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Overview
Overview
The Menus of Change University Research Collaborative (MCURC) turns campus dining halls into living laboratories, bringing universities together to test, measure, and scale menu strategies that advance human and planetary health. College diners often skip vegetables because they assume “healthy = bland.”
The Delicious Impressions Support Healthy Eating (DISH) Study, the first multi-site living-lab experiment run through the MCURC, proved that simply re-naming plant-based dishes with flavorful, “taste-focused” language boosts uptake. Across five U.S. campuses, taste-focused labels increased vegetable selection by 29% and actual consumption by 39% over health-focused labels, across 137 842 diner decisions, 71 dishes and 185 days.
The study underpins the peer-reviewed paper Increasing Vegetable Intake by Emphasizing Tasty and Enjoyable Attributes and sparked the chef-ready Edgy Veggies Toolkit, scaling the findings across the 80+ member MCURC network and beyond.
Alignment with the EAT-Lancet Commission
Alignment with the EAT-Lancet Commission
DISH advances the Commission’s call to “shift diets toward diverse plant foods and lower red-meat intake” by making vegetables the default. Taste-focused naming supports the Menus-of-Change principles, nudging diners toward the plant-based targets while staying within planetary boundaries.
Rigorous RCT design (three menu cycles per site with daily plate-waste measurement) tracked students’ choices and consumption. Compared with health labels, taste-focused names raised selection 29% and cut plate-waste, yielding a 39% consumption jump. The effect replicated across 24 vegetable types and five universities, and mediation analysis confirmed the mechanism: higher expectations of a positive taste experience.
Key actors
Key actors
Core leads: Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford R&DE
Participating Member institutions: Stanford, Rutgers, USC, UNT & Northeastern, providing dining hall data and chef insights.
Toolkit partners: Stanford SPARQ, campus marketing teams translating research into Edgy Veggies resources
Beneficiaries: ~4 million daily student diners exposed to tastier, plant-forward defaults
Amplifiers: 80 + MCURC institutions now using taste-focused naming in menus.
Lessons Learned
Lessons Learned
Lead with flavor. Diners are motivated by anticipated taste, not nutrient claims; indulgent-sounding labels unlock demand for veg even in “meat-and-potatoes” cultures.
Credibility matters. Labels only work when dishes truly taste great; campuses with better-rated recipes saw the biggest gains.
Next steps
Next steps
Scale Edgy Veggies adoption on campus and contract-foodservice chefs, integrating taste-focused labels into menu-management processes.
Boost recipe flavor - Run concise chef trainings to upgrade vegetable dishes, so seasoning, texture and presentation deliver on promised flavor
Expand scope – Apply the Edgy Veggies Toolkit principles to other type of dishes that may suffer from false assumptions, such as ones made with repurposed ingredients or deliciously imperfect ones.
For more information contact: Sophie Egan at smegan@stanford.edu
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