strategies we develop actually work. So we'll measure participants' eating habits before and after the intervention to see whether there's been a real change. That will happen during the final phase of the project.”
And how plant-based are your own diets?
Maxine: “I try to avoid meat and fish three days a week. I don't always feel like eating them anyway. Since getting involved in our previous project on healthier and more sustainable eating habits, I've become much more conscious of my own food choices.”
Tom: “I'm an omnivore. I enjoy eating meat, and that's always my opening disclaimer when I teach nutrition classes. What I do try to watch is how much meat I eat. Where I might once have bought 300 grams of meat at the supermarket, I now buy 150 grams. I haven't managed to switch to a fully plant-based diet, and I doubt I ever will. But getting an entire population to adopt a radically different diet is difficult, and I don't think it's necessary. If we all become a little more conscious of what we eat and make small changes to our habits, I believe we can make a real difference.”
Will VUB be crowned Belgium's best veggie campus?
The race to become Belgium's Best Veggie Campus is on! In the Campus V Cup, 15 campuses are going head-to-head to put plant-based food in the spotlight. VUB is taking part too, with exciting dishes, tasting sessions, workshops and prizes up for grabs. On 18 November, a professional jury will visit our campus restaurant to assess what's on offer. And you can help VUB claim the title by casting your vote!
Organised by ProVeg Belgium, the Campus V Cup runs until 30 November.