We all want to eat the kinds of foods that make us feel better, live longer, but there's

so much conflicting information out there, so many nutrition opinions.

Welcome to the Nutrition Facts podcast, I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger, it's my job

to give you the information you need to make the healthiest choices possible.

Today we look at some of the best research on plant-based meat, and we start with the

Swap Meat Study that put beyond meat products to the test.

As the chair of Harvard's Nutrition Department put it, transitioning global diets towards

healthy plant-based dietary patterns would require large-scale public health efforts but could

be instrumental in ensuring future human health.

In my book How Not to Diet, in the chapter on Habit Formation, I talk about how you can

change your existing bad habits to good ones or establish new good habits from scratch

using a technique known as Implementation Intentions.

Instead of vague self-promises to do our best, Implementation Intentions are specific

if-then-plans to perform a particular behavior in a specific context.

They take the form of when-situation exercises I will perform response-y, for example, if

I get hungry after dinner, I will eat an apple.

If the triggering circumstances are regular, daily occurrence, Implementation Intentions

can be a beginning of a beautiful habit.

So what about using Implementation Intentions to cut down on meat?

After all, most food choices just due to ingrained habits in meat is no exception.

Here they were trying to get people to change from a climate perspective, noting more greenhouse

gas emissions from animal ag than all cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes combined,

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