Our passion at Family and friends is for all things food and drink, moreover, working with brands that are thinking in the ‘now-future’. Because as all leading environmental thinkers and activist agree, the future really is, now.

We know that to thrive in today’s eco-economy, consumer brands must have ethical, inclusive, sustainable and healthier ‘purpose drivers’ at their core. It’s the price of entry these days. There’s contention and equal amounts of positivity around what some brands are doing and accusations of ‘green-speak’ from others.

Trend wise, we’ve all heard about the ‘benefits’ of GMO-free, Organic, ‘hunter gatherer,’ paleo diets, but the issue of what we put in our bodies and shopping carts needs to properly evolve –  to sustain us, and sustain the planet.

So to properly kick off 2022, now we’ve got the Dry-Vegan-January-Blues out of the way, we’ve decided to focus on exploring something we think is real and essential to our future.

We are exploring the theme of inner and outer food biodiversity – nutritional and agricultural biodiversity to be more precise.

It’s a fact that only a fraction of the available food sources on our planet are being widely used to provide human nutrition…

It’s a fact that those crops and creatures have been over-farmed or poorly sustained in many cases for many years…

It’s a fact that much of our food, whilst perhaps less flesh these days, isn’t always providing the balanced healthy diet we think…

If food and beverage brands that want to truly provide us with earth and life changing substance, then they need to be biodiverse; not only utilising diverse, plant-based multi-crop ingredients, but also having those ingredients fuel our bodies in a more rounded way.

Over the course of the next few months, using data, case studies, interviews with friends of the Family, plus our own ideas, we’ll be exploring this subject of substance.

In the meantime, we will leave you with a couple useful resources:

Guidance on Mainstreaming Biodiversity for Nutrition and Health – WHO

Biodiversity in Standards and Labels for the Food Industry – Business & Biodiversity Campaign

Biodiversity touches every aspect of our lives – so why has its loss been ignored? – The Guardian