Sustainable food systems for people and planet
Network vision
Human health is highly dependent on healthy ecosystems. This is acknowledged in the concept of One Health, and WHO urges for approaches across public health, food, veterinary, and environmental sectors to promote a healthy future.
Our key aim is to identify sustainable food systems that work for both people and the environment. In our network, we are interested in working across contexts and countries to facilitate and promote mutual learning. We also aim to bridge academic disciplines and collaborate closely with external partners, e.g. the health sector.
Current research project
The network has a shared interest in legumes. But why focus on legumes as a key part of sustainable food systems for both people and planet? Legumes have a variety of both nutritional and environmental benefits. For example, legumes are an inexpensive source of protein – and choosing legumes over meat has been shown to reduce mortality from diet-related diseases by 6%. Also, legume farming is climate resilient and legumes release seven times less greenhouse gas emissions per area as compared to other crops. Introducing legumes into modern agriculture also enhances structural and temporal crop diversity – providing more varied microhabitats and food sources to support diverse insect communities. Given Europe’s ongoing insect biodiversity crisis, legumes thus present a key avenue for more resilient and sustainable agroecosystems.
Given this multitude of assumed benefits of legumes, they were slated to play a key role when the 2019 EAT-Lancet commission presented a global planetary health diet that is healthy for both people and planet. Specifically, the commission recommended an intake of 75 grams per person per day. In Denmark, the average intake is only 2-5 grams of legumes per day. A possible reason for the low intake is a lack of knowledge and culinary traditions for legumes and negative connotations such as ‘poor people’s meat’.
In our network, we aim to identify legumes that are both nutritious, climate resilient, biodiversity friendly, and aspirational for farmers to produce and people to consume.
Contact network members
Laura Vang Rasmussen (network chair)
Associate Professor
Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Faculty of Science
lr@ign.ku.dk
Anna-Sofie Stensgaard
Associate Professor
Department of Veterinary and Animal Science (IVH), Faculty of Health
asstensgaard@sund.ku.dk
Mita Sengupta
Assistant Professor
Department of Veterinary and Animal Science (IVH), Faculty of Health
msen@sund.ku.dk
Emilie Vansant
Postdoc
Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Faculty of Science
ecv@ign.ku.dk
Line Rise Nielsen
Director of the company Changing Food
Christian Hovmann
Head of culinary development at the Mary Elizabeth’s Hospital