Add One More Vegetable vision

The New Zealand vegetable industry’s vision for the Add One More Vegetable concept is that it becomes a government, industry and retail behaviour change programme to increase vegetable consumption and improve health outcomes across the country. 

The inspiration for Add One More Vegetable is Australia’s Plus One Serve programme, billed as ‘A national movement uniting partners to boost veg intake and support growers’. See here: https://www.plusoneserve.com.au/

Plus One Serve is backed by research that found that ‘Australians eat 19kg less vegetables per person per year than in 2001, with intake at just 1.8 serves daily. Only 6.5% of adults and 4.6% of children meet the recommended five-plus dietary serves daily’. 

Evidence suggests that the situation in New Zealand is no different. However, New Zealand is currently doing very little to increase vegetable consumption and improve health outcomes.

The vegetable industry believes it has the answer: government, industry and the retail sector forming a partnership to develop and fund a behaviour change programme that’s return on investment will be significant.

In Australia, it’s estimated that for every A$1.00 spent to increase vegetable consumption, the return will be A$12.30, in health care savings as well as returns to industry. There’s no reason why the return in New Zealand would not be on a similar scale, at a time when our health sector is in crisis and the viability of growing vegetables in New Zealand is in question.