Multinational food giant Unilever released a report encouraging consumers to either switch over to a plant-based diet or implement plant-based meals in their life.
The report states that plant-based foods offer better sustainability metrics and health benefits than traditional animal food.
Unilever is the biggest parent company to ever release a report pushing for plant-based diet adoption. This also supports Unilever's growing plant-based platform.
Motivated by consumer trend data, Unilever has been making moves into sustainable brand management. The report was conducted by in-house scientists Nicole Neufingerl and Ans Eilander, and they analyzed if plant-based foods can benefit health.
Using 141 external studies as data sources, the researchers concluded that a plant-based diet is the most effective for improved health and wellbeing.
Outside of human health, the Unilever report claims that a commercial move towards plant-based food production would benefit the planet. If companies of Unilever's size are willing to decrease reliance on animal-sourced ingredients, there is potential to slow the climate crisis before it gets worse.
"As you'll know, there is a secular trend toward us all eating a little more of a plant-based diet, and we see all our vegetarian and vegan offerings growing very quickly. The first thing we're concerned about is to make sure that our big brands like Knorr and Hellmann's have got attractive plant-based offerings. So that's really the main course," says Alan Jope, Unilever CEO.
