Birmingham City Council’s Full of Beans Campaign

Full of Beans is a multi-strand campaign to increase supply, demand and consumption of beans and pulses in schools, with families and in food businesses. Increasing consumption of beans and pulses aligns with the objectives of the Birmingham Food System Strategy, in relation to both consuming a nutritious diet which helps us thrive and reducing harm to the world around us.  

This case study outlines the approach taken so far, highlighting lessons learned and next steps for the campaign.

There is a global commitment to transition populations away from a diet rich in animal proteins to a more plant-based protein system. This is for multiple reasons including the need to make considerable environmental change as the current protein production system accounts for half of all food system greenhouse gas emissions and 30 per cent of global methane emissions. As a Glasgow Food and Climate Declaration city, Birmingham has committed to tackling food system climate change and protein transition is a key objective. 

Poor diet is a key risk factor to ill health and inequalities exist across diet-related conditions such as obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes. As well as their environmental benefits, beans and pulses provide countless benefits to our health and wellbeing. They are nutrient-dense and rich in both protein and dietary fibre. It is important that we work to improve the availability, affordability and access to safe, nutritious foods across Birmingham, to address food and nutrition related health inequalities.  

Our work builds upon the Beans is How campaign, which seeks to amplify and make visible the importance of beans as a simple, affordable solution to our global financial, health and environmental challenges while uplifting policy and academic research, and galvanising significant stakeholder action to reach this ambitious goal.

To achieve our aim, the Food System Team is working closely with the Birmingham Food System Partnership to identify opportunities for action and to amplify the reach of campaign activities. 

Prior to developing resources for different settings and communities, we wanted to ensure that we had a large collection of recipes that can be utilised in the campaign. We worked with the British Dietetic Association to capture 250 recipes, which use beans and pulses, on the online platform Samsung Food. All recipes were produced by registered dieticians and had to meet the criteria of being tasty, nutritious and culturally diverse to celebrate the diversity of Birmingham. The Full of Beans recipes were grouped into Samsung Food communities, such as affordable and low equipment recipes, which people could explore to find recipes which meet their needs. This provided communities and organisations across the city with access to healthy recipes at no cost. 

We then delivered our pilot intervention, which was supported by the EU Horizon 2020 Programme Food Trails project, with children attending the Holidays Activities and Food (HAF) programme holiday clubs during the 2023 summer holidays. We chose to deliver our first intervention in this setting as the programme supports the most deprived children and families in the city and has a track record of high levels of engagement with activities. The activities gave the children and young people the opportunity to explore beans and pulses through growing, tasting and cooking. There were three resource booklets created, including a Kids’ Club Leader Guide, a Kids’ Activity Pack and a Discover Beans and Pulses Booklet. To evaluate the impact of the intervention, we created a measuring success poster to collect baseline and follow-up data on the children and young people’s consumption of beans and pulses. Providers were to take pictures of these posters and send them to the HAF programme lead. Based on feedback from providers, we adapted the pilot resources for use at the Easter 2024 HAF programme, with the resources being made available online through their portal.  

It is a very exciting time for Full of Beans to move from the pilot to the city wide, multi strand behavioural change intervention to help everyone discover how amazing beans and pulses are.

The Full of Beans recipe collection provided citizens and organisations access to healthy recipes at no cost, whilst also being a great asset to be used in future resources and interventions. This built upon our previous use of the Samsung Food platform during the Cook the Commonwealth Campaign, demonstrating how digital platforms can be a great way to provide recipes and resources to citizens. 

Our pilot intervention gave up to 4,200 children attending 70 of the Holidays Activities and Food Programme the opportunity to grow peas, taste four types of beans and pulses and take part in cooking activities. It also facilitated exploring approaches and interventions to increase children’s acceptance and demand for healthy and sustainable food. Childhood is an important time for developing food preferences and behaviours and early exposure to a variety of foods can encourage positive attitudes towards food. By developing effective interventions with beans and pulses, we can apply this learning to other target foods in future projects, such as green leafy vegetables. 

Other Full of Beans projects are underway, so please keep an eye out for updates on the Food Revolution area of the Birmingham City Council website. 

Birmingham is delivering two new projects as part of the Full of Beans campaign work to keep and sustain the momentum of the campaign: 

Throughout the Birmingham’s Full of Beans campaign, key learnings were captured to inform future projects: 

We are excited about the potential of the Full of Beans campaign, and through the partnership’s shared commitment we will continue to grow the Birmingham Food Revolution across our city together.