#BangInSomeBeans – How ANutrs & RNutrs Can Help

Words by Rebecca Stevens ANutr, Campaigns and Communications Manager at Veg Power

Veg Power and The Food Foundation launched its new campaign #BangInSomeBeans earlier this month as you may have seen across traditional and social media.

The campaign is aiming to double the UK’s bean consumption by 2028 and calling upon nutrition professionals to help spread the word about beans, lentils and pulses and inspire our nation to eat more of them! As you’ll be aware, they are great for our health, planet and wallets and encouraging more bean consumption will also help to close the fibre gap.

How you can get involved

Nutritional professionals can support the campaign in lots of different ways depending on your speciality, sector and role. Here are some ideas but these can be adapted to suit the individual/workplace.

• If you work with the general public (e.g. one:one consultations; healthy weight programmes, parent groups, weaning classes, corporate wellness activities), can you communicate the benefit of adding more beans, lentils and pulses to diets to the general public and provide practical advice on how beans can be added to make simple and tasty meals?
• If you have a social media presence, can you use your platforms to highlight your support of this campaign and share evidence-based nutrition and health messages about beans e.g. blogs, posts, recipes?
• If you work within the food industry, can you help to reformulate and innovate to include more beans within dishes? Could your retailer stock more beans and use price, placement and promotion to increase sales? Can you join other businesses and become a ‘Keen Bean Pledger’* committed to increasing sales and consumption?
• If you work within school food or other catering sectors, can you work with your catering teams to incorporate more beans into school dishes? You can support our campaign and become Keen Bean Pledgers* and join our schools’ programme?
• If you’re an in-house nutritionist or working within a company, you could share beans content as part of your company’s internal communication activities such as e.g. bean facts, recipes for bean lunch or dinner options and reasons why they’re so good in your company’s newsletter. Could you implement a bean challenge within your workplace to encourage employees to commit to trying a different type of bean that week? If you have a canteen, can they add a few different bean recipes to the menu?

A #BangInSomeBeans Nutrition Professionals Toolkit is available – it includes a slide presentation, social media assets and further guidance and can be accessed here.