Given that around 26 per cent of mortality cases in Canada are attributable to dietary choices, and that the global food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, researchers are exploring ways to balance nutritional value with sustainability. McGill scientists have recently developed a consumer-focused approach that could pave the way for improving both individual dietary habits and the sustainability of the broader food system.
Ebenezer M. Kwofie, an assistant professor in McGill’s Bioresource Engineering Department, and his collaborators developed Dashboard for Improving Sustainable Healthy (DISH) food choices—a digital application designed to guide consumers in making informed food purchases.
“The platform’s goal is to provide people with the information on nutrition and the environment, [so] they get to make a choice on what they want to buy,” Kwofie said in an interview with The Tribune.
He also emphasized the importance of consumer autonomy.
“We think that that is the first step in making that transition to a sustainable, healthy diet: Having a system that is not intrusive, having a platform that provides the information but still leaves the choice to the consumer is critical,” Kwofie said.
Unlike other applications, DISH presents nutritional and environmental information in a way that is easy to understand. It employs a five-star scale and a red-green colour-coded rating system, ensuring that key information is presented at the time of purchase without requiring significant cognitive effort.
“If we can provide a tool that people would engage in at the time they are making the decision, maybe we might have a better outcome,” Kwofie said.
Early findings support this idea. To evaluate the platform’s impact, Kwofie and his team recently conducted a study to evaluate how DISH influenced consumers’ choices at a cafeteria at the University of Arkansas. Participants received two meal options: A beef-based burger, rated as slightly healthy and unsustainable, or a plant-based burger, rated as moderately healthy and sustainable.
Among the 90.2 per cent of consumers who initially intended to buy a beef-based burger, 56.9 per cent reported a shift in purchasing intention in favour of the plant-based burger, with 83 per cent citing DISH’s environmental and nutritional information as the key factor influencing their decision.
The results suggested that presenting clear, accessible information to consumers can effectively encourage healthier and more sustainable food choices.
“While the goal is not to make everybody move from animal to plant [diets], we believe that by providing the data […], if we can get more than half of the people to start thinking about what they are eating and how it influences their health, how it influences the environment, and if we can begin that discussion and make people even question their own choices, that’s a big win,” Kwofie commented. “Just wanting everybody to move is not realistic.”
The researchers hope to expand DISH beyond university cafeterias, ultimately aiming for implementation at provincial, municipal, and even national levels. In the meantime, they are refining the application based on user feedback and testing it with a broader menu and a more diverse range of participants.
The team is currently testing an upgraded version of DISH at the Café TWIGS and The Ceilidh at McGill’s Macdonald Campus, as well as in off-campus locations such as supermarkets. They are also studying its effectiveness in Montreal across different age groups, including middle schoolers and older adults, and eventually hope to do the same in immigrant communities.
“If we can target even more young people and make [the environmental and nutritional information] in a form that they can understand […], we think that we might get a healthy eating culture in the near future, which is the target of this whole research,” Kwofie said.
Kwofie and his team aim to launch a McGill-wide version of the DISH application by Fall 2025. In the meantime, those interested in making healthier, more sustainable food choices can explore DISH for Research, another platform developed by the team, which is expected to be available later this winter semester.
