Game Changers: What does it take to change how we think of meat? A study measuring the impact of the Game Changers documentary on perceptions of veganism

From being generally viewed as odd and deviant, diets that disregard the importance of meat for one’s well-being have started to gain increasing traction in recent years. The Netflix documentary Game Changers has led people to question their beliefs about meat and reconsider their dietary choices with regards to their own health and this of their loved ones. Plant-based eating has furthermore been widely discussed in relation to environmental causes, sustainability, reducing human impact, animal sufferings as well as other modern social movements. This study briefly explores the history of veganism, meat’s symbolic relationship with gender and media’s role in teaching people about health. It specifically investigates how successful Game Changers’ alternative portrayal of plant-based eating and veganism via storytelling and celebrity endorsements is in impacting viewers’ general attitudes towards the consumption of meat and their willingness to reduce it, posing the question: To what extent can watching the Game Changers documentary influence the overall perception of meatless consumption of female and male viewers?. A sample of 169 men and women participated in an online survey distributed on MTurk. Half of participants were placed in an experimental condition, while the other half – in a control condition where no treatment was used to prime their answers. Both groups were asked about their dietary preferences, associations of plant- and meat- based diets, attitudes towards meatless meals, perceptions of meat and willingness to decrease their meat consumption. Results showed that the general reception of the documentary across conditions was highly positive, with respondents in the experimental condition showing significantly lower scores in their perception of meat as natural, necessary, and nice. Hence, Game Changers did impact the way diets without meat are perceived by both men and women. The only variable in which no difference was measured was the understanding of meat-eating as normal. While participants’ intention to reduce their meat consumption can be manipulated by the documentary, their long-term behavioral change appears to be complex and difficult to alternate due to meat’s prominent historical symbolic role in societies. Future research should further explore the role of socioeconomic and psychological factors in people’s dietary choices in order to develop alternative views meat that lead to its reasonable and sustainable place in our diets.