It's bean too long: Interventions to reintroduce legumes to the UK palate and plate

Legumes are a nutrient dense food group that can offer considerable health and sustainability benefits. Despite a long history in agricultural production and diverse dietary patterns, legume intake in the UK is chronically low. This narrative review proposes that the implementation of interventions to promote greater acceptability, access, and intake of legumes in the UK is a worthy endeavour to promote population and planetary health. The health and environmental impacts of legume intake are summarised, and existing barriers to consumption—taste, texture, cooking skills, time, convenience, familiarity, digestive concerns and allergenicity—are outlined. The Nuffield Council on Bioethics Intervention Ladder is adopted to frame and review intervention options that can be adopted to increase legume intake through proportionate population level action. Intervention strategies are identified in a narrative synthesis, mapped to intervention ladder levels, and appraised for feasibility, impact, and proportionality. We identify ‘anchor institutions’ and retail environments as high leverage settings. Progress requires coordinated policy and practice beyond the provision of information and the level of personal responsibility for food choice. Target interventions include: changes to choice architecture in public and retail food environments; increased availability of legumes (e.g., reformulation of familiar foods to incorporate legumes); harnessing public procurement (e.g., schools and the NHS) to increase exposure and normalise legume‐based options; and deployment of incentive measures to promote access. The introduction of interventions across a number of ‘levels’ may offer an efficacious approach to support increased acceptance and consumption of legumes.