Dish swap across a weekly menu can deliver health and sustainability gains

Annika N Flynn; Taro Takahashi; Alex Sim; Jeff Brunstrom

doi:10.1038/s43016-025-01218-8

Dish swap across a weekly menu can deliver health and sustainability gains

Annika N Flynn^*, Taro Takahashi, Alex Sim, Jeff Brunstrom

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article (Academic Journal) › peer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A weekly canteen menu comprising 15 dishes (3 dishes × 5 days) has 1.4 million unique configurations. Here food choice was monitored over four weeks ( ~ 5,000 meals) in a UK university residence. Without students noticing, mathematically optimized menus achieved 30.7% and 6.3% reductions in carbon footprint and saturated fatty acid intake, respectively. This demonstrates the potential of strategic menu manipulation to benefit health and the environment, without the need for recipe changes.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	843-847
Number of pages	8
Journal	Nature Food
Volume	6
Issue number	9
Early online date	11 Aug 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01218-8
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 11 Aug 2025

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Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2025.

Research Groups and Themes

Nutrition and Behaviour

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10.1038/s43016-025-01218-8Licence: CC BY

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title = "Dish swap across a weekly menu can deliver health and sustainability gains",

abstract = "A weekly canteen menu comprising 15 dishes (3 dishes × 5 days) has 1.4 million unique configurations. Here food choice was monitored over four weeks ( \textasciitilde{} 5,000 meals) in a UK university residence. Without students noticing, mathematically optimized menus achieved 30.7\% and 6.3\% reductions in carbon footprint and saturated fatty acid intake, respectively. This demonstrates the potential of strategic menu manipulation to benefit health and the environment, without the need for recipe changes.",

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AB - A weekly canteen menu comprising 15 dishes (3 dishes × 5 days) has 1.4 million unique configurations. Here food choice was monitored over four weeks ( ~ 5,000 meals) in a UK university residence. Without students noticing, mathematically optimized menus achieved 30.7% and 6.3% reductions in carbon footprint and saturated fatty acid intake, respectively. This demonstrates the potential of strategic menu manipulation to benefit health and the environment, without the need for recipe changes.

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JO - Nature Food

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Dish swap across a weekly menu can deliver health and sustainability gains

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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