Legumes for sustainable food system and healthy life (LEG4LIFE)

Public description of the goals at the beginning of the project

Leg4Life, a project of University of Helsinki, National Institute for Health and Welfare, and Natural Resources Institute Finland, will establish a food system wide transition towards climate-neutrality with increased legume utilisation while taking the consequential environmental and health effects into account. To achieve this goal, the project focuses on grain legumes (pea, faba bean, and lupin) that are feasible to be cultivated in our climate. The project investigates and promotes legume-supported agriculture, develops tasty and healthy legume foods for food services and individual consumers, and studies the effects of increased legume production and use on human nutrition and health, society, economy, and environment. All the information obtained in the project regarding changes in primary production, food processing and health assessments will be used to produce different scenarios of the overall impact on sustainability.