The time for change is now: fighting for a sustainable food future
Knorr Professional and the World Wildlife Foundation have joined forces to create the Future 50 Foods initiative – a campaign to start using more diverse, under-utilised foods in order to create a more sustainable future in food. Find out how you can get involved!
The time for change is now: fighting for a sustainable food future
Knorr Professional and the World Wildlife Foundation have joined forces to create the Future 50 Foods initiative – a campaign to start using more diverse, under-utilised foods in order to create a more sustainable future in food. Find out how you can get involved!
In food, as in life, sustainability is the name of the game now. We’re all trying to find ways to cut down on our waste, use products more effectively and broaden our horizons when it comes to what we eat and what we serve. There’s no question that some things are improving, but as we become more conscious of the environment we live in, the thing we all learn is that sustainability isn’t black and white. There are lots of things to consider when it comes to what we cook in the kitchen. Where has a product come from? How has it been produced? Does it require a lot of water, or feed, or land?
Balancing all these things can be a minefield. The population is steadily growing – and with it, the demand for food and agricultural raw materials – and yet, we still live in a society where we expect to have whatever we want, whenever we want it. We look for all-in-one solutions that will let us have our cake and eat it, but in truth, these don’t exist. A vegan diet certainly helps to relieve the burden that industrial meat production has on the planet, but in many cases this creates a huge carbon footprint instead, as we transport vegetables from all over the globe to meet our demands. The dairy industry is a huge contributor of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere – you may think that switching to almond milk is an easy fix, but almonds have their own environmental cost. It takes over 6,000 litres of water to produce 1 litre of almond milk, according to the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s Pete Hemingway (via The Guardian), and 80% of the world’s almonds are grown in California – a region that already has its fair share of drought problems.
Although it may seem that we have access to everything, when you look more carefully at what we eat, the results are surprising. We know that there are over 5,000 edible crops globally that we could be eating, but currently, 75% of our diet relies on just twelve crops and five animal species. This demand is what creates intensive farming industries like dairy, beef, almond, soy and chicken, which in turn put enormous strain on the environment. As a result, we’re consuming some natural resources far too quickly, whilst completely ignoring others – something the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has termed ‘ecological debt’.
On a mission to relieve our ecological debt, Knorr Professional has launched a campaign aimed at encouraging chefs and food industry professionals to diversify the ingredients used on their menus. This campaign is spearheaded by a report created in partnership with the WWF, The Future 50 Food, which lays out a roadmap for a sustainable future in food.
Knorr Professional, in partnership with the WWF, want the food industry to lead us into a brighter future, by swapping out overused, over-cultivated ingredients for more diverse ingredients with a much lower environmental cost. Instead of beef mince, for example, try using green lentils – using lentils in something like a lasagna will offset your carbon emissions by a third. Lentils themselves are still very protein-rich, but with far fewer calories. Swap potatoes for sweet potatoes, which have a much lower water and carbon footprint. Instead of throwing rocket into your salads, use watercress, which has a similar flavour but is easier to cultivate, very nutritious and is grown in Britain.
On top of that, the Future 50 Foods report has identified a whole list of under-utilised foods that are available in the UK (which you can see on the right-hand side). By making small changes to your menus – either swapping in more diverse ingredients or coming up with new recipe ideas – you can be a force for change in the industry, setting a standard that home cooks will follow. We’ve joined forces with some of the best chefs in the country – Richard Bainbridge, Emily Watkins, Peter Joseph and Ivan Tisdall-Downes – to come up with some creative ideas that use these diverse ingredients to their delicious full potential.
The time for change is now, and as chefs, it’s our responsibility to lead the way. You can find out more about Future 50 Foods by visiting the website and downloading the full report. Check out some of the recipes our chefs have come up with here, and get involved with your own ideas – show us your own creations on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by tagging us along with the hashtags #FoodForTomorrow and #Future50Foods.
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