Why we should eat more plants
Average read time: 3 minutes
The way we grow and produce food continues to negatively impact the current global food system. Its impact is far reaching as it contributes to malnutrition as well as low-quality diets that ultimately result in poor health outcomes.
Moreover, eating the same foods repeatedly is boring our palate and harming the planet. Mealtime monotony is a global issue as 75% of the global food supply comes from only 12 plant and five animal species. Just three (rice, maize, wheat) make up nearly 60% of plant-based calories despite there being up to 50,000 edible plant species. This not only bores our palates but excludes many valuable sources of nutrition while taking excessive amounts of resources from the planet and harming the precious soil.
Knorr’s purpose is to reinvent food for humanity with the ambition to get food that is good for people and the planet on 7 billion plates by 2025. To respond to these food system issues Knorr is focused on three shifts: more variety, more plant-based foods, and sustainable, restorative, regenerative ways of growing and producing food. This is the basis of Eat for Good and the meaning behind ‘good food’ with Future 50 Foods being the unlock to all three shifts.
Simple things you can do to make a difference:
Add more variety to your mealtimes!
- By trying new vegetables like pumpkin leaves, red cabbage, or okra. The idea is to eat a wide variety of veggies and find plenty of ways to enjoy their goodness. After all, variety is the spice of life!
- Swap rice for quinoa to get three times more fibre, plus a source of magnesium and folate, while decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 50% and reducing water use by up to 90% compared to white rice (when grown).
More plant-based meals
- Swap beef for lentils to get 10 times more fibre and no saturated fat, while emitting approximately 80% less greenhouse gases than ground beef. If you prepare this meal once a month for one year (using lentils instead of beef), you save approximately 25kg of greenhouse gases.
- Swap fries for Cilembu sweet potato: Highly coveted as they’re easier to grow and sweeter than other potatoes; eating more varieties of similar foods makes the food system more resilient. Besides being scrumptious, a Cilembu sweet potato is rich in vitamin A (which supports good eyesight), and it contains three times more vitamin C and Calcium.
Change what’s on your plate with the help of Future 50 Foods
What are Future 50 Foods? They are naturally nutritious, have a lower impact on our planet than animal-based foods, and can help safeguard the future of our food. These include a selection of vegetables, grains, beans, legumes, nuts, and seeds from around the world that increase the nutritional value of your mealtimes while also working to decrease the environmental impact of your meals. Future 50 Foods allow you to make a positive change by creating simple, colourful, and tasty dishes that are good for you and the planet.