Toward Plant-Forward Diets in Türkiye: Consumer Motivations and Potential Barriers
Executive Summary
Industrial animal agriculture poses significant challenges across animal welfare, environmental sustainability, and public health. Dietary shifts toward plant-based or plant-forward diets offer a key pathway to addressing these harms. For such shifts to happen at scale, we need to understand what motivates people to change their diets, and what holds them back. Most of what we know comes from Western countries, leaving other regions far less studied. This is especially true for the Middle East and North Africa and neighboring countries, where cultural traditions, economic realities, and social norms around food can look very different — and where strategies built on Western assumptions may simply not work. Turkey is one such context: a country with diverse food traditions and a rapidly evolving food landscape, where robust evidence on consumer attitudes toward plant-based diets has until now been limited.
This report helps fill that gap. Drawing on a large-scale survey of 2,499 adults across Turkey, we examine current dietary patterns, how the public perceives plant-based diets, what motivates those who are reducing or avoiding animal-based food consumption, and how attitudes differ across demographic and consumer groups. Based on these insights, we offer recommendations for organizations working to promote more sustainable, plant-forward diets in Turkey and similar contexts.
Key Findings and Recommendations
Key finding: Health is at the center of how people think about plant-based diets — but not always in the same direction: Negative perceptions of plant-based diets are most prevalent around health and nutrition — with over half of respondents reporting negative views in this area. Yet among those already reducing animal-based consumption, health is the most commonly cited motivation. This dual role of health concerns — as both a potential barrier and a driver of change — suggests that how health is communicated may be a particularly relevant area for intervention.
Recommendation: Place greater emphasis on health in communication efforts. Providing clear, accessible information on the health aspects of plant-based diets and correcting common misconceptions is likely to be an effective strategy to support dietary change.
Key finding: Practicality and affordability are also common concerns — though this may depend on how plant-based diets are interpreted (for example, whether they are understood as specialized products versus familiar everyday foods like legumes and vegetables): Perceptions in this area vary across groups in less consistent ways than for other dimensions — for example, respondents in metropolitan areas report more negative views on practicality than those in non-metropolitan areas, which may reflect these differences in interpretation. How plant-based diets are framed may therefore play a role in shaping whether they feel achievable.
Recommendation: Address practical concerns by highlighting plant-based diets as nutritionally balanced and rooted in familiar, everyday foods. Framing plant-based eating around affordable, accessible options rather than specialized alternatives may help make it feel more achievable.
Key finding: Animal welfare is a strong motivator. Among those already reducing or avoiding the consumption of animal-based products, animal welfare is the second most commonly cited motivation after health.
Recommendation: Use animal welfare as a key point of engagement. Providing information on animal welfare issues and production practices, alongside health-focused messaging, may be a relevant way to reach a substantial share of consumers.
Key finding: Perceptions and behavior vary meaningfully across groups: Men consistently report more negative views than women across multiple dimensions and are less likely to reduce animal-based consumption. A clear east–west geographic pattern also emerges, with more negative perceptions concentrated in eastern regions.
Recommendation: Tailor messaging and outreach by gender and region. A one-size-fits-all approach may be less effective given the differences observed across groups.
Key finding: Younger consumers show relatively high negative perceptions around health and practicality — and given their potential role in shaping longer-term dietary trends, this is of particular relevance.
Recommendation: Prioritize understanding and engaging younger audiences. Further research and targeted interventions focused on younger groups may be important for shaping longer-term shifts in dietary behavior.
