Access to nutrition and healthy diets for everyone
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Through our portfolio of brands, we’re helping people to choose healthier diets.
Helping more people enjoy healthier diets
We want to increase access to nutritious, affordable and tasty food. This means making our foods and beverages nutritionally better (Opens in a pop-up window ), inspiring people to cook more nutritiously, encouraging better food choices, and focusing on how we price and distribute our products.
We believe food and beverage companies have a role to play in increasing the affordability of nutritious foods and building food system resilience. That’s why we’ve partnered with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and leading food and agriculture organisations to identify relevant opportunities. The resulting report highlights four key areas (Opens in a pop-up window ) where businesses can act to address food affordability issues, particularly the affordability of healthy diets.
Providing access to healthy foods
To help make good nutrition available to all, we provide our products across a range of recommended resale prices and package sizes. We take this further by using innovative distribution channels and money-saving recipe suggestions to help even more people access the nutrition they need.
We focus on:
Our ASPIRE framework provides a guide for inclusive distribution models (PDF 450.64 KB) (Opens in a pop-up window ) targeting hard-to-reach populations. We’ve developed our Shakti programme to enable women in remote rural areas to become micro-entrepreneurs and earn a livelihood by selling our products. Shakti in India is our longest-running example, with over 200,000 women active as sales agents in their local villages. The model has now expanded to other countries, including Nigeria, Ethiopia and Ghana, and is tailored to fit local conditions.
Promoting healthy diets through recipe inspiration
Through our healthy eating campaigns and programmes, as well as our recipe inspiration and suggestions, we aim to change attitudes and promote eating patterns that help people shift to better diets. We regularly update a repository of more than 100,000 recipes, all based on our Healthy Recipe Framework, (PDF 221.54 KB) (Opens in a pop-up window ) providing delicious meal inspiration.
Across our online platforms and on our packs, people can find recipes that meet their dietary preferences and needs, as well as suggestions for low-cost, low-waste and batch-cooking. Other recipes help people add more vegetables to their plate, cook with fresh, seasonal ingredients, and make life easier with handy meal planners.
In 2023, Knorr launched its Taste Combos campaign in the US and Canada. The campaign provided a menu of delicious, affordable and nutritious meals that combine vegetables, lean protein and Knorr products, and can be prepared at home in less than 30 minutes. The campaign was awarded the Silver Effie and Shorty Impact Awards for its creativity and impact. In 2024, the campaign continued with Fast Food Remix to show that cooking nutritious meals at home can be just as delicious and convenient as fast food meals.
Healthy eating programmes in collaboration with partners
We collaborate with partners around the world to run programmes that give consumers the knowledge and skills to improve their diets. Working with government organisations, NGOs, retailers and agencies, we seek to understand local communities’ specific nutritional needs and challenges and aim to address these through our programmes.
We make our programmes relevant and engaging for consumers. They are adapted to cultural and local preferences, use available and affordable ingredients, and are aligned with dietary guidelines. At the same time, these programmes promote the quality and high standards of our products and grow brand presence and loyalty with our consumers. To ensure these initiatives deliver on our desired outcomes, we track their impact, and this enables us to improve affordability in local communities and understand the ongoing challenges in access to nutrition.
Examples of our programmes include:
Philippines: Knorr Nutri Sarap (1 of 5)
In the Philippines, Knorr Nutri Sarap aims to tackle hunger and malnutrition by empowering parents to build healthy eating habits for their children and diversify their diets at a low price. Since the programme began in 2015, it has reached over 12 million people, and in 2024, Knorr Philippines set an ambitious goal to reach 15 million lives by 2030. Additionally, Knorr has partnered with the Department of Education (DepEd) to launch Knorr’s Makulay ang Buhay programme in public schools nationwide, making learning about nutrition fun and engaging for primary school children. This initiative also provided 60,000 Nutri Sarap recipe books to teachers, parents and 97 central DepEd kitchens to help prepare nutritious, delicious and affordable meals. Furthermore, Knorr has renewed its partnership with the Department of Social Welfare and Development to integrate the Nutri Sarap programme into the Family Development Sessions in the Calabarzon region, empowering mothers with nutrition skills. Knorr Philippines (Opens in a pop-up window ) is also an official member of the Zero Hunger Alliance, a nationwide network of donors, implementers, volunteers and researchers who share the vision of eradicating hunger in the Philippines by 2030.
Indonesia: Royco Nutrimenu (2 of 5)
In Indonesia, Royco Nutrimenu inspires caregivers to prepare nutritious and budget-friendly meals with iodine-fortified products to address child stunting. From 2019 to 2023, the initiative reached 18 million mothers and resulted in about 75% of participants gaining the skills and knowledge necessary to prepare meals according to Indonesian healthy eating guidelines. The programme helped reduce the number of children at risk of stunting by 37% in areas of Bogor City where it was implemented.
South Africa: More plant-based food, less food waste in schools (3 of 5)
In South Africa, Knorr collaborates with the National Department of Basic Education to help teachers educate students about the importance of vegetables and plant-based protein, as well as provide practical advice on healthy recipes and cooking methods. The programme has also trained 201 food handlers in 83 schools, reaching almost 45,000 primary school students between 2021 and 2024.
South Africa: Enhancing nurses’ awareness of micronutrient deficiencies (4 of 5)
In South Africa, micronutrient deficiencies remain widespread. In 2024, Unilever partnered with the Democratic Nursing Organisation of South Africa (DENOSA) to educate nurses on the consequences of micronutrient deficiencies and the importance of fortification, along with other nutrition topics. The training event hosted 274 nurses, who are estimated to reach over 16,000 consumers – raising awareness about the importance of a healthy diet and adequate micronutrient intake for overall health.
Mexico: Maizena allies with Save the Children (5 of 5)
In Mexico, Maizena partnered with Save the Children to promote the importance of nutrition-rich and varied diets for children’s wellbeing. Since the start of the programme in 2022, around 1,275 primary school teachers have been trained on healthy diets, ultimately reaching over 12,000 children.
Programmes for chefs
When people eat out or get a home delivery, we want to make it easier for them to eat healthily. A number of our brands are sold through Unilever Food Solutions (UFS), which serves professional customers through away-from-home channels. Our initiatives and programmes aimed at chefs help them prepare healthy and nutritious meals to support people’s transition to sustainable diets.
Our Future Menus report (Opens in a pop-up window ) identifies major food trends and demonstrates how these can be implemented in professional kitchens, helping chefs better respond to consumer demands. The 2024 trends include growing interest in plant-based proteins and the creation of new and unique vegetable dishes to stand out from the competition.
Our PLANTMADE platform (Opens in a pop-up window ) provides chefs with recipes, products, training and ingredients for plant-based cooking.
Specific populations, such as the elderly, require tailored meals adapted to their nutritional needs. Our Aged Care RE:FRESH (Opens in a pop-up window ) website provides chefs with inspiration, meal ideas, and products to cater to people within their care.
In 2023, UFS partnered with Sodexo, Shanghai JS Life Sciences Institute and the Consumer Goods Forum to launch the Healthy Canteen Initiative (PDF 188.54 KB) (Opens in a pop-up window ) in Unilever Shanghai. The programme provides dishes low in salt, oil and sugar to empower employees to choose healthier options.
Tackling food insecurity
Globally, 3 billion tonnes of food are lost or wasted each year, while one in four people are malnourished. Hunger is often not a food problem but rather a logistics problem that can’t be solved just by producing more food. We’re adopting a variety of approaches to tackle this issue, supporting areas hit by disasters and emergencies (Opens in a pop-up window ) as well as everyday work in communities. For example, in Argentina, our Women in Action initiative trains soup kitchen leaders on best practices to support healthy diets, enforce food security, reduce food loss and waste, and raise awareness of the importance of eating vegetables in all formats – for example, fresh, dried and frozen. So far, we’ve reached more than 3,000 community kitchens. We also contribute to food banks by redistributing surplus stock that would otherwise have gone to waste.