19 Jan Peas please
Food Foundation in the UK are gaining traction with their ‘Peas Please: Making a pledge for more veg’ initiative, the results of which were recently described in Nutrition Bulletin.
Despite a historically growing UK market for fruit, which has increased by around 50% since 1970, vegetable purchasing was seen to slowly decline over the same period. The common perceptions of vegetables as boring or not that tasty was likely not helped by minimal publicity, with only 1.2% of the UK food advertising spend used to market vegetables. On top of this, there are questions around the environmental impacts of the average UK shopping basket, and ample evidence that field-grown vegetables have small environmental footprints.
Most of the UK public do not meet dietary guidelines for vegetables, particularly those with lower incomes. On top of low purchase rates, 40% of purchased vegetables in the UK are wasted at home. This matches the global trends of food waste shown by the DELTA Model®, where most of the nutrient waste is from plant-sourced foods. Altogether, the nutritional and health implications of low vegetable intake due to consumer choice and waste needs to be tackled.
The ‘Peas Please’ initiative aims to make eating vegetables more healthy, affordable, sustainable and pleasurable. Organisations, such as supermarkets and restaurants, pledge to follow these directives, in the hope of changing the way the country treats vegetables. Their website features ways in which individuals, communities and businesses can engage with the initiative and forge better relationships with vegetables.
Photo by Artem Kostenko on Unsplash
