Exploring the role of adolescents in healthier, more sustainable family meals: A decision study on meat consumption.

Abstract

Objective: Can children's preferences make family meals healthier and more sustainable? Extending cultural evolution theory, we explored the children's role in a possible bottom-up transmission of meat preferences to their parents in the context of family meals.

Methods: Fifty-seven parent-child dyads from Germany (age: M_children = 15.9 years, M_parents = 50.5 years; 67% daughters, 93% mothers; 14% of children and 0% of parents followed a vegetarian/vegan diet; 82% of children were still in school; 42% of parents had a bachelor's degree or higher) decided on a family meal through discussion, which was videotaped. Before and after discussing, dyad members separately stated their preferred meat proportion for the family meal.

Results: In contrast to our hypotheses, on average children neither preferred less meat nor had a stronger influence on meat proportions in family meals than their parents. Daughters-despite a considerably lower preference for meat-did not reduce meat at family meals more than sons. Rather than demographic characteristics (i.e., age, gender), it was specific behaviors of children or dyads that predicted stronger influence on and eventually lower proportion of meat at family meals. These specific behaviors were following a vegetarian/vegan diet, general conflicts about meat-related aspects of family meals, and-in tendency-mentioning sustainability arguments in discussions.

Conclusions: Children can be part of the change toward healthier and more sustainable family foodways-which could improve the family's health-if they themselves eat accordingly and actively advocate for it.