How I Learned to Love Shrimp Seth Green on why reducing meat consumption is hard and what actually works
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Feb 26, 2026 Seth Ariel Green, a research scientist at Stanford’s Humane and Sustainable Food Lab and author of Regression to the Meat, discusses his meta-analysis of meat‑reduction studies. He explains why defaults often fail, where they might work, and which interventions show tiny but measurable effects. New ideas, research quality problems, and promising long‑term studies also come up.
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Mindless Eating Evidence Has Red Flags
- Much mindless-eating research rests on shaky foundations like Wansink's p-hacked studies, raising red flags.
- Seth cautions that optimistic claims about huge behavioral shifts from tiny nudges are often overstated or fraudulent.
High Quality Studies Show Tiny Effects
- A meta-analysis of high-quality RCTs (35 papers, 107 interventions) found tiny average effects (~0.07 SD), roughly 1–3 percentage-point meat reductions.
- Seth translates standardized effects into practical terms: most interventions yield very small dietary changes.
Placement Nudges Can Hide Interspecies Shifts
- Eye-level placement reduced meat orders by 5 percentage points but mostly substituted fish for meat, producing only ~1 percentage-point net meat reduction.
- This shows interspecies substitution can mask outcomes if studies report only meal categories.
