Removing barriers to plant-based diets: assisting doctors with vegan patientsuse asterix (*) to get italics

Romain Espinosa, Thibaut Arpinon, Paco Maginot, Sébastien Demange, and Florimond PeureuxPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"

2022

<p>Shifting to plant-based diets can alleviate many of the externalities associated with the current food<br>system. Spontaneous shifts in diet are often hindered by consumers’ imperfect knowledge about the<br>health risks and benefits, which leads them to seek advice from their doctors. However, doctors<br>have often had only limited nutrition training, and often express negative opinions of plant-based<br>diets, even though recent evidence suggests that they confer substantial health benefits. We here<br>explore whether providing doctors (general practitioners) with information about the risks and<br>benefits of plant-based diets significantly changes their attitudes and medical practices. We run a<br>randomized control trial on a representative sample of French doctors and assess the impact of an<br>information campaign developed by doctors to inform their colleagues about plant-based nutrition<br>through case studies. Our confirmatory analysis shows that our information campaign effectively<br>changes doctors’ views about plant-based diets (Cohen’s d: 0.71). To a smaller extent, we find a<br>positive but not statistically nor economically significant effect of the intervention on the doctors’<br>(hypothetical) medical practice with patients who follow a plant-based diet (Cohen’s d: 0.22).</p>

plant-based diets, veganism, medical practice, information campaigns, doctors

NonePlease indicate the methods that may require specialised expertise during the peer review process (use a comma to separate various required expertises).

Medical Sciences, Social sciences

2022-08-27 11:01:32

Zoltan Dienes