Interactive results · Plant-Based Study

Finding 1 of 6

You’ll probably be able to reduce by about half

We converted people’s daily food logs into grams of animal protein per day:

3-oz serving of meat ≈ 26 gcup of milk ≈ 8.5 gone egg ≈ 6.3 g

Before day one, both groups reported their normal diet at about 46 g of animal protein a day. During the study, both groups reported eating less animal product than they normally did: the comparison group about a third less, the reduction group about half.

The gap between the groups held for all fourteen days. Over the full two weeks, the reduction group averaged about half of what they started from, going from 46 g a day to 23 g a day. The comparison group ended at 33 g a day.

To interpret these results fairly, it's important to note that participants likely overestimated how much they normally ate, underreported what they ate during the study, or reduced despite being told to eat as normal.

Both groups · average logged day, day by dayMost participants reduced by more than half

reduction groupcomparison group

Each bold line follows the group’s average logged day; shaded bands are 95% confidence intervals. Hover for any day’s numbers. Reduction n = 219 · comparison n = 54 of 55 (one gave no baseline figure).

Finding 2 of 6

You’ll likely find it about as hard as you expect

Before the study, each person in the reduction group rated how difficult they expected the two weeks to be, from 1 to 5. Afterward, they rated how difficult it actually was. The difference between the two ratings measures how surprised a person was.

Nearly half thought it was exactly as hard as they expected, and 9 in 10 were within one point of their initial guess.

Reduction group · how it felt minus how they thought it would feelMost found it as hard as they expected

Each bar is the share of the reduction group whose difficulty rating shifted by that amount. Hover a bar for the count. Reduction group, n = 202 (17 didn’t answer both questions).

Finding 3 of 6

Your age, gender, or experienced difficulty probably won’t affect how much you’re able to reduce

You might expect some groups of people to reduce a lot more than others: men or women, younger or older, the people who expected it to be easy, the people who found it easy.

However, every group's typical reduction was between 39% and 52% of their normal intake — cutting roughly half — while the typical member of the comparison group ate 82%. Even people who found the study hard cut about as much as the people who found it easy.

Reduction group · share of normal intake still eatenEvery way we sliced it, people reduced about half

Split by

Each dot is one person; the tall tick marks each row’s typical (middle) person, with its value printed beside it. The dashed line is the comparison group’s typical (82%) for reference. Hover any dot for its numbers. Not shown: 9 people with baselines under 5 g, 6 who ate above 150%, and anyone who skipped the question the graph is split on. Reduction group, n = 210 (204 shown).

Finding 4 of 6

You’ll probably have cravings

At the beginning of the study, we asked participants what they thought would be hard. At the end of the study, we asked them what they actually found hard.

Going in, people were most worried about cravings, protein, and finding plant-based options. Coming out, cravings, such as missing the flavor of meat or ice cream, were clearly the most common difficulty, named by 27% before compared to 44% after. Protein and nutrition worries barely increased (24% → 30%).

Reduction group · share naming each difficultyWhat’s difficult about eating plant-based, expected and experienced

expected, beforeexperienced, after

Sort by

Each row is the share of the reduction group naming that difficulty; people could name several. Hover a row for its numbers. Reduction group, n = 210 before · 195 after.

Finding 5 of 6

You'll probably want to keep going after trying

At the end, we asked everyone: as a result of the study, do you plan to keep more plant-based food in your long-term diet? 85% said probably or definitely yes.

We sent out a follow-up 30 days after the study ended to see what fraction followed through. The next finding summarizes the preliminary results.

All respondents · “Will you keep eating more plant-based?”Most plan to eat more plant-based

Each segment is the share of respondents giving that answer at study end. Hover a segment for the count. Final-survey respondents, n = 281 (including participants excluded from the consumption analyses).

Finding 6 of 6Preliminary

You may change your long-term habits

Thirty days after the study ended, we asked participants what they were eating to see whether the changes they made during the study lasted.

In early responses, the reduction group reported eating about a third less animal product than they used to. This finding is preliminary and may change as the follow-up analysis is completed.

Methodology

Each day, participants reported what they ate by text message or, for those who enrolled by email, by a daily email and the study website. A language model (Claude Sonnet 4.6) was used to convert these free-form responses into a structured list of foods participants consumed.

Each named food was then looked up in a reference table written into the script and converted into a low-to-high range of standard servings for each animal product category. The midpoint of the range was multiplied by a fixed per-category protein value (26 grams for meat, 20 for seafood, 8.5 for dairy, 6.3 for eggs). To test the sensitivity of our results, we recomputed each participant’s intake using food-specific protein estimates within each category. Both the per-participant totals and the estimated effect changed by less than 10%, and all conclusions were unchanged.

The daily grams of animal protein for each participant is the mean of their usable days. We exclude participants that did not log food consumption for three or more days. Inclusion rate was 59% for the comparison group and 60% for the reduction group. When using comparisons relative to participant baselines, the 14 participants with baselines under 5 grams were excluded.

We will release a full report with formal statistics once we have the data from the 30-day follow-up. Here’s a draft of the report:

draft report · PDF