Not long ago, chalky tofu and limp lettuce constituted some of the only vegetarian meal options available at campus dining halls. But that’s changed in recent years as more colleges and universities have set broader sustainability goals, which often include pledges to offer more plant-based foods.

Nowadays, students have access to more adventurous plant-based dishes, such as cauliflower ceviche, japchae and sesame tempeh, to name just a few.

Over the past decade, dozens of colleges and universities have vowed to provide more plant-based meals, including Smith College, the University of North Texas and the University of California, Los Angeles.

In November, the University of California, Riverside—where meatless meals already make up about 45 percent of its dining options—became one of the latest universities to commit to expanding its meatless offerings, pledging to make 50 percent of meals plant-based by 2027.

While such pledges are rooted in sustainability goals, they’ve also led to the creation of more diverse and healthier menu options—both things students have called for. And regardless of students’ motivation for consuming more plant-based food, prioritizing such options at campus dining halls—which feed millions per year—has the power to affect environmental change at scale.

By one estimate, if humans substituted half of the animal-based foods in their diets with plant-based options, it could cut global greenhouse gas emissions from farming by 31 percent and water use by 10 percent.

“Without question, institutional procurement is a massive lever for climate solutions at school and an often-overlooked tool for public health,” said Sophie Egan, co-director of the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative housed at Stanford University. Founded in 2012, the collaborative is a network of 85 colleges and universities that are using campus dining halls as living laboratories to research promotion of plant-forward options, food-waste reduction and increasing food literacy. “The decision-makers at universities who hold the purse strings and design menus are the potential heroes in this story. They can make small tweaks to menu sourcing and operations that can have a huge impact at scale.”

For colleges, the shift satisfies multiple goals.

“There are so many things that play into sustainability that are low-hanging fruit, including trying to offer menu items that don’t require a lot of water,” said Lanette Dickerson, director of culinary operations at UC Riverside. At the same time, she’s also focused on creating menus that reflect students’ varied and changing tastes. “UC Riverside is a really diverse campus—more than 40 percent of students are Latino and 34 percent are Asian—which makes it easier for us to offer these items because they’re already deeply rooted in these cultural diets.”

She added that offering vegetarian foods—which tend to be lower in fat, cholesterol and other ingredients associated with an increased risk of chronic disease—may also help some students adopt healthier overall eating habits.

Vegan Labels a ‘Turn-Off’

Reaching the university’s new plant-forward menu goals will require more training for Dickerson’s staff. “Our team needs to know how to prepare these items to make sure they’re palatable,” she said. What won’t work is advertising plant-based menu options as meatless, vegan or vegetarian. “We got such bad feedback on our ‘meatless Mondays,’” she said, noting that students assigned more value to meat-based proteins. “We did still try to do it, but without such heavy marketing behind it.”

Experts say that kind of reaction to food labeled vegetarian, vegan or meatless is exceedingly common, despite consumers’ increased appetite for plant-based foods and the growing availability of plant-based ingredients.

“The term ‘vegan’ has a bit of a bad connotation. ‘Plant-based’ seems a lot sexier,” said Scott Zahren, director of culinary development at Aramark, which provides dining and food services to more than 275 U.S. colleges and universities. “Plant-based products these days are much better than they were 10 or 20 years ago. We have such great alternative dairy products now that we can offer a lot more dishes.”

Jessica Scranton/Smith College

But Zahren and his team recognized that “vegan” can be a “turn-off,” and Aramark recently updated its marketing content to describe its menu items as “plant-based” instead. “The marketing reads a lot better for the masses.”

Presenting plant-based foods as a default menu item rather than an alternative also increases the likelihood that students will eat them. According to a 2024 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology, on days that dining halls set up food stations with a vegan default—say, stir fry with tofu—those stations saw a 58 percent increase in plant-based dining, and meat consumption declined anywhere from 21 percent to 57 percent. In short, students don’t run away from plant-based dishes when they’re presented as the norm.

‘It’s About Good Food’

In addition to sustainability initiatives, changing food preferences are also driving dining halls to offer more meatless options.

In 2020, the global market for plant-based foods was valued at $29.4 billion; by 2030, it is expected to grow more than fivefold to $162 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg Intelligence. While data also shows that about 22 percent of Gen Z are actively limiting their meat consumption, what students really want out of campus dining is more options. According to a 2023 Inside Higher Ed Student Voice survey, respondents said that if dining halls want to improve their offerings, they should prioritize variety and quality of flavors, reduce ultra-processed foods and offer a variety of cuisines.

“Campus dining programs are responding to customer preferences,” said Robert Nelson, president and CEO of the National Association of College and University Food Services. “The focus is on making great-tasting dishes that happen to be plant-forward. What’s important for dining halls as they expand their plant-forward, vegan and vegetarian offerings is to market them with descriptive, flavorful language. It’s not meatless curry, it’s coconut curry; it’s amazing mushroom pasta; it’s crispy cauliflower tacos.”

That’s the approach Smith College has taken in its quest to offer more plant-based meals.

Jessica Scranton/Smith College

“We’re showing students that it’s not about the words ‘vegetarian’ or ‘vegan’—it’s about good food. It doesn’t have to have meat to be good,” said German Alvarado, director of culinary services at Smith. “With all of the technology that’s available, students are seeing all the variety of food out there and they want to see it in front of them. What’s trending is variety and healthy choices.”

In 2015, the college pledged to reduce meat consumption by 5 percent each year, aiming to make 55 percent of its entrées plant-based by 2025. As of December, it was around 51.5 percent, according to Alvarado.

“We’re not that far off,” he said, adding that the college just needs to add a handful of additional menu items to reach its goal. “We don’t want to do this for the sake of doing it. We want to make sure students are enjoying it and we’re creating good recipes.”

Choice Is Key

But Smith, UC Riverside and many other colleges have no plans to stop serving meat entirely. A dustup in the opinion pages of the Williams College student newspaper already showed limited appetite for that: In November, a student wrote an op-ed suggesting the college go vegan to mitigate animal cruelty, prompting blowback.

“When accepting the invitation to attend the College, students did not sign up for a vegan menu,” Ella Goodman, a freshman at Williams, wrote in response. “Suddenly restricting our meal offerings would be unfair to students for whom a vegan menu could have been a dealbreaker in choosing between colleges.”

Preserving personal choice is key for institutions undertaking plant-based dining initiatives, said Egan, the co-director of Menus of Change.

“The word ‘meatless’ really backfires. People tend to not like being told they can’t have something,” she said. “The behavioral science is very clear: Having something taken away or restricting choice is a very good way to make people not excited about what’s left. Plant-forward is really about celebrating what’s in a dish.”

And those initiatives at campus dining halls can also shape student relationships with food, which has implications that stretch far beyond the campus.

“A person’s college years are a particular formative time for developing food identity, food preferences and making decisions about food,” Egan said. “Showing students that healthy, sustainable, plant-forward ways of eating can be delicious, comforting, satisfying and help them perform well in sports, academics and their different pursuits—those preferences stay with them long after their college years.”