Meat Reduction by Force: The Case of “Meatless Monday” in the Norwegian Armed Forces

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper makes a useful contribution to an important topic: introduction of a plant based diet through institutional policy. Authors examine a "meatless Monday" intervention among Norwegian soldiers, and explore reasons why the intervention was embraced and fully implemented by military decision makers, chefs and cooks, as well as attitudinal differences between soldiers who did and did not experience vegetarian meals because of the intervention. This paper provides an excellent yet concise literature review on the benefits and rationale for consuming less meat, along with an explanation for why few government policies and public health campaigns are in place to facilitate a population shift in behavior. Possible reasons for barriers to change in consumer behavior and eating habits are presented with appropriate references. The literature review is presented in logical fashion and supports the methodological design of the study.

I would suggest that the Introduction and review of literature (sections 1, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3) be presented separately from the qualitative results which start in section 1.4. Some reviewers might suggest that the qualitative and quantitative methods be presented in their own separate section, but for this paper, prefacing the presentation of results with a short description of methods used seems to flow nicely. 

Since the paper begins by discussing reasons why the intervention never really became a "campaign" it might be helpful to present  literature on  the theory of change in institutional policies and practices, similar to frameworks used to evaluate of CDC's "Healthy Communities" campaigns which emphasized policy,environment and systems changes in schools, workplaces, and communities. Using theory frameworks to understand the resistance and lack of full implementation of "meatless Mondays" in Norwegian army settings could be valuable for future campaigns.However, this approach might be reserved for a future, more in depth study.

For survey methodology, I would suggest that the statement "This means that it to a large extent is random who answered and who did not" on line 267 is inaccurate, and that it might be more accurate to state that there was a complex set of factors that biased response by some soldiers more than others. Also I'd like to see how the distribution of responses by gender compares to soldier demographics--were female soldiers more likely to respond?  

Figure 1: Please correct legend as "Stronly disagrees" is misspelled, and line 315 "reluctance" should be "reluctant".

I enjoyed reading the discussion section. I would like to see some ideas presented as to how to get more buy in for meatless Mondays from chefs, cooks, and decision makers, as lack of adequate preparation and ownership seemed to affect whether or not the intervention was implemented fully or at all. I would also like to see mention of educational public health campaigns for the soldiers that could accompany a meatless Monday scheme. The experience of tasting vegetarian food is a strong influencer of attitudinal change, but as the survey results indicate, lack of understanding on the nutritional benefits of plant based diets, and the relationship between meat consumption and climate change is widespread. More knowledge on those subject might help facilitate a positive shift in attitude that would make meatless Monday campaigns more successful. 

Author Response

This paper makes a useful contribution to an important topic: introduction of a plant based diet through institutional policy. Authors examine a "meatless Monday" intervention among Norwegian soldiers, and explore reasons why the intervention was embraced and fully implemented by military decision makers, chefs and cooks, as well as attitudinal differences between soldiers who did and did not experience vegetarian meals because of the intervention. This paper provides an excellent yet concise literature review on the benefits and rationale for consuming less meat, along with an explanation for why few government policies and public health campaigns are in place to facilitate a population shift in behavior. Possible reasons for barriers to change in consumer behavior and eating habits are presented with appropriate references. The literature review is presented in logical fashion and supports the methodological design of the study.

I would suggest that the Introduction and review of literature (sections 1, 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3) be presented separately from the qualitative results which start in section 1.4. Some reviewers might suggest that the qualitative and quantitative methods be presented in their own separate section, but for this paper, prefacing the presentation of results with a short description of methods used seems to flow nicely. 

Thank you very much for these nice comments. There was a mistake in the heading of the sections that must have happened in the submission process. What was section 1.4 now has heading 3.

Since the paper begins by discussing reasons why the intervention never really became a "campaign" it might be helpful to present  literature on  the theory of change in institutional policies and practices, similar to frameworks used to evaluate of CDC's "Healthy Communities" campaigns which emphasized policy,environment and systems changes in schools, workplaces, and communities. Using theory frameworks to understand the resistance and lack of full implementation of "meatless Mondays" in Norwegian army settings could be valuable for future campaigns.However, this approach might be reserved for a future, more in depth study.

Thank you for this useful comment. As you we believe such an approach would require more space than what is available for this type of study.

For survey methodology, I would suggest that the statement "This means that it to a large extent is random who answered and who did not" on line 267 is inaccurate, and that it might be more accurate to state that there was a complex set of factors that biased response by some soldiers more than others. Also I'd like to see how the distribution of responses by gender compares to soldier demographics--were female soldiers more likely to respond?  

Thank you for this comment, we have changed the wording as you suggest. We have also added information about the percentage of women in total population of soldiers in the army, We discovered an error in the calculation of the percentage of women having answered, and it turns out that women were only slightly more likely to respond, so we have not commented on that.

Figure 1: Please correct legend as "Stronly disagrees" is misspelled, and line 315 "reluctance" should be "reluctant".

Thank you very much for pointing out these mistakes, this has been corrected.

I enjoyed reading the discussion section. I would like to see some ideas presented as to how to get more buy in for meatless Mondays from chefs, cooks, and decision makers, as lack of adequate preparation and ownership seemed to affect whether or not the intervention was implemented fully or at all. I would also like to see mention of educational public health campaigns for the soldiers that could accompany a meatless Monday scheme. The experience of tasting vegetarian food is a strong influencer of attitudinal change, but as the survey results indicate, lack of understanding on the nutritional benefits of plant based diets, and the relationship between meat consumption and climate change is widespread. More knowledge on those subject might help facilitate a positive shift in attitude that would make meatless Monday campaigns more successful. 

Thank you very much for these comments. Most of what you suggest is already mentioned in the last section, conclusion. To avoid repetition we keep it were it is only, but we have broadened it to include more of what you suggest, see yellow highlights.

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript presents interesting studies on the implementation of a project aiming to reduce meat consumption among Norwegian soldiers. By means of surveys and interviews, the authors found that participants of the project (both staff members and soldiers) were not sufficiently familiarised with the idea of Meatless Mondays and its implication for health and environment. What is more, the authors conclude that the awareness of such benefits is crucial for the willingness to reduce the meat consumption.

The objectives of the manuscript are of interest and fit the scope of the journal’s special issue. However, there are some parts of the paper that need clarification or reorganization.

1. The Introduction is long and detailed but it presents just a summary of the many different phenomena and it lacks a specific theoretical background on which the idea of the study has been built. It seems that the authors held no clear hypothesis about the study. It would be better to specify the hypothesis based on existing literature and point out what findings in the results would support or fail to support their hypothesis.

2. I strongly suggest that the authors reorganize the paper in accordance with the principles of writing research articles. The manuscript present two separate studies presented in the form of brief unstructured reports. It would be beneficial to divide the research part of the text into two studies and present each of them as Methods (e.g. Participants/Procedure/Method of data analysis) and Results. In the current form the description of the study groups is insufficient. We do not know the structure of the groups (age, sex, rank, etc.), participants’ involvement in the Meatless Monday program, or they previous food preferences etc. What is more, the brief description of the procedures unable other scientist to replicate the studies. The same problem concerns the way of analyzing the data (mainly in the fist study).

3.  Lines 106-131. I am not sure for what reason the authors described “Possible interventions” in the Introduction section. It would be better to move this part to the Discussion section and refer this information to the results obtained in the presented studies.

4. Lines 207-252. I would suggest that the authors present the findings of the first study in more cautious way. Stating that the authors discovered the exact reasons of the phenomena is too strong.

Minor points:

line 29 – I suggest that the phrase “climate gas” is changed to “greenhouse gas”

line 117 – pls, explain the abbreviation

line 177 – It is not clear to what the reference is refered

Author Response

The manuscript presents interesting studies on the implementation of a project aiming to reduce meat consumption among Norwegian soldiers. By means of surveys and interviews, the authors found that participants of the project (both staff members and soldiers) were not sufficiently familiarised with the idea of Meatless Mondays and its implication for health and environment. What is more, the authors conclude that the awareness of such benefits is crucial for the willingness to reduce the meat consumption.

The objectives of the manuscript are of interest and fit the scope of the journal’s special issue. However, there are some parts of the paper that need clarification or reorganization.

1. The Introduction is long and detailed but it presents just a summary of the many different phenomena and it lacks a specific theoretical background on which the idea of the study has been built. It seems that the authors held no clear hypothesis about the study. It would be better to specify the hypothesis based on existing literature and point out what findings in the results would support or fail to support their hypothesis.

Thank you for this useful comment. We have rewritten the literature review to organise it more in terms of research questions and hypothesis. In our study we look at the challenges of changing towards more plant-based diets, and the literature review presents some hypotheses regarding why such changes are challenging both at the institutional and individual level, and what are the possible outcome of a change of menus such as Meatless Monday in the Norwegian Armed Forces. Previous studies have found that lack of knowledge is a major barrier to willingness to adapt to a more plant-based diet, and that for this and other reasons an intervention such as Meatless Monday could risk a backlash, meaning a more negative than positive effect on attitudes and behaviour regarding plant-based food. This is briefly summarised in a paragraph at the end of the section.

2. I strongly suggest that the authors reorganize the paper in accordance with the principles of writing research articles. The manuscript present two separate studies presented in the form of brief unstructured reports. It would be beneficial to divide the research part of the text into two studies and present each of them as Methods (e.g. Participants/Procedure/Method of data analysis) and Results.

Thank you very much for pointing out this. We have reorganised these sections and created a “methods” section at the beginning of both the qualitative and the quantitative study to make the structure more clear.

In the current form the description of the study groups is insufficient. We do not know the structure of the groups (age, sex, rank, etc.), participants’ involvement in the Meatless Monday program, or they previous food preferences etc. What is more, the brief description of the procedures unable other scientist to replicate the studies. The same problem concerns the way of analyzing the data (mainly in the fist study).

Thank you for this comment. We have described the procedure of both of the studies with as much detail as we can, and we have tried to make the section more clearly explained, for both the qualitative and the quantitative study, see yellow highlights. For the qualitative study we have for instance added information about how the data analysis was organised, around three clusters. We have reintroduced a section that was previously removed to present more clearly the attitudinal aspect, one of the three different clusters (knowledge barriers, implementation challenges and attitudinal barriers). For the survey we have for instance added the information that we do not know anything more about the respondents than what they have answered in the survey. We have added information about the percentage of women in the total population of soldiers, but we do not know what is their exact average age. They are all soldiers doing their national service, which we have now specified, so rank is not important.

3.  Lines 106-131. I am not sure for what reason the authors described “Possible interventions” in the Introduction section. It would be better to move this part to the Discussion section and refer this information to the results obtained in the presented studies.

Thank you for this comment. We have followed this advice and moved the paragraph about “possible interventions” to the discussion part.

4. Lines 207-252. I would suggest that the authors present the findings of the first study in more cautious way. Stating that the authors discovered the exact reasons of the phenomena is too strong.

Thank you for this good advice. We have changed the wording several places to make it more clear that what we have found are only indications and not exact reasons. We have also deleted the last paragraph of this section, as most of it is repeated in the discussion part.

Minor points:

line 29 – I suggest that the phrase “climate gas” is changed to “greenhouse gas”

Thank you, this sentence was edited away when the paragraph was moved

line 117 – pls, explain the abbreviation

Thank you, we have done this.

line 177 – It is not clear to what the reference is refered

Thank you, it was a reference to a web page, but we decided to delete it.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is interesting to the research field.

It is clear and well-written in structure and content and the topic is appropriate for the journal. The subject addressed in this article is worthy of investigation.

The organization of the manuscript is appropriate.

Author Response

The paper is interesting to the research field.

It is clear and well-written in structure and content and the topic is appropriate for the journal. The subject addressed in this article is worthy of investigation.

The organization of the manuscript is appropriate.

Thank you very much for these very nice words which we highly appreciate!

Reviewer 4 Report

The study is nicely written there is a need to add a table of the participance  and a flow chard  of the study disign 

Author Response

The study is nicely written there is a need to add a table of the participance  and a flow chard  of the study disign 

We have made a flow chart of the study design for the quantitative study which includes a table of participance. We will however argue that we have made two separate studies that do not need to be seen in relation to each other. Moreover, adding the flow chart to the paper can make it seem like the two studies are related, and can therefore confuse the reader. The two studies are also each following simple structures, and a flow chart is not really necessary to understand the study design.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed the points I raised in my review in a satisfactory manner.