“I challenge you to be #plantpowered”.

By Daniel Stöcklin

The signs are set for sustainable nutrition – especially among younger generations. Documentaries on Netflix, the Fridays for Future movement, and role models on social media have set the course for more sustainability in the food sector. But how is this supposed to work?

The young generation is ready for a sustainable diet. This is shown by documentaries on the streaming network Netflix, one of the most popular streaming portals in Switzerland, as the IGEM Digimonitor 2020 survey shows. The criticism voiced in these documentaries about the industrial production of food for everyday consumption led to heated discussions about one’s own eating style. Today, one can be vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian, carnivore or something else. But one thing is certain: you have to think about what you eat.

However, this does not make the decision about one’s own lifestyle and diet any easier. Because every diet is propagated as the one perfect diet, which logically leads to confusion on the consumer side, as the SRF documentary “Ernährungswahn” also proves. Do we have to do without certain foods because an expert has declared them to be unhealthy? Does every vegetarian have an iron deficiency? Do carnivores lack essential vitamins? These questions then fade into the background when one builds one’s diet on inclusion instead of renunciation.

In this case, you can eat according to your own values and attitudes and at the same time access all the minerals, vitamins and amino acids. More importantly, this approach gives you the opportunity to simply eat more sustainably. Plant-based foods have a smaller environmental footprint than animal-based products. But there is often a lack of knowledge and skills to combine foods like vegetables, nuts, fruits and grains in a refined way so that the dish tastes good in the end. As soon as you learn this knowledge and these skills, it is also completely acceptable to eat a fine piece of meat now and then or to bake with butter.

But how can the young generation get a picture of it for themselves? On September 21, Foodways is launching the Plant Powered Challenge on the MyFoodways app and on Instagram (@myfoodways), with which participants can learn about plant-based nutrition in a varied and interactive way. Accompanied by athletes and partners, they can do what they like best: look, like, and eat well.

What’s your strategy for bringing sustainable nutrition to younger generations? Share your approaches in the comments or send them to info@foodways.ch.