A new navy bean variety called ‘Capulet’, bred for UK soil, is about to be cooked into school dinners and canteen meals to test whether the entire food system can shift away from high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt foods. The problem is that cutting unhealthy foods requires coordinated change across farming, processing, catering, and retail—not just telling people to eat better. BeanMeals tackles this by starting with the meal and working backwards to the grower, a ‘fork-to-farm’ approach that reverses the usual supply-chain logic. Capulet beans cook quickly, need less water and energy than imported beans, and fix nitrogen in the soil, reducing fertiliser use and greenhouse gas emissions. If the project succeeds, it could transform institutional catering—schools, hospitals, council canteens—by making healthy, low-impact meals the default rather than the exception. It would also create new markets for UK farmers, cut shipping emissions from North American imports, and demonstrate how public procurement can drive systemic change across the food system. The project is centred on Leicestershire but designed to scale nationally.
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'Thinking beyond the can': Mainstreaming UK-grown beans in healthy meals (BeanMeals) A key challenge for the UK food system is how to move towards healthier diets with lower environmental impact while also enhancing local and national enterprise. However, moderating consumption of foods that are high in fats, sugar and salt (HFSS) requires coordinated action across the food system. BeanMeals will directly address this by researching how to transform the food system based on systemic innovation in institutional catering and home-cooking by using healthier ingredients, new public procurement practises and more-local products. By starting with the meal and working backwards through the supply chain to the grower, research will be based on a 'fork-to-farm' concept (a disruption of the productionist 'farm-to-fork' paradigm). It will feature meals made from two quick-cooking navy bean varieties ('Capulet' and 'Godiva') which have recently been developed at the University of Warwick for UK growing conditions. it is also suitable for a wide range of easily-prepared institutional- and home-cooked meals with lower fat, salt and sugar content. Capulet production is poised to scale with commercial partners, and increased UK production would reduce the amount of dry navy beans (used in tinned baked beans) imported from North America, thereby lessening the environmental costs of shipping and opening new local enterprise opportunities. Environmental benefits of increased production and consumption of UK bean-based meals include reduced fertilizer demand on subsequent crops (beans are a N-fixing rotation crop), and hence reduced GHG related to its manufacture and reduced N2O emissions and runoff from agriculture; reduced water and energy use from more efficient processing (the beans cook quickly); and reduced transport emissions from having more local supply chains and lower importation of dry beans. BeanMeals aims to develop and analyse systemic innovations (i.e. innovations that require collaboration between multiple actors) for reducing HFSS consumption in institutional and home-cooking by using UK-grown navy beans. Research will develop a new 'fork-to-farm' paradigm of the systemic innovation of dietary change, which can be seen as 'reverse-engineering': start with preparation and consumption of the meal, and work backwards though the 'missing middle' (i.e. the retailers/wholesalers, distributors, secondary and primary processors, and the associated logistics), to the grower. By crossing research disciplines with innovation topics in its research design, we will determine both how best to bring about systemic innovation, and analyse the health, environment and enterprise impacts of the transformed system. The project will be centred on Leicestershire, and has been co-designed with a range of local partners co-convened by Leicestershire County Council (LCC), including Leicester City Council, Food for Life and the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP), who all see the potential for enhanced outcomes for local health, environment and enterprise. The potential benefits at the UK-level have been identified by organisations with a national remit, including Defra, FSA, NFU, WWF and CIWF.
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