Appetite for words

Abstract

In 2021, The Danish Veterinary and Food Administration published new official dietary guidelines. The number of guidelines is now reduced from ten to seven. The guidelines are now taking the climate change into consideration and the paramount point is reducing the meat consumption among the Danes. Instead of eating meat the Danes should eat fish or legumes. 100 grams a day of legumes is the recommended amount, but the Danes only consume about 2-5 grams a day.

Several new plant-based products have been introduced in the Danish market, but the Danes are still lacking information and know-how in relation to incorporating legumes in their daily lives. Low frequency users of the products state, that convenience and ease is one of the main factors, when they think about the motivation to choose legumes over meat. One category, that this thesis will examine is the category of meat-substitutes. The category for meat-substitutes is a convenient way for consumers to incorporate more legumes into their daily diet. These products are however, named in a different way than the animal-based products, which sometimes can be misleading to the consumer or just not appealing. We eat with our tastebuds, but shop with our common sense and a typical consumer will decode a name in a about two seconds. Research shows, that we actually eat the product just based on the description alone, even if we haven’t bought the product.

There is a struggle among the producers of meat free alternatives to name their products both appealing and lawfully, while at the same time convince the meat eaters to convert to the meat free alternatives. This task is not an easy task and in an effort the name the products, the producers might be too creative, and the understanding of the product will not be received by the consumer. The discussion of what the naming of the meat-free alternatives can and cannot do, ends in the supermarket, where the consumer is faced with the products and names.

Therefore, this thesis examines the consumers’ understanding of these names and how the category can be adopted further within the Danish population. The thesis collects data from a questionnaire resulting 119 answers. In addition to the questionnaire, a semi structured interview with Planteslagterne was also carried out. The main take aways from this questionnaire was that the names of meatfree alternatives were deemed humorous, but in most cases the names of the products were not saying enough about the actual contents of the products. Several barriers were also imminent, both in the literature sought and in the results of the data collection. The barriers included a low understanding of selected namings of the products, lack of knowhow in using the products, the risk of not being able to feel full after eating the products and risks of not liking the taste of the products. In terms of naming, a selection of the products presented for the respondents in the questionnaire was assessed in relation to relevant theory. The findings of this analysis were, that for the consumer to decode the names of these products, they must have both a deep understanding of the Danish language and use their cognitive resources, in order to fully understand and accept the namings of the product.

To examine the lack of adoption of the products, the barriers found in the questionnaire and several other reports, was analyzed with the use of Rogers theory of diffusions and a value proposition canvas. The results of this analyses found that the barriers of the adoption of meat-free alternatives, was a scattered pattern depending on the willingness or the degree of food neophobia among the consumers. The findings of the two analyses were then assessed along the lines of the Three E’s. which found that this problem of lack of adoption, both in terms of naming and in terms of consumption cannot solely be solved with the use of communication. The problem of understanding the names and accepting them, and then as consumer buying them, must be solved in a joint effort from the supermarkets, producers, and the government, in order to reach the full potential of adoption within the Danish population.