Daniel Vennard’s scientific contributions

Food production accounts for a quarter of all greenhouse gases, making shifting people’s diets toward lower carbon foods a critical strategy for reducing emissions. This study finds that displaying thoughtfully framed environmental messages on restaurant menus can significantly increase customers' uptake of lower carbon, plant-rich dishes. WRI finds that the two most effective descriptive messages doubled the chance that a consumer would order a vegetarian menu item. These themes are “small changes can make a big difference” and “join a movement of people choosing foods with less impact on the climate.” Restaurants and food businesses should use these findings to increase sales of lower carbon menu items while helping consumers choose foods that fit a climate-friendly lifestyle. While the WRI study was done online with more than 6,000 participants, the findings can be adapted and tailored to a wide variety of retail and food service contexts. More research and real-world learnings will further our base of knowledge. This study, however, shows that adding environmental messaging can be an easy, cost-effective and promising way for companies to see impact and shift consumer choices toward more climate-friendly options.

Cool Food is a global initiative that helps dining facilities commit to a science-based target to reduce their food-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 25 percent by 2030 relative to 2015. This paper establishes the baseline estimate for Cool Food members’ collective food-related GHG emissions and also reports the group’s 2030 reduction target. In total, members reported more than 129,000 tonnes (t) of food purchased in the base year. If members met the collective 25 percent GHG emissions reduction target, their actions would reduce the group’s annual emissions by more than 1,071,000 t CO2e per year by 2030 relative to the base year—a reduction equivalent to avoiding the annual tailpipe emissions from more than 230,000 passenger vehicles. We will provide a progress update using the group’s 2019 food purchase data once new data are available.

Installment 11 of Creating a Sustainable Food Future shows that for people who consume high amounts of meat and dairy, shifting to diets with a greater share of plant-based foods could significantly reduce agriculture’s pressure on the environment. It introduces a protein scorecard ranking foods from lowest (plant-based foods) to highest impact (beef), as well as the Shift Wheel, which harnesses proven marketing and behavior change strategies to help move billions of people to more sustainable diets.

Installment 11 of Creating a Sustainable Food Future shows that for people who consume high amounts of meat and dairy, shifting to diets with a greater share of plant-based foods could significantly reduce agriculture’s pressure on the environment. It introduces a protein scorecard ranking foods from lowest (plant-based foods) to highest impact (beef), as well as the Shift Wheel, which harnesses proven marketing and behavior change strategies to help move billions of people to more sustainable diets.

A bi-directional suture passing instrument configured to approach soft tissues perpendicularly, enables safer and more efficient surgical repairs and minimally invasive techniques to be employed, useful in areas such as annulus repair, meniscal repair, shoulder arthroscopy, hernia repair, laparoscopic repair, and wound closure.