The collaboration between Veg Power, The Food Foundation, Ark Agency and local authorities is aiming for more sales, promotion and education around beans as a healthy food that can help cut dietary emissions
A new campaign to encourage people to eat more beans, pulses and legumes as part of a healthy diet has won almost £1.4 million in National Lottery Funding.
Run by The Food Foundation and Veg Power, along with digital marketing agency Ark, the campaign will call on retailers, chefs, manufacturers and wholesalers, as well as community food organisations, to commit to selling more beans alongside “turbocharging” their marketing and promotion.
Alongside this, a schools programme and associated outreach will run student focused-activities via Kent Students’ Union and Birmingham City Council. The campaign will also be partnering with Beans Is How, a global campaign to fix the future by doubling global consumption of beans, peas, lentils and other pulses by 2028, as one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“Beans are the ultimate ‘superfood’, and a win-win-win when it comes to health, environmental and affordability goals. So we are incredibly excited to be kicking off this three-year programme of work thanks to the support of The National Lottery Community Fund,” said Rebecca Tobi, head of food business transformation at The Food Foundation.
“With rapidly rising levels of diet related disease in the UK, and the impacts of climate change increasingly being felt, now is the perfect moment for a campaign to boost bean consumption,” she said.
It comes as new data from sustainable food alliance Eating Better and The Food Foundation found that three quarters of people agree beans are good for them, and 62 per cent agree they are tasty, but only one quarter of those asked are eating beans twice a week or more.
Only 42 per cent of people feel confident cooking beans, suggesting there is huge potential for beans to form a more prominent part of UK diets.
“Beans should be seen as a hero food for all businesses looking to meet Net Zero goals and cater to rising consumer demand for healthy, affordable foods, and we are keen to work with businesses to ensure beans are much more appealing and available in the supermarket aisle and when out and about,” added Tobi.
Chief executive of Veg Power, Dan Parker, said: “At Veg Power we’re dedicated to making healthy, sustainable eating easier so we can’t wait to get started on this campaign to get the UK eating more beans.
“We’ll be contributing our expertise to run the social media and influencer campaign, developing fresh and exciting creative ideas and running a schools’ programme in 750 UK schools to get children eating more beans.”
The Food Foundation and Veg Power are behind the successful Eat Them To Defeat Them and Peas Please campaigns, which reached 36 million people since 2019, and led to over 1.1 billion additional portions of veg being sold in the UK respectively.
Beans are high in fibre, protein and micronutrients such as potassium, magnesium, iron and zinc, as well as counting a portion of five-a-day. From a production point of view, they help fix nitrogen in the soil so can help reduce the need for fertilisers, supporting soil health and biodiversity goals.
The National Lottery Community Fund’s funding strategy, innovation and UK director, Mel Eaglesfield, said: “There are real benefits to eating more beans for our health and the environment, as well as our pockets. And with food prices going up, there’s even more of an incentive to add more beans to the dishes we make.
“It’s a perfect example of an ambitious partnership project that links climate action with everyday life, benefitting people and the planet.”
The Ark Agency’s Matt Goff said: “I’ve had the privilege of working up close with The Food Foundation and VegPower before, so I know the kind of behaviour change they deliver. This new challenge is exactly the sort that we founded ARK Agency to address and the chance to work with the team again was almost too good to be true.
“The Eat Them to Defeat Them campaign sets a very high bar in terms of marketing effectiveness, but records are there to be broken. We are looking forward to getting the whole nation inspired to eat more beans.”
