Climate awareness and lower-meat eating among children and adolescents: potential behavioral pathways and contextual conditions

Abstract

Climate awareness is increasingly proposed as a motive for lower-meat eating, while research involving children and adolescents spans distinct outcomes, from knowledge and willingness to food provision and measured intake. This Mini Review synthesizes these outcome levels and the conditions that connect them. A targeted structured search of Web of Science and Scopus identified surveys, qualitative studies, message and food-education interventions, family and school provision studies, and nutritional analyses. Evidence was organized as climate-linked motivational, proximal behavioral, and intake-association evidence; provision- and intake-change evidence; and contextual or feasibility evidence. Climate-related motives coexist with health, taste, identity, convenience, and social norms. One preregistered study comprising two randomized message experiments reported changes in immediate sustainable choices and intentions. A cross-sectional youth analysis linked climate attitudes with current intake, retrospectively reported reduction, and future intention, whereas a provision-based family trial supplied the clearest within-study change in meat intake. Family gatekeeping, school-food systems, product acceptability, culture, affordability, nutrition, and equity shape opportunities across these routes. Age changes opportunities for dietary agency: decision control may be adult-led, shared, or youth-led within age groups and settings. Climate awareness therefore occupies one motivational position in a multilevel evidence map. Connecting motivation with acceptable, accessible, and nutritionally adequate food environments provides a testable framework for sustained dietary change.