How I Learned to Love Shrimp

Katie Cantrell on shifting millions of meals to plant-based

• Amy Odene & James Ozden

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There is an age-old debate within animal advocacy on the importance of educating the public. Is it simply enough to tell people about the harms of industrial animal agriculture and then they will change their behaviours? Sadly, not it seems. Many people have been disappointed about the amount of behaviour change that’s actually happened over the past few decades due to education, as seen in relatively stagnant numbers of people going vegetarian or vegan. 

That’s why I’m excited that this week’s guest, Katie Cantrell from Greener by Default, is trying a new approach to get people to change their behaviours – by changing their diets with them barely even noticing. Stick around for a great discussion on the importance of nudging, choice architecture and making the plant-based option the default path.

For those who didn’t listen to our special 50th episode (which I think was awesome – go check it out!), this is a reminder that it will just be me hosting the podcast for the foreseeable future, as Amy sadly had to take a step back. 

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Katie Cantrell:

Sodexo operates somewhere between 400 and 500 different hospital cafeterias in the United States, and it's taking place over the course of several years, because it's obviously a big shift. But they were getting them all into centralized menus anyway, and so as part of these new menus that will be uniform across these accounts one meal a day there is a plant-based default. It may not seem like much, but really it's shocking how many hospital menus have so few plant-based options. Maybe there's a spaghetti with marinara sauce, or maybe there's a black bean burger, but other than that it's pretty much all meat. And so to have a plant-based default, one meal a day the initial data from the hospitals. They've rolled it out to suggest that it could likely transition somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million meals per year from meat-based to plant-based.

James Ozden:

There is an age-old debate within animal advocacy on the importance of educating the public. Is it simply enough to tell people about the harms of industrial animal agriculture and then they will change their behaviours? Sadly not, it seems. Many people have been disappointed about the amount of behaviour change that's actually happened over the past few decades due to education, as seen in relatively stagnant numbers of people going vegetarian or vegan. That's why I'm excited that this week's guest, katie Cantrell, is trying a new approach to get people to change their behaviours by changing their diets with them barely even noticing.

James Ozden:

Stick around for a great discussion on the importance of nudging and making the plant-based option the default path. And for those who didn't listen to our special 50th episode which I think was awesome, by the way, and you should definitely listen this is a reminder that it will just be me hosting the podcast for the foreseeable future, as Amy sadly had to take a step back, and we've already gotten a bunch of responses about how sad people are about Amy leaving, which is fitting and deserved, given how wonderful she is to work with and what a great co-host she is. However, I will do my best to carry the torch in her absence Without further ado, enjoy the conversation with Katie. Without further ado, enjoy the conversation with Katie.

James Ozden:

Hey everyone, today we are joined by Katie Cantrell, who is the co-founder and CEO of Greener by Default. Her work was recently featured in the New York Times and was chosen for Vox's Future Perfect 50 list of changemakers for 2024. Prior to Greener by Default, katie was the founder and executive director of New Roots Institute. So welcome, katie, thanks for having me, thanks for joining, and, as always, we'd like to start with what's something you changed your mind on recently and why.

Katie Cantrell:

Something that I changed my mind about a couple of years ago now, but it was a very formative mind change was about the importance of giving people facts and information. At New Roots Institute, which was originally the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition, I founded it to educate people about the harms of industrialized animal agriculture and over the course of a decade I came to realize that it's very difficult to change people's behavior by changing their minds and that facts don't necessarily really play a role in our behavior. And actually I realized the irony of it because I was a psychology major and there have been all of these studies showing that facts don't change people's minds. But I had thought I just have to get the facts out there to people. So I was not listening to the facts and trying to give people facts.

James Ozden:

But eventually I came to accept that I mean, I think there is still importance in education, but that that was maybe not necessarily the right or the most effective outreach strategy Is anything that happened in particular that can lead you to really kind of cement this or, like, really change what you're doing based on this kind of new belief.

Katie Cantrell:

I mean, I saw that, you know, in giving these presentations they were really transformative for a small percentage of students and some of them it was even life changing. I've had people tell me, you know, a decade on, that they went into animal advocacy as a career because of the presentations that they saw. But it was really definitely less than 10% of people. I would say probably less than 5%, and the rest of them, you know, they would be disturbed by the information. But then, if I happen to be back at the school a week later, it just didn't seem like it was really creating lasting change. And actually I should say that the organization has shifted their focus as well. So New Roots Institute is now really more focused on cultivating those activists and supporting them long term and, you know, engaging and activating those students who do really have an awakening as a result of the education. So they're kind of parallel realizations. You know, for me that that wasn't just focusing on facts wasn't enough, and the organization has shifted strategy as well.

James Ozden:

And just for some background, for some people who may not know so, the work that New Year's Institute formerly Factory Farming Awareness Coalition was doing was going into schools and it was like providing almost like presentations and almost like lectures to students on the harms of animal farming. Is that right?

Katie Cantrell:

yeah, primarily high schools and colleges. Also corporate green teams, government agencies, other places like that interesting to let you mention.

James Ozden:

Yeah, there's like two. The organization also changed strategy and I guess you personally also changed what you think is most important, which I guess it kind of it kind of makes sense, if you do buy into that research, which I think is credible, that yeah, we should do things a bit differently. So obviously, that now maybe brings us to your work now green by default. So okay, you've decided that actually, you know, telling people facts doesn't work. What do you choose to do and how does green by default, like take into account this new idea?

Katie Cantrell:

What I moved towards as stead was the concept of choice architecture, which comes out of behavioral economics, and it's basically the idea that we can help people make better choices by making it the easy choice. So our behaviors are shaped by a multitude of different factors, but a lot of them have to do with the environment in which we're making the choice. You know what's most visible to us, what's easiest to do, what the people around us are doing, and so the focus of Greener, by default, is using behavioral science, behavioral economics, to make it easier and more appealing for people to choose plant-based options.

James Ozden:

What are some tangible ways that you might actually make it easier for people to choose plant-based the gold standard in terms of behavioral interventions is changing the default.

Katie Cantrell:

So most places meat is the default and people have to specially opt into plant-based options, which really only strict vegetarians or vegans bother to do.

Katie Cantrell:

Because you have to think about it, you have to put in extra effort, sometimes it's awkward, you have to make a special request, and so that pretty much ensures that the majority of people who are omnivores are going to stick with the meat default, and so what we do is flip the default to make plant based the default and give people the choice to opt into meat and dairy. So an easy example of this is milk defaults in coffee bars. Usually the default is dairy milk, unless you request a plant-based milk, and so we've worked with some companies and some universities, different institutions, so that they just have a sign that says we make our drinks with oat milk. Let us know if you'd prefer dairy, almond or soy milk. It's really just as simple as that. You train the baristas, you put up a sign and at LinkedIn, san Francisco cafeteria, where we first tested this, dairy milk usage dropped from 70% to 18% just by switching the default.

James Ozden:

And then that's 70% of customers, people requesting right. So basically you dropped by 50%.

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, I mean, that was their dairy usage, which is what we were able to track.

James Ozden:

Yeah, I mean, in a way, that's probably what people care about the most is not just individual requests but the overall volume of things that are being used. Do you have any similar data for meals, rather than just milk and drinks?

Katie Cantrell:

Yes. So we changed the default in New York City health and hospitals that's kind of the most famous example. So we worked with the mayor's office of food policy, with New York City health and hospitals and with Sodexo to shift the meals in their 11 public hospitals in New York City. The way that it works there is they have what's called bedside ordering, and so food service associate comes to the patient's room, says our chef's special today is X, would you like it? If they say no, they say our other chef's special today is Y, would you like that?

Katie Cantrell:

If they say no, then there's a static menu of options that they can choose from, and so prior to our intervention they did meatless Mondays.

Katie Cantrell:

So on Mondays the chef specials were vegetarian, but other day of the week both of the chef specials always had meat, and so if the patient was vegetarian they had to request a vegetarian option. But for initially, what we did as a pilot study and then became permanent intervention is making both of the chef's specials plant-based, and so if a patient doesn't want either of those plant-based chef's specials, then they can choose from one of the static meat options. But what we found is that initially during the pilot, when I was just lunches, about 60% of eligible patients opted for one of the plant-based chef specials and it was so successful that they implemented it for lunches and dinners and, with it in place, for both meals. Now it's about slightly over half of all eligible patients are opting in for one of those plant-based chef specials. So yeah, shifting about 50% of meals from meat-based to plant-based by changing the default was it basically at like a few percent before.

James Ozden:

Now it's gone up to 50 or 60, is that right?

James Ozden:

yes, uh, we weren't able to get any like actual baseline data, but because it was really only the percentage of patients who were strict vegetarians or vegans, yeah, it was probably somewhere around like three to five percent wow, yeah, so that's a obviously a pretty huge change and obviously one of the reasons why this is compelling is because what you said before is you know it doesn't take away choice and lots of people care about that. It's even though you know that option is there, you can kind of see how this path definitely leads them towards this and you know, for people who are really like up in arms, they still have that option. I guess has that been a big selling point when talking to, I guess, hospitals or other institutions about this.

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, it's huge. I mean, that's really the key to the success of the program, both for the institution and for individuals, because people just don't like having choice taken away from them. And there's actually just a study that came out I saw Sophie Atwood from WRI posted about it looking at the impacts of meatless days in cafeterias that found that it did cut the carbon footprint, I think in half, but there was a 17% decrease in foot traffic on those meatless days, which is obviously a real problem for the operators because they're losing money and they were saying you know, if that 17% of people went out and bought burgers, it would negate the impact of the intervention, at least from a carbon perspective. And so it's really important to make sure that there is something for everyone, because then the small percentage of people who are really diehard meat lovers, they are satisfied, so they're not complaining, they're not taking their business elsewhere, and so that makes it really visible for the operators.

James Ozden:

Yeah, and maybe, if you want to expand more on who the operator is in this case, you work with food service companies who are kind of third parties, who come in and they're the ones who kind of cook and serve the food in hospitals, maybe schools and some other places. Is that right?

Katie Cantrell:

Yes, yeah. So we work primarily with large cafeterias in corporations, universities, hospitals, and then we do also work with large catered events, and so with those institutional cafeterias. Sometimes they're self operated, but usually it's a food service management company who operates the cafeteria. So there's what they call the big three. There's Compass, Sodexo and Aramark are the largest food service management companies in the United States. There's many others as well, but basically they get contracted to come in and operate the cafeterias and produce the food, you know, manage the staff, all of that.

James Ozden:

Moving on, maybe almost like I'm going to come back to what we spoke about at the very beginning. I guess you have this realization of you know you need more than just facts to get people to change their behavior, and I've also kind of read in kind of psychology literature is it often works the other way around as well, such that when you change your behavior, it's actually easier for you to then change your beliefs because it's less cognitive dissonance. You're not trying to, I guess, contort yourself in ways that don't make you seem hypocritical. Do you actually find that like? Do you believe that? You know, if people kind of go on, the becomes easier for them to develop, I guess in our case, more pro-animal views or other pro-environmental views.

Katie Cantrell:

Yes, I do believe that it's something that we don't have data yet at Greener by default. But I mean anecdotally, just from my experience back with FFAC. I did a lot of tabling at VegFest and things like that and very frequently I have people come up and say that they went vegan because their doctor recommended it. You know, they had heart disease or diabetes or what have you. And then after they went vegan, they started reading all these books and watching all these videos and now they're really passionate about animal rights or about the environment.

James Ozden:

And so just personally.

Katie Cantrell:

I saw that frequently that once people had adopted the diet then they were open to learning more about the reasons for it. And I think, exactly like you said, you know that cognitive dissonance was removed, that they didn't have to feel guilty or justify contributing to the system that does all these horrible things. Well, there's a few interesting studies that have looked at this. One of them found that people who so they gave the participants snacks. Basically they said oh, you know, do you want a snack? We have these available today. They didn't tell them that.

Katie Cantrell:

That was the key part of the study, but you know, one group they gave them beef jerky and the other group they gave them trail mix.

Katie Cantrell:

And then they asked them how they felt about a range of issues, including, I don't know if it's animal sentience or, like, the importance of animals as ethical beings or, you know, valuing their welfare, and so people who had eaten trail mix were more open or rated more highly the importance of animal ethics or animal sentience than the people who have eaten beef jerky.

Katie Cantrell:

So that's a good suggestion that that cognitive dissonance does play a big role and I think, if we rethink about it, even just from a more personal level. If you really believe that you need meat on a daily basis in order to be healthy and happy, then of course it's going to seem very threatening if someone is proposing ending subsidies for factory farms or doing something that's going to make meat a lot more expensive. But if you know that well, every day at lunch I've been enjoying a plant based meal and I feel good so I can eat less meat it wouldn't negatively impact my life Then it does make sense also that those people should be more open to at least supporting legislation to reform the factory farming system.

James Ozden:

I would see yeah, that makes sense. It's funny that that same beef jerky study was referenced by david k, I guess, two episodes ago. David recommended it also quite recently, which is quite funny. That's come up clearly that you know there's a similar theme here. Yes, and on that note, in your example of you know the someone, someone who starts a vegan diet for health reasons, you know they know they're on a vegan diet. In the case of people coming to these cafeterias, do they actually know they're eating plant-based or is it ambiguous like, yeah, do you know? Do you know about this?

Katie Cantrell:

sometimes they do and sometimes they don't, and actually that's that is one of the challenges that we're facing, and I think within the next couple of years that will be the next big research question for us. So and this is actually something that I talked about with Cass Sunstein, who is sort of one of the fathers of default he authored the book Nudge. I spoke with him before we launched the New York City Health and Hospitals pilot and he was saying that there's this double edged sword with defaults, which is that they work best or they work better when people are less aware of them. So the more it just seems natural like this is just the food that's on offer, this is just the setting. People are more likely to stick with it. But there's also the real risk of backlash that if people then find out that there is a default or that you know your people are trying to modify their behavior, then people can get angry and feel like you know they're being manipulated, they're being misled, and so it is this really fine line, and that's something that we have adjusted our recommendations to kind of try to find that balance.

Katie Cantrell:

And I mean there's also a lot of research showing that the more you draw people's attention to the fact that food is plant based, the less likely they are to choose it. So if you call them vegan enchiladas, then a lot of omnivores won't choose them because it acts as an identity trigger. So people think, oh, those are just for the vegans, I'm not a vegan, it's not for me, yeah. Or they'll think, oh, you know, it's going to taste like cardboard or I'm going to be hungry 10 minutes later if I choose that. So we definitely always recommend that the food is not prominently labeled as vegan, that that's not the main descriptor, that instead it's really about the flavors and the ingredients and making it sound really appealing and mouthwatering.

Katie Cantrell:

We do recommend having a little symbol or something there, so that people who are vegan or lactose intolerant or what have you can identify it Like a V or a little leaf or something exactly so you know, for our primary theory, change is really just shifting procurement on a large scale, and so to do that best, it's really helps to focus just on the the great qualities of the food and not the fact that it is plant-based. And you know new york city? They don't say our chef special today is a vegan lasagna, they just say it's a you know, garden tuscan, garden vegetable lasagna. But they do actually give out cards when patients are being discharged that talk about the fact that they are serving more plant-based foods yeah, and they give them some recipes.

Katie Cantrell:

So something we're working on is finding that middle ground where it's not at the point of sale. It's not right, when people are choosing their food, that we're talking about the fact that it is plant based, but that at some point they are getting that education that, oh, you've enjoyed a plant based meal, and here's the reasons for it.

James Ozden:

Definitely seems like some tension, because I think it makes sense where you know if you are to blast it too early on, then, like you said, people get put quote-unquote more tasty, high in protein. But also, if people never find out, then when they go home will they ever even consider having a plant-based meal because they're like, ah, every time I've had it sucks. So yeah, I can definitely see that's quite tough and maybe the hospital is a nice case where it's like a defined period and they go home. But I guess maybe it's more challenging in university settings or other kind of like, kind of long-term. Basically like, how would you do the maybe the educational, the light information in that context?

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, that's something that we are still working on finding that balance. A fun intervention we did. We worked with a biotech company in the Bay Area and they did a plant-based burger patty defaults at their grill station. So if you just order a burger, it comes with a plant-based patty. And what we suggested, and they did to great effect, was they did a taste testing and like a contest before the default switched and so they had their diners try different versions.

Katie Cantrell:

So this is a mushroom quinoa, this is a black bean. They were making them in-house, the one that was the favorite that people voted on. Then that became the like the house special patty, and so also finding those ways to get people feeling like they have agency over it, like they had a say, that also helps to prevent backlash. So that's kind of another factor that we're taking into account. So it doesn't just seem like a top down. We're forcing you to eat more plant based foods, but you know we're offering these exciting expanded options and the ones that you like best we're going to feature. You know that type of narrative tends to help as well.

James Ozden:

You said your goal is very much shifting procurement. It seems like the main goal of your guys' work is, I guess, trying to change meals served and maybe the effects of on human behavior and attitudes. It's kind of like a bonus. Is that, broadly, how you guys think about it?

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, so definitely. I mean our primary theory of change is shifting procurement and you know, for instance, in New York City Health and Hospitals they just announced that 2 billion meals have just been shifted. We passed that landmark of 2 million meals from meat-based to plant-based. So we do see that, you know, the default strategy and these other behavioral badges have this big effect on procurement. We do view the potential shift in attitudes towards plant-based as a secondary effect, but it is one that over time, especially as we fine-tune these strategies and as they become more widespread and hopefully more normalized, then we can start to add on other strategies or make sure that the messaging, the signage, the timing of it is right as well.

James Ozden:

Do you have anyone who's really against the default? If there are particular diners and customers who, even though they have a choice, they somewhat get frustrated or any other major concerns around the default idea?

Katie Cantrell:

Well, we did have an interesting instance where we worked with an institution to implement a plant-based default. It went extremely well. They served half as much meat. There was no change in diner satisfaction during the three months of the pilot. It went so well. They kept doing it and they had been doing it, I think, for a total of about nine months by the time we got permission to talk about it more publicly. And then at that point, once it's the news started getting shared among employees, then they got not a lot of complaints but a handful of complaints, and so they didn't get any complaints, just about the food itself. But then, once the talk is about changing the defaults and you know my employer is trying to impact my food choices they're trying to make me more sustainable what have you? Then there's this ideological pushback against this, either against plant based or against the idea that employers or institutions should be trying to shift people's food choices.

James Ozden:

What happened in that context? Did the employer stop doing it or is it still going on?

Katie Cantrell:

They're still using a lot of the strategies. Still going on, they're still using a lot of the strategies. There were some other changes that happened, just in terms of internal structure and contracts and things like that. That made it complicated. But yeah, and that is something too, that we've really noticed is that food service management companies and dining directors, operators in general, are really sensitive to feedback, especially the university level. Actually, even if just a handful of people complain, it's kind of ironic because you can have vegans saying we want more vegan food till the cows come home, but then they're kind of like, oh, they're always complaining, but you know, if a handful of like normal diners, omnivores complain, then that rings all the alarm bells and something has to change.

Katie Cantrell:

So you know, it is really important that we get the framing right and that we do find that balance. And again, that is the beauty of defaults as well, that it's less prone to pushback than like a fully needless day.

James Ozden:

It seems like you guys are kind of operating with lots of constraints. Right, there's, like you know, customer satisfaction. You have to make sure the price stays down. So I'm sure that operators don't get too difficult, like yeah, I guess, any of the major constraints and how well these go, or like how you have you can shape menus it's a main constraint and I would say one of the biggest challenges is culinary skill and expertise, because the main thing is the food has to taste good.

Katie Cantrell:

you know, know, first and foremost, it's not going to work unless the food is delicious. And it can be tricky. A lot of chefs think, oh, I know how to make plant based foods, but they're making, you know, a hummus wrap or baked tofu or something that, yeah, vegans will eat it. But even vegans are not going to get excited about that, let alone, you know, an entrepreneur is not going to choose that over a burger. And so getting them to really think outside of the box and challenge themselves to make something that's going to be exciting for all diners and what we say is aim to have this be the most exciting dish on your menu it does take some reframing and sometimes retraining or building skills. That can be a big challenge. I can imagine retraining or, you know, building skills that can be a big challenge.

James Ozden:

I can imagine retraining chefs by giving them additional skills to cook more delicious plant-based foods is actually a huge undertaking, and I assume you guys aren't doing that. So how do you guys going to get around this potential issue?

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, so there are some really great resources offered by the Forward Food Program, which is part of Huey and World for Animals, so we do direct food service and chefs to their recipes. They have some training videos and then also just trying to draw upon their existing expertise. So we make suggestions of oftentimes there will be twin dishes, so they'll have a meat and a veg version of the same dish. And this is great for vegans because we like to eat the same food and feel veg version of the same dish. And this is great for vegans because we like to eat the same food and feel like we have the same exciting options.

Katie Cantrell:

But actually it started as a hypothesis of mine and then we partnered with a researcher at Oxford who tested this and found that omnivores are less likely to choose a veg option if there is a meat version with the same flavor available, which it makes intuitive sense because you know meat is seen as a high value food, it's high in protein, it's usually more expensive and so if I can get orange chicken or orange tofu, if I'm not vegan, why would I ever choose that orange tofu? But if there is, you know, maybe chicken fried rice and orange tofu, then if I really like that flavor. The only place I can find it is the vegan option, and so that's one strategy that we use, where it's not necessarily that they need to make new recipes or learn new skills, but it's just changing the options they're putting out to make the existing plant based options more appealing.

James Ozden:

Yeah, that makes sense. Based options more appealing yeah, that makes sense. Earlier in April, you announced that you were doing this big new partnership with Sodexo, focusing on US hospitals. Do you want to talk more about this, and I guess why you're excited about it.

Katie Cantrell:

As I mentioned, sodexo was a food service management company operating the New York City Health and Hospitals cafeterias, and so they saw firsthand that it's really it's a win. Across the triple bottom line, as they call it, it's cost saving. So in New York City they're saving about 60 cents per tray, so it's about half a million per year. Yeah, so they're saving money. They cut their carbon footprint by a third across all of the food that they're serving and there wasn't a change in diner satisfaction. They weren't getting complaints from patients or anything like that. Plus, also, it really helps to fulfill the mission of hospitals should serve healthy food and help people to recover and, ideally, help prevent chronic illnesses that might lead them to return to the hospital. So it really makes sense across the board. And they got to see that firsthand just what a win it was, and so they internally, of their own volition, decided to expand it across pretty much all of their US hospital accounts. So Sodexo operates somewhere between 400 and 500 different hospital cafeterias in the United States and it's taking place over the course of several years, because it's obviously a big shift, but they were getting them all into centralized menus anyway, and so as part of these new menus that will be uniform across these accounts.

Katie Cantrell:

One meal a day. There is a plant-based default. It may not seem like much, but really it's shocking how many hospital menus have so few plant-based options. Maybe there's a spaghetti with marinara sauce or maybe there's a black bean burger, but other than that it's pretty much all meat. And so to have a plant based default. One meal a day the initial data from the hospitals. They've rolled it out to suggest that it could likely transition somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 million meals per year from meat based to plant based.

James Ozden:

That's amazing. Yeah, I mean even you were saying, I think in New York you had 11 hospitals and you hit 2 million after a couple of years. So it shows, yeah, like with 400 hospitals you could hit some pretty amazing numbers. Yeah, that's super exciting.

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, and it's great too, because it really helps to show that this should be considered industry best practice. And that's something that we've really been working towards is making the business case like this is not something that institutions should be doing out of the goodness of their hearts, but really because it makes them more competitive Having such a major food service management company do this and across accounts. So that's something else we've been struggling with is a lot of people say, oh yeah, you have this amazing result, but that's New York City. You know, they're so big or they're so diverse, they're so urban. They're finding all these reasons that, oh, that works over there, but it doesn't work over here. So showing that rural hospitals in Nebraska are doing this the same as urban hospitals across the country.

James Ozden:

Nice, that's very cool. Yeah, I think that's a classic excuse people often give right. It's like either, oh, they're too big, or they're too small. You know, we're just right in the middle, we're so unique. But yeah, it's great you can dispel some of this stuff. Have you guys focused predominantly on healthcare? Or this is, like you said, somewhat as a almost like a lucky coincidence, because the New York trial went so well.

Katie Cantrell:

It is partly opportunistic because New York City went so well, we've had a lot of interest from healthcare so we actually haven't really had to do much outreach at all. We get a lot of inbound requests from, especially lifestyle medicine physicians who have read about New York City and because it's gotten so much media coverage, physicians who have read about New York City and because it's gotten so much media coverage there's, it's generated a lot of interest. We focus on institutions that have a captive audience. So you know hospital patients, they're not going anywhere they're gonna eat those meals no matter what.

Katie Cantrell:

Also, hospital food, you know, unfortunately it's a pretty low bar like people have pretty low expectations for how good it's gonna be, so those and also people expect that it should be healthy. So we do also work with corporate cafeterias. That has been a little slower just because I mean after the pandemic you know there was people were working remotely, so some cafeterias were closed. There's been, you know, in tech there's been some economic ups and downs that impact how much they're offering these perks to employees. Historically it's been a perk. And then we're also working with university cafeterias as well. That's another really promising sector where we can get that scale with the captive diners, because with restaurants their profit margins are so slim and they're constantly competing with all of these other options and so it's riskier for them to try out these new strategies.

James Ozden:

Yeah, and I guess it does make sense to partner with some of the food service companies, because then you know they can do the scaling and it's very repeatable, and once they figure it out in one kind of location, hopefully they can just roll it out further and further. So I guess that kind of makes yours and their job a bunch easier as well possible.

Katie Cantrell:

So the Sodexo hospital intervention was really ideal because they were rolling out these new menus across their accounts. It is more challenging with a lot of other sectors, a lot of other food service management companies. The accounts have more choice in terms of what menus they're offering. So they'll have a central database of thousands of recipes. They'll have options for different station concepts. But then it's up to the dining directors at the individual accounts to write their menus, decide which recipes they want to use, decide which stations to use, and so there is still some need to reach the account level to get them bought in so that they want to choose this option that's available at the corporate level.

Katie Cantrell:

So that's something else that we're working on is really trying to strategize and figure out systemically how do we spread this as quickly as possible. But change management is a big part of that, because we've also found that really everyone needs to be bought in. Initially we thought like, oh, if leadership is bought in, they'll just tell everyone else to do it and they'll agree to it. But you know, the operations manager needs to be bought in, the culinary director and even like the food service associates serving the food. We did a study in partnership with Food for Climate League, looking at plant based defaults at universities, and at one school the take rate was much lower than the other two and they figured out eventually it was because the person serving the food was saying like really tofu, are you sure you want that? Don't you want the chicken?

James Ozden:

wow person can kill a whole initiative if they're not bought in but when you said accounts before, you mean like individual hospitals would be an account for the food service company. Is that right? Exactly? Yes, I guess that ruins the whole point of defaults, right, if someone's like giving it away or like saying bad stuff around one type. So I guess, you'd advise to not do that, but you can't control everyone, right?

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, I mean something that we've built out more is training, so, and like a train the trainer, so that the culinary director can do even, like they do, team huddles, which are usually just a minute or two every day. So, talking about it, huddle meetings, doing taste tests with staff, that's something that we found really impactful. We did that. We partnered with friends of the earth and Sodexo and worked with an account that all they did was just add, like at their hot bar, which is the most popular station. It used to be three meat options. They just made the first option in the line plant-based, so one out of three, and it transitioned I think it was like 5,000 meals a month for me based to plant-based at this point.

Katie Cantrell:

But we also did Friends of the Earth came in and did a taste testing with the staff, so they tried several of those different options and we got feedback from them. And it was great to see among the staff like people said, oh, I thought I didn't like tofu, or I thought I didn't like eggplant, but this is really delicious. And so then they were telling the customers like, oh, you should try this eggplant. Or like, oh, this tofu is my favorite, and so you know, having that personal relationship and someone really genuinely recommending something makes a huge difference. So doing and that was another key to the success at New York City Health and Hospitals is Chef Phil, who's their culinary director, did what he called a culinary roadshow, and so he went to each of the 11 hospitals and did a cooking demo and a taste testing for the frontline food service workers and for the nurses, so that they got that firsthand experience of oh, this food is really delicious.

James Ozden:

I guess that ties in quite well with your ideas. Dishes I guess that ties in quite well with your ideas. What you were saying before is you have to get people bought in at many different levels, and also this idea of like letting people be part of it and saying you know, you guys do the taste test and see what you like the most, and is there anything else? You think that's a key takeaway in how you get either the food service companies or like the actual institutions on board with using defaults.

Katie Cantrell:

Making clear that plant based foods are not something that's like different and scary, but really emphasizing that, whatever culture you're from, there are traditional dishes that are plant-based. I thought it was really interesting. I was part of a webinar and I think it was. The World Wildlife Foundation had done a survey in the UK and they found that people in the UK thought of avocado toast as vegan, but they didn't think of beans on toast as vegan.

Katie Cantrell:

And so sometimes this idea that, like, people are eating all these foods that are plant based and are part of their traditional cuisines, but it's just normal food and so they don't think of it as plant based because they think of plant based as something that's like different and unfamiliar and scary, and so getting involvement can also help to think about, like, what are your favorite traditional dishes that are plant based? Or like you know how can we bring in more flavors from all these diverse cuisines? So the end that I mean in general, also with just diner satisfaction, we found that really drawing on all these international cuisines that are naturally using plant based proteins, like black bean enchiladas, no one's going to think twice about those like where's the meat, but you know if you're serving steak and replacing that with cauliflower.

James Ozden:

that's something that's very noticeable to people you said some of the stuff previously that had worked in terms of getting people to be excited about it, in terms of the institutions is, you know, also cost and helps with their sustainability goals. Anything else that you find is is convincing for them to adopt the default yes, so inclusivity is another important motivator.

Katie Cantrell:

Now we're we're calling it something for everyone in the us, there's a lot of you know controversy over dei but that word yeah traction and retention for corporations is a big deal, and in universities they're getting requests.

Katie Cantrell:

In hospitals there's people on all these special diets and so realizing that plant based is kind of the lowest common denominator and that it meets all of these different dietary needs.

Katie Cantrell:

So if someone is lactose intolerant, if someone is kosher or law, there's all of these different populations who benefit from having plant-based options from you know, who aren't able to eat the meat and dairy-laden default, and so that's both an efficiency for food service operators that they can just make this one main meal that most people can eat, rather than having to make all of these different special diets. And then also, you know that, that feeling of being included. One of our advisors was talking about how she is Hindu and you know she's been to so many events where she's just eating like French fries or a side salad, and so there is this really powerful effect from people feeling like they are normal. They don't have to be treated as some you know, special case and given something different, but they can be sitting down with their, their friends and eating the same meal as everyone else, and so that is also a big motivator to the psychological benefits and the morale benefits of it.

James Ozden:

Nice, that's very cool, and actually that segues quite well with what I would be keen to talk about next, which is talking about this issue, whether it's, you know, animal advocacy and factory farming or plant-based diets, with people outside of the traditional animal advocacy movements and I think this is something you're definitely doing at new roots and students, something you're doing now as well, but I'm kind of curious how important is it? Or do you find that you need to, I guess, tailor your messages, different audiences and any kind of lessons you've learned over doing this for the past years and years?

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, absolutely. So that was really one of my main motivators for starting New Roots Institute was the need to tailor the message to different audiences. This was back in 2009, 2010, when the only groups talking about factory farming were animal rights groups. 2010, when the only groups talking about factory farming were animal rights groups and I had been involved in animal rights in college and leafleted and, you know, gave out food samples, and I had seen firsthand that it's it's seen as a very controversial topic.

Katie Cantrell:

If you ask people to learn about animals, they'd be like, oh, no, thanks. And you know I realized that everyone has. I mean, this was I went to uc, berkeley. So you, everyone there has a cause and I can realize that most people just don't have the mental energy capacity to take on another cause outside of what they're already working on. There's already so many terrible things going on in the world, like learning about one other terrible thing often feels like too much and I realized that I could relate to that. You know, I was focused on animal rights and there are certain human rights issues going on in the world. That's like thanks for working on that, but like I can't, I just can't.

Katie Cantrell:

And so I founded what was then FFAC, to talk to people about an issue that they already cared about, because factory farming is bad for everyone, you know, not just the animals. I mean, if you care about the environment, if you care about social justice, if you only care about the health of yourself and your family, it's something that everyone should be concerned about. You know, as we've seen pandemics and antibiotic resistance I mean practically like you name it and there's a way to tie it to factory farming. And so I started FFAC to really be able to frame the issue in a way that would resonate with something that people already cared about, rather than trying to come in with this totally separate cause. And so we had and newer still has, you know, all of these different versions of the presentation, depending on the audience, to speak to them in a way that resonates with them.

James Ozden:

I always think that I've seen this sometimes be done in ways that feel like, you know, inauthentic. You know you have someone who's talking lots about climate goals and actually they've never been involved in climate related advocacy. So it feels a bit funny or like you're religious advocacy and they're not religious. All this kind of stuff. I guess how important do you think is like the messenger and making sure this actually lands effectively?

Katie Cantrell:

That's a good question.

Katie Cantrell:

I do think it's certainly important and I think that you know, with New Roots, we always tried to hire presenters who did genuinely care about these things.

Katie Cantrell:

I think you know most folks because, even if you, your primary motivator is animals climate change is bad for animals, you know. All of these things are are interrelated, and so I think a lot of people, if they're just wanting to make the world a better and more compassionate place, do genuinely care about frontline communities and climate change and all of these things. So I think you're right, there has to be some kind of genuine emotion and I think, definitely if you're dealing with identities, so yeah. If it has to do with religion or culture, definitely. If you're dealing with identities, so yeah, if it has to do with religion or culture, then it is very important that the person who is espousing that is also a member or you know, has some kind of way that they can genuinely relate to the, the people that they're speaking to on the issues that they're speaking about when you're doing that, do you, I guess, try not get into necessarily, like you know, hold per animal, but just be against the same big issue.

James Ozden:

Right, let's say you want them to be against factory farming or how we treat animals industrially and then almost have a common ally. Because I guess maybe one way I think this can diverge and not be the same is I think the classic example everyone gives is within the environmental movement is you know, if you get them to just care about, you know, the global emissions of of heat, then they might say, okay, we should eat less beef and more chickens and fish, which is obviously not good for our, our value. So I guess it feels like a bit of a tension there. Sometimes, if you get them some of the way, they're not fully the way there. It doesn't always end up in a positive way, I guess. Yeah, how do you think about that kind of issue?

Katie Cantrell:

well with ffac, you know, we did talk about animals. Always. We would frame it and talk primarily about whatever the main issue was. But you can't talk about factory farming without talking about animals, and it was interesting to see that we would survey people afterwards to see you know what moved them the most or what really stuck with them the most, and it was almost always the animal suffering, regardless of who the audience was.

Katie Cantrell:

So when you're talking about factory farming, really the only solution is eating less meat. So there, I think it was less of a tension. It's interesting with greener by default, because we don't talk about animals at all. We found that that really is a distraction and actually we've stopped talking about climate change more broadly, generally speaking, and we really just make the business case that you know. I mean we talk about like carbon reductions because it will help them meet their commitments. We also talk about cost savings and inclusivity, but really just like how it benefits them, and that's something that was great advice I got from Christine Middleton, who used to work for Meatless Mondays. When I started working with institution, she told me just make the dining director's job easier. That's really the best way.

Katie Cantrell:

Show them that you're trying to help them and that you're on their side, and so that's something that we've really taken to heart.

Katie Cantrell:

Really do with our materials and with our approach is just like, hey, we'll help you meet your budget goals.

Katie Cantrell:

That's something that a lot of food service directors are stressed about, especially with inflation and rising prices. If there's a way that they can do that and not, you know, lose out on diner satisfaction, that's a big motivator to them. And so it's pretty analogous to what we were talking about earlier of like, do you tell them they're eating plant based? It's similar where you know, if we're talking about these big abstract, moralistic issues, some of which seem maybe politically charged or radical, that makes people nervous about it, and so we are really just talking about their bottom line, and that's a big motivator. But then you get that same kind of question of like, if you're never talking about these things, then how are you creating these larger societal changes? So you know again, I think our hope is that we can create big shifts among these major food service management companies, shifting, yeah, tens, hundreds of millions of meals per year, and then, once that becomes more normalized, then hopefully there should be more space to have these conversations more and more.

James Ozden:

Nice. Yeah, I think it makes sense that you want to start off relatively kind of tame and not too pushy and as you kind of build trust and legitimacy with these kind of institutions and companies, you can then be a bit more, I guess, like open with, yeah, your beliefs, maybe why it's important. But yeah, if you don't think, if you go maybe too fast, too soon, it's not going to help animals in the long run exactly I thought also the way you were talking about how to get dining directors on board.

James Ozden:

I guess there's almost like another you know audience you have to cater for. It's like you know with environmental groups you cater to their climate um goals. With dining directors, you cater to their budget goals. You talk about the cost savings. So it just makes sense. Almost no matter the audience, you have to kind of put it into things they value or maybe in this case, they're kind of obligated to meet towards.

Katie Cantrell:

So yeah, yeah, it's another interesting kind of my whole career, which is really just using the language that's most accessible to your audience and will resonate the most with them. So one thing I thought was really interesting is they found the term responsible business was seen by conservatives to be a conservative term, by moderates to be a moderate term, by progressives to be a progressive term, and so you can find that terminology that like resonates with everyone and doesn't seem threatening but speaks to their interests, and that's really what you want to do. And they're saying you know, stay away from bargain these acronyms that people don't know what they mean, like esg and csr and dei, and really just speak to like what is the tangible benefit to people? What? What is this going to look like for them? What, yeah, sidesteps a lot of the controversy and also is what's most motivating to people.

James Ozden:

I want to start using this useful business now all the time, yeah. Everyone loves it. It seems like you guys use lots of research to both decide in the programs and evaluate them and to kind of iterate. Can you talk more about why that's so important and how you guys factor in research into the programs you guys are running?

Katie Cantrell:

Absolutely. So you know, we are really using these behavioral science strategies that have come out of academia and initially it's very important for us to measure the impacts because we're taking these, these strategies that often they've been used in, like theoretical studies. So you know, you have people like like being paid to look at a menu online and say, like what would I order if I were in a restaurant, choosing this, and sometimes those effects are very different than when people are actually really hungry and they're smelling all the smells and they're having to make a choice. And even when they are the real world experiments, you know they're often done just with undergrads or it's a very small setting.

Katie Cantrell:

And so you know, to our knowledge, like the New York City Health and Hospitals pilot, was the first time that defaults had been tested on that scale or in healthcare, and so a lot of the work that we've been doing has been novel, and so we had to see we weren't even positive like would it work? Would there be some kind of negating effect that we didn't predict, or would there be spillover effects, would it fall off over time? And so kind of our first phase, I think, was just proof of concept and making sure that these strategies actually do work when applied in the real world. That's a big part of the reason that we've measured the impacts, and we do that primarily through procurement data, so we work with the institution to get all of the food that they're purchasing, and that's really where we can see, because, ideally, if they're serving less meat and people are eating less meat, they should start buying less meat over time.

Katie Cantrell:

And that's where the rubber meets the road in terms of the impacts of supply and demand. So we're now using, like AI, to take in the raw procurement data. Because this is a big issue is that you know these are massive spreadsheets. Sometimes they're not even spreadsheets, Sometimes they're still like paper receipts.

Katie Cantrell:

I was really shocked that in 2025, there's still physical receipts that they're getting, sometimes from participants. So it's just a mess of data, and that's been a big barrier in trying to actually track the impact of these interventions is getting all that data and making sense of it. But it's something that we've been able to do and then that's really valuable for us to demonstrate our impact and then also for our clients, for the institutions we work with. Then they can see oh, this is really working and we can tell them you know, you cut your carbon footprint by this amount, and then they can communicate that back to their diners, which is, yeah, kind of a virtuous cycle, nice.

James Ozden:

It takes a lot of humility to be like we don't even know if this is going to work, but we, you know we should test anyway Because ultimately, right, that's what we care about. Is you want to see? I totally agree that lots of these experiments, even the ones in the real world, often these experiments, even the ones in real world, often have like quite unique settings or maybe it's not implemented well, and actually it matters how things are implemented in the day-to-day. So I think it's super important to try these things. But yeah, and I actually had a curiosity, how were there actually major differences between some of the findings you guys have got in real life versus some of the ones that were either experimental or in like smaller settings? Like, did you actually see? Oh, the drop in meat consumption we saw was actually half of what they predicted previously?

Katie Cantrell:

I think it's actually it's been like pretty much what we expected to see, which was really great. I mean, we did, like I mentioned in that study that Food for Climate League led. You know, one site had much lower impact because there was someone who was kind of undermining it. So I mean that's, you know, there's certainly a big challenge, and that's true for research and it's true in the real world implementation as well, that the fidelity of the intervention is important, and that's a big challenge. So that's definitely something that we've run into time and again, but it's been pretty spot on. And then we've also been able to identify these novel research questions where there doesn't seem to be research, and so we actually now have a research director to Kenjin Chang, who we're really excited to be working with, and he's helping us work with some behavioral economists and food service management companies and different research partners to test some of these other strategies or research questions.

James Ozden:

Nice. Can you give us a hint of maybe one or two of these questions?

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, I think it's okay for me to talk about this. There's a lot of studies showing that kind of similarly to labeling something vegan if you label something as healthy, people are less likely to choose it because they think it's not going to taste good or not going to be full. But as far as we could tell, there weren't studies on the effects of labeling among hospital patients, which you would think if anyone's going to be motivated by health, it would be a hospital patient, and so I won't say exactly what we're testing or how, but we are doing some research that I'm really excited about. That I think will be really useful across the board, because most hospitals want to label hurt healthy or put some kind of symbol or something on their menus, but no one knows if that actually works or if that's deterring patients from choosing those options. So that's something that we're studying.

James Ozden:

That's a cool example. Yeah, I totally agree with your hunch that if anyone, in any setting, would prioritize that word, it would be in hospital. So I hope you find some conclusive answer. I hope it helps us, so good luck.

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, I'll let you know. It'll be a while, I think, till we have the and we're going to try to get those results published, I think. But maybe next year we'll be able to share the findings.

James Ozden:

Yeah, it's very cool. You guys are adding to the academic literature base and then, I guess, building up all this information because it means, I guess, hopefully, that either if you scale to the countries or other people can even take, try them in countries where you might not expand to but there's a relatively concrete playbook. Is that kind of the plans with having really good validated research?

Katie Cantrell:

Yes, absolutely, and we're trying to work on creating materials, too, that people can take and run with, because we do want this implemented in institutional food service globally. And our team has grown a lot, but we are not at that capacity. So another phase of expansion that we're hoping to do is really just supporting activists on the ground in other countries who are already has grown a lot, but we are not at that capacity. So another phase of expansion that we're hoping to do is really just supporting activists on the ground in other countries who are already working to use our materials and our approaches, so that, yeah, we're not trying to start chapters in every country?

James Ozden:

Do you guys have materials already? If you know, is there some people to go to website and if they want to like, help some institution to defaults? Like does that already exist, like can? Could you signpost people to that?

Katie Cantrell:

We do have some resources, especially for events, because we found that that's the easiest to implement this, for it's really it's amazing what a change it can make. Just shifting the language on RSVP forms. Changing like one or two sentences can make a huge switch. So my our co-founder, alana Braverman, our CEO, had led a study with professors from Harvard and UCLA and some other schools on student meal choice at on-campus events, and so they looked at when there was a meat default and students could opt into a vegan option. They found about 20% of students requested the vegan option, but then they switched it and they made plant-based the default and gave people the choice to request a meat option, and two thirds of people stuck with the vegan default. So it was almost a 50 percentage point shift in the number of people eating plant based just by changing the language on the registration form. So that is by far the easiest and most successful intervention. So we have resources on our website for people who are hosting events. If you have an RSVP form, we have the sample language. Again, people have an opt-out option so that you don't get that pushback. It's not a fully vegetarian meal. That third of people who opted for the meat option. They were satisfied. They didn't complain.

Katie Cantrell:

So we do have some resources for events. It's just greener by default slash events we have. You know, if people are RSVPing, if you're serving food buffet style, there's also very easy interventions just putting the plant-based options first in the main line, putting meat and dairy at the end in smaller containers with smaller serving utensils Even that, something as simple as that, makes a big difference. And then also people are serving box lunches. We have suggestions for how they can go about that. And then, if you're part of a hospital or university or corporation, we are working on developing some more like DIY materials, but it is a lot more complicated to implement these in a cafeteria. But it is something that we're working on with Food for Climate League. Actually to create like a toolkit that operators can use and just take and run with, hopefully with minimal support, is the idea, so that again we can scale this more quickly.

James Ozden:

Nice, that's exciting. Yeah, we'll link some of those websites below so people can go check out the various resources you mentioned. You spent a bunch of time living in housing cooperatives. Do you want to say more about this and how this has influenced your approach to advocacy?

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, so when I was in college at UC Berkeley, I lived in a 60 person, that's six zero person A lot.

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, Vegetarian co-op that made decisions based on consensus, and so we would meet every week for council meetings and if three people had a minor objection, it would fail, or if one person had a major objection, which is supposed to be like so major that they would move out if this motion passed, then it would sink a bill. And so it was this really fascinating study of communication, like because you have to convince people, you have to get everyone on board and you have to address their people.

James Ozden:

Can't see my face, but that sounds like hell. I don't know. I feel like I was involved in like some consensus based stuff definitely not with 60 people and it's so challenging and, yes, it gets so blurry like what's a minor objection, what's major it's like, and you can kind of weaponize these things if it's like done poorly. So and first of all, that that's sounds a while, but sorry, keep going.

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, it was mostly other co-ops just worked on majority, simple majority. We were one of the few that that operated based on consensus. But I think it really did impact my approach to advocacy and especially my focus on communication. Because you, you know, I saw first, you know, like people would be talking past each other, they would be operating based on these assumptions that you know the other person didn't, didn't realize, or they would be speaking to, you know, an issue or perspective that just wasn't resonating with where the other person was coming from. And so just seeing that out firsthand and how that could kill progress, you know it could, it could keep something from moving forward, I think was really formative for me and how much value I placed on communication and on framing the message to make sure that it is resonating and connecting with the person. I mean. Also, I saw really the most contentious meetings we had were about food issues. So one was about whether to buy bananas and the other was about whether or not to buy earth balance.

James Ozden:

What's wrong with? What's wrong with the earth balance? Oh right, yeah.

Katie Cantrell:

So you know, this is like a hippie co-op where everyone's like super passionate about the environment and social justice and so, yeah, these, these food ethics issues were really the thorniest, and I mean both of those like I think they're like six hour meetings they went to like one or two people were screaming and like everyone was mad, and so you know, I mean I already knew how contentious food issues could be, but like to see it play play out with something it wasn't even meat or anything as emotionally charged as these foods that we're talking about. So, yeah, that was a good primer for me and how sensitive these issues can be wow.

James Ozden:

That is, I'm sure, a very formative experience and great story. It's funny. I also was living in like um, I could come in much smaller, I mean like 10, 12 people. Also. We had some big disputes over it was. It was all vegan, but we would also go dumpster diving and the question was like if we found non-vegan products like is that allowed and like, can I be consumed? Eventually it was looking back, it's kind of hilarious. It's like you can only be eaten like in like the shed, like not in the main house, it has to be in some additional outhouse and it has to be stored there. And looking back, it's just like, wow, this is so funny.

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, I think we weren't allowed to have meat in common space, but there was one hot plate that was the meat pan and it lived on this really high shelf and it was like, if you have to cook meat and it was like if you have to cook meat, you can do it in your room on this one particular pan, but like no one should ever hear of it.

James Ozden:

Basically, oh, wow, Okay. Well, that was a fun way to finish what I asked, Okay, and we always like to close with three questions. And the first thing is what's one bit of news you're excited about or grateful recently?

Katie Cantrell:

I was excited that the FDA is phasing out some types of animal testing. Not expecting to have much good federal policy news coming out lately, but that was great and I think it shows. I think Kenny Torelli had an issue of his newsletter in Vox that was talking about how animals don't necessarily have, animal issues don't necessarily have like a political home in the US. It doesn't cut across the political divide the way other issues do. So yeah, this was good proof of that, to show that we can still get some some victories even in the current political environment.

James Ozden:

Nice and what's your three media recommendations you have for listeners? It can be books, podcasts, films or anything else.

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, a couple of books I've. Well, one of them I'm I'm in the process of reading is called e by kat bohannon, and it's a look at human abolition through the lives of the female body and, um, like women's role in society, and it's super fascinating. It's one of those books where, like every page or two, I'm like, wow, tell my husband, like, listen to this. Just yeah, and I mean I'm I'm always interested in that type of thing, but yeah, I mean seeing how much has been like left out of the scientific understanding through the often unintentional focus on the male body as the default for, like medical research and things like that is really fascinating.

James Ozden:

It's funny it always comes back to defaults, right? I guess the way it shapes society is yeah, men were the default. That's interesting, anything else?

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, the Mountain and the Sea by Ray Nehler. It's a fiction book and it's in a way kind of a maybe an interesting book end to youth because it's somewhat near future. It's it's science fiction but looking at through both animal sentience and AI, what are the implications of consciousness. It's a fantastic book. I mean it's one of those like can't put it down. It's got a lot of heart and good characters and really interesting premise, like from a science fiction perspective. But also I do think it is one of the more animal rightsy books, I guess, or like the. The way that it it considers animal sentience and I think is is really striking and should be a book that the movement recommends more broadly to get more people to consider animals that's cool.

James Ozden:

I'm like, wow, I like I find animals and stuff, so I think I'm gonna check this one out personally, because I just finished work last night, so this is perfect. And finally, how can people get more involved with your work and are you hiring? Do you have any things you want to plug, or how can people support you guys in your efforts?

Katie Cantrell:

Yeah, so if folks are interested in getting involved on our website, greenarebydefaultorg, you can sign up for our mailing list just to learn about all the news that's happening. There's so many developments, it's an exciting space and also following us on LinkedIn. That's where we post a lot of these studies and news. If we have job openings, we post them to LinkedIn. We don't really have a lot of volunteer opportunities right now because the work is so specialized.

Katie Cantrell:

We found it kind of takes people who are who are doing it full time to learn all the nuances of it. But we do really really depend on people who are within institutions to be that on the ground advocate. So almost all of the victories we've had have been because someone on the inside has thought like, wow, this is such a cool initiative, it fits really well with our sustainability goals or our inclusivity goals. And so bringing us in finding the right people to make the case and get them to the table to meet with us and then also to kind of nudge them and remind them like hey, what's going on with this? That's really how we've been successful. And so I always say like hey, what's going on with this, that's really how we've been successful. And so I always say like students, employees, nurses, doctors everyone has so much power to bring these initiatives into your institution that that's really one of the best ways to help. So if you're interested, you can go on our website. You can email us also at info at greenerbydefaultorg.

James Ozden:

That's a very tangible thing that feels like so many people could do, because, you know, vast majority of people are like employees or work in large institutions. Yeah, that's a very nice and practical thing that people could help you guys and help the world with. So, yeah, I love that.

Katie Cantrell:

You know, even switching the default is a big can be a big lift, but there's also really there's much simpler interventions that institutions can do and if folks are thinking, oh, it might seem scary to advocate for something that big, you know, again, even just changing the way that dishes are labeled, making it so that it's not a separate line for the vegetarian option but it's part of the main one, there's all these small changes that can be made main one. There's all these small changes that can be made. Also, just replacing simple ingredients. We just hosted a webinar with there's a food service director from a school district in Colorado who replaced all of the baked goods with, like coffee cake, you know, banana bread, et cetera. They made them all plant-based and they just replaced the eggs with applesauce and baking powder. The students don't notice the difference. More students are able to eat them because of allergies and they're saving $26,000 a year. So again, advocating for these like really simple, win-win strategies is a great way to go.

James Ozden:

Wow, that is a great way to finish it. What a great little story. So, yeah, I guess, thanks, katie, for all the work you and GreenWide for doing and, yeah, looking forward to I guess, the, the tens and more, maybe even more millions of meals you guys are gonna affect over the coming years thank you so much for having me.