News that Vexes: 10/01/2019 - 11/01/2019

News that Vexes

It's so tiresome to read 'new studies' that reveal Smoking, Stress or Obesity are Bad for you. Yet these studies appear all the time. It's time to take back the newswire from so-called Scientists!

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Shocker - if you offer me less of something I buy less of it

Today's News that Vexes is brought to you by the otherwise reputable journal Nature.  Here we go folks - hold on to your forks: "Even meat lovers go veggie when plant-heavy meals abound"

Basically if you offer more vegetarian options, people will order more vegetarian food.  Somehow, reading this article actually made me feel dumber.

The deets: the "scientists" went to a cafeteria and doubled the number of vegetarian options while reducing the number of meat options by a third.  So, there were fewer meaty options and twice as many vegetarian options, like "wild mushroom, roasted butternut squash and sun blushed tomato risotto with parmesan"  - by the way what is SUN-BLUSHED TOMATO?  ("Aw shucks Mr. Sun, I'm blushing," said no tomato ever).  

Anyway, in this significantly less-carnivorous environment, people ordered less meat.  Someone is actually getting a PhD for this staggering 'research'.  Congratulate PhD candidate Emma Garnett at Cambridge by dropping her a note!

Ready for a mind-blower?  If you remove ALL the meat options, there is a very good chance [research still needed though] that people will actually buy zero meat options and buy only vegetarian options.   I should get a PhD in vexation!