The Power of Plant-Forward Eating (Part 2)

What if someone told you there was one thing you could do each day to live a longer, fuller life and ensure a better world for future generations? Decades of research indicate that there is such a strategy — eat more plants.

Eating plants supports human health, expands the diversity of flavors and foods we experience, and has the potential to mitigate climate change. Despite these benefits, we grow and eat far fewer plants than our ancestors. Guckenheimer is committed to changing this trajectory. 

Last week, I shared two plants that are especially vital to the future. This week, I’ll explore three more — perennial grains, wild foods, and sea vegetables.

Growing Perennial Grains Across Seasons

Human civilization is inextricably linked to annual agriculture, the practice of growing crops that complete their life cycle in a single growing season. Annual grain crops devote a large proportion of resources to producing seeds, resulting in high yields that made them attractive to the farmers who first domesticated them 12,000 years ago, as well as to those who drive industrial monocultures today. Yet high yields come at high cost. Farmers must replant annuals each year, requiring labor, expensive inputs, and frequent soil disturbance.

Conversely, perennial grains regrow across seasons, enabling multiple harvests from a single seed. Their roots have more time to grow deep into the soil, with positive ripple effects across the landscape. Deeper roots help reduce erosion and fertilizer runoff, improve water infiltration, and facilitate carbon sequestration. Living roots also interact with microbes and other biological life in the soil around them, forming a thriving ecosystem that supports soil stability and nutrient cycling (such as nitrogen fixing that occurs in leguminous plants’ rhizosphere). Though largely invisible, building biodiversity below ground is as crucial to a sustainable future as it is above ground.  

Perennialization, or the conversion of annual crops to perennials, is a growing area of research for more regenerative grain production. The Land Institute is working with universities to develop commercially viable perennial versions of common staples, with two grains already on the market. Kernza, a cousin to wheat, is used to make beer at breweries across the United States and sold as flour and pasta from farmers affiliated with Sustain-A-Grain and Perennial Pantry. Tens of thousands of smallholder farmers are also growing perennial rice in China and Uganda. 

While some critics say that Kernza won’t yield enough to replace annual wheat production, the results from perennial rice are promising. Each regrowth cycle achieves yields that are on par with annual varieties, while reducing labor costs by 58 percent and input costs by 49 percent. Given that annual grain crops grow on about 70 percent of global cropland, a perennial grain revolution would dramatically shape what the world grows and eats. 

The Wild Relatives of Common Plants

Wild plants are part of the perennial rice story. Researchers developed the new rice by crossing a common high-yield annual and a vigorous wild perennial rice from Nigeria. The resulting combination maximizes both yield and regrowth across seasons to improve farmer livelihoods and make it an enticing alternative to modern annuals.  

Other crop wild relatives — the official name for wild cousins of agricultural crops — are similarly harnessed for their favorable traits. For example, wild walnut trees that grow in Arizona, the second-driest U.S. state, provide rootstock for commercially grown walnut trees to improve drought tolerance. The International Potato Center in Peru used a wild potato to develop an agricultural variety resistant to late blight, the disease that caused the Irish potato famine and that’s likely to make potato growing more challenging due to climate change.  

Because they evolved to grow without human interventions like irrigation and fertilizers, crop wild relatives contain genes that may prove crucial to future food security. Yet these plants are themselves at risk due to extreme weather, land use changes, and overcollection. More than half of American crop wild relatives studied are at risk of extinction, and over a third of wild relatives of Mesoamerican crops — including peppers, maize, beans, avocado, potato, squash, and tomatoes — could soon be lost.  

Conservationists are urgently working to safeguard these precious genetic resources. Researchers are partnering with botanic and public gardens to encourage more links between theory, practice, and public education. Individuals can get involved in conservation by helping to collect native wild plant seeds or volunteering to clean seeds for safekeeping.  

Beyond agricultural applications, foraging is another way to develop a greater appreciation for wild plant diversity. It’s also a way to reclaim knowledge that’s been undervalued or erased by history. Alexis Nikole Nelson, an Ohio-based TikTok creator with over 4.5 million followers, shares her foraging expertise to help others learn skills that were integral to the survival of Indigenous groups and enslaved Black people. Books and digital apps can help identify plants in the wild (which is how I discovered that the wild leeks in my area are edible and delicious) and provide guidance on best practices for ethical collection.

A Critical Role for Sea Vegetables

Oceans cover about 70 percent of the world’s surface. Scientists are early in their journey to understand the full breadth of life teeming within this vast area, but its importance to the planet is undeniable. 

Marine plants and algae (including seaweed) are estimated to provide at least 70 percent of the planet’s oxygen through photosynthesis. They also provide other ecosystem services that resemble terrestrial plants. Like trees, seaweeds such as kelp can grow in dense underwater forests that sequester carbon, reduce pollution through filtration, and provide habitat for surrounding plants and animals. These benefits inspire climate experts to call for seaforestation — restoring and expanding seaweed forests — alongside reforestation on land. 

Though not technically defined as plants due to differences in structure and life cycles, algae clearly offer some of the same climate benefits. They also have similar culinary and nutritional traits. Deemed “sea vegetables,” kelp, nori, dulse, and other edible seaweeds are rich in nutrients such as protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. They’re the only plant-based source of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), two omega-3 fatty acids that humans typically obtain by eating fish. Kelp contains an enzyme that tenderizes beans; adding a piece of kombu to a pot of beans improves their digestibility and contributes an umami flavor boost. Sea vegetables enable all these benefits without requiring land or fertilizers, making them a low-carbon and climate-friendly food choice. 

Sea vegetables are growing in popularity in the United States, with consumption increasing by seven percent each year. Cooking and eating recipes from cultures with rich seaweed histories, such as China, Japan, Korea, and the Nordic countries, is an excellent way to tap into the plant’s nutritional power.

Exploring Our Plant-Powered Future

As we continue exploring the numerous benefits of plants, embracing plant-forward eating is a vital step. Eating more plants brings countless benefits to our health and allows us to work toward a better future for everyone.