Furniture retailer IKEA has announced that it will make 50% of its menu plant based.

Lena Pripp-Kovac, Chief Sustainability Officer at Inter IKEA Group said,“IKEA wants to make healthy and sustainable choices the most desirable option, by for example demonstrating that plant-based food can be really delicious. Research confirms the importance of making sustainable products affordable and desirable, and IKEA can really make a positive difference here. The more sustainable choice shouldn’t be a luxury for the few. It should be part of people’s everyday life”.

However, the traditional meatball will stay on the menu. But In the last couple of years, IKEA has set out to develop more delicious and affordable plant-based options and to challenge the meat icons, with examples including the veggie ball, a chicken ball, a veggie hot dog and a salmon ball. The most recent example is the plant ball HUVUDROLL – a more sustainable option for the many meatball lovers that has only 4%** of the climate footprint of the traditional meatball, without compromising on taste and texture.

The company said that In 2019, over 680 million customers experienced the IKEA food offer in the restaurants, bistros and the Swedish Food Markets.

According to recent report, eating less red meat, and more fruit and vegetables, is good for both people and planet. The food system today contributes 25-30% of global greenhouse emissions, and a significant part comes from livestock production.

“A truly sustainable food system must be based on delicious, nutritious and responsibly produced food. IKEA is taking a full value chain approach to contributing to sustainable food systems, from responsible sourcing of materials, reducing food waste along the value chain, circular and more sustainable packaging and using the IKEA reach to make healthy and sustainable food options available to as many people as possible.”, says Peter van der Poel, Managing Director for IKEA of Sweden and Manager IKEA Range & Supply.