Meet the 50 foods that will save you and the environment

Knorr (Unilever) and the World Wildlife Fund have released the “Future 50 Foods” report: a list of fifty types of produce that make our meals more nutritious and drastically reduce the negative impact on the planet at the same time.

Healthier people on a healthier planet

“Most of us might believe it’s our energy or transport choices that cause the most serious environmental damage. In fact, it’s our food system that creates the biggest impact,” says WWF Britain’s Tony Juniper. Currently, about three quarters of all our food comes from twelve crops and five animal species. As the world’s population will rise to ten billion people by 2050, WWF and Knorr stress that we will have to rethink our way of eating and producing food.

The nature protection organisation added that more diversity in our eating pattern is essential, because the current diet is both detrimental for nature and for the safety of our food. The cooperation with Knorr was set up to give retailers, cooks and shoppers inspiration for varied and plant-based ingredients at the dinner table, WWF adds.

From algae to sweet potatoes

WWF, Knorr and the Center of Public Health Nutrition from the University of Washington joined forces to achieve the double goal of a healthier population on a healthier planet. They did this by looking for valuable produce that is currently ignored, and rated the produce’s nutritional value, its taste and its impact on the environment.

The result is a list of fifty plant-based types of food, from well-known but unpopular vegetables such as lentils and quinoa to more obscure ones like fonio, squash blossoms and even cactus. These crops have the additional advantage of guaranteeing more plentiful harvests than the currently popular agricultural produce, and they are often more resilient to extreme weather conditions.