Less is Better - Determining key barriers and levers for reducing meat consumption in Cambridge colleges, and developing behaviour-led intervention approaches

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• Siggi Martinsson, MPhil student, Darwin College
• Tuesday 04 November 2025, 13:10-14:00
• Richard King room, Darwin College.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Janet Gibson.

Excessive appetite for meat is a key component in a global existential poly-crisis, and reducing meat consumption could result in multiple benefits to people and the planet. Current levels of meat-eating and the resulting livestock production are major causal factors in the climate breakdown, the mass extinction of species, and a public health crisis involving zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial-resistant bacteria, and increased all-cause mortality from such causes as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and dementia. Furthermore, some consider livestock farming and even eating meat at all, to be cruel, inhumane, and unnecessary. Conversely, contrasting viewpoints consider meat to be an essential component in a healthy and balanced diet and critical for wellbeing and are sceptical of the need to reduce meat consumption and of the products that seek to replace it. Despite (or perhaps because of) an increasingly prominent and polarised discourse around livestock farming and meat-eating, efforts to reduce meat consumption have so far failed to achieve meaningful effect sizes in any population or choice environment.

In my talk I will discuss the complexities of dietary transition away from meat, including the challenges posed by the conflicting deontological and consequentialist root narratives. I will also talk about the results of my recently completed research project that, with the aid of a survey (n=849) and four follow-up focus groups (n=30), determined key barriers and levers for reducing meat consumption in the Cambridge colleges. Finally, I will propose a novel approach to reducing meat consumption, introducing a framework that can guide the development of more inclusive, accepted, and effective population- and context-specific intervention strategies.

This talk is part of the Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Centre for Health Leadership and Enterprise
• Chris Davis' list
• Darwin College Humanities and Social Sciences Seminars
• Darwin College Research Talks
• Darwin Lectures and Seminars
• ESRC DTP
• Neurons, Fake News, DNA and your iPhone: The Mathematics of Information
• Richard King room, Darwin College
• custom

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