Authors: Agnieszka Marta Kosla and Carol Jasper (2026)
What’s the article about? (At a glance)
Background: Nostalgia is a bittersweet emotion that arises when reflecting on memories of the past. Food can be a powerful elicitor of nostalgia. Consumers often select foods that comfort and remind them of past experiences and loved ones, and food companies often appeal to nostalgia to sell products.
The present study by Kosla and Jasper explored the role of nostalgia when considering the transition to a vegan diet. The researchers interviewed 24 omnivores about their past experiences with food, including the food traditions they engaged with growing up, and had them reflect on how being vegan might influence the way they participate with those food traditions in the present – for example, what do they think of traditional foods made only with vegan ingredients?
Key findings: The authors report on three major themes from the interviews.
- The role of traditional meat-based dishes in a sense of home and place. First, participants expressed how meat played a crucial role in many of the food traditions within their family, and how engaging in these traditions served as a mechanism to connect with people and their past, create a sense of belonging (“[When cooking Golaki like my dad did], it is something that keeps you like connected with kind of your roots”), and manage their moods (“My mom’s cooking cheers me up. It makes me feel safe, makes me feel happy, brings me back to my childhood, makes me feel like I’m home.”). While some participants were doubtful about the effectiveness of vegan substitutes to elicit equivalent nostalgic feelings, the authors perceived that others recognised the value of these products for helping vegans preserve a connection to their past.
- Negotiating the attitudes of friends and families. When imagining what it would be like to be vegan, participants imagined that transitioning would create more challenges with their family than friends, due to the disruption to family routines and feeling that being vegan would make them a burden at family events (“I don’t think my parents would cope with it whenever I go home”; “…with my friends, I think it would be totally fine. I mean, there are so many vegan places nowadays”). Some participants expressed concerns with the cost of ‘vegan food’ or saw vegan substitutes as less tasty, while others viewed vegan diets as a prominent trend in modern dining (“…if anything, I’m just swimming with the tide, rather than swimming against the tide”).
- It’s not the meat, it’s the memories. When contemplating changing their diets, some participants acknowledged that the nostalgic feelings they have about meat-based meal traditions are more about the positive connections fostered by the meal and the coming together for the meal, rather than the food itself (“I think they were more around the kind of all the process and the experience rather than the food itself”). To quote the authors, “It can be inferred that the true essence of nostalgic food frequently resides not in the actual ingredients but in the shared experiences associated with them” (p. 12).
Implications for advocacy
The authors’ findings have important implications for vegan advocacy. They remind us that people often choose to eat foods that they know will elicit nostalgic feelings and connect them to their pasts and family traditions. Thus, it is important that plant-forward diets offer consumers the opportunity to use food for this purpose.
Importantly, it seems that some meat consumers recognise that the specific ingredients of nostalgic meals matter less than the overarching goal of connecting with the memories and the people associated with those meals. Thus, it is an important message for vegan advocacy to effectively communicate that such nostalgic experiences are possible even when animal-derived elements of a traditional meal have been replaced with more compassionate options.
Quick Links
The paper “Looking Back and Feeding Forward: An Analysis of Food Nostalgia on Meat Eaters’ Attitudes towards Transitioning to a Vegan Lifestyle” was published in Volume 5 (2026) of the PHAIR journal.
To read the full, open-access paper, go here
Blog post by Jared Piazza for PHAIR
Cover photo by Odiseo Castrejon
