Bolder and broader: turning behavioral science to more ambitious dietary change

We argue that while profound dietary change and systemic transformation are widely acknowledged as urgent, current behavioral science approaches remain too incremental and hesitant to meet the scale of sustainability challenges. Most studies start with the status quo, focus on narrow or short-term behaviors, and prioritize small interventions or nudges over transformative interventions. This has created what we refer to as an “aspiration-action gap”: a distance between the urgent calls for significant dietary change—particularly reduction in meat consumption—and the predominantly cautious and gradual interventions applied in food consumer behavior studies. We call for a shift toward bolder and broader behavioral science. “Bolder” highlights the need for more decisive attention to ambitious dietary change, particularly substantial reductions in the overconsumption of animal-based foods. This requires taking a different, more far-reaching aspirational end-goal within study designs. “Broader” emphasizes embedding behavior change in systemic or contextual approaches, shifting attention from individual responsibility to structural and institutional levers. We illustrate why the current situation makes the incremental and small steps such an attractive perspective, and subsequently highlight perspectives for change, including a focus on moving beyond the status quo, on long-term behavior change, as well as on interdisciplinary research. All in all, we advocate for future behavioral science that embraces boldness—i.e., moving beyond incrementalism—and broadness—i.e., taking contextual-level factors that constrain or enable dietary shifts into account.