Some people are convinced that fruit and vegetable skin is particularly nutritious, and now scientists have confirmed the idea. They have discovered that these parts of fruits and vegetables often contain far more fibre than the flesh we normally consume.

The finding suggests cooks are unwittingly discarding fibre-rich food by chucking out the seeds, skins and stems of fruits and vegetables when preparing a meal.

Home cooks and caterers should adopt “root to tip” eating and start cooking with squash peel, watermelon rind and pepper stalks to improve the public’s intake of dietary fibre, the team says.

“We’ve really got to shift our purchasing habits to buy whole fruits and vegetables, and then use all of the fruits and vegetables in dishes,” says at King’s College London.

Gibson and her colleagues tested the fibre content of 12 fruits and vegetables, including butternut squash, kiwi fruit, watermelon, broccoli and bell pepper. The team measured the fibre content both in the parts typically consumed and the parts that usually go to waste.

They found that, in 10 of the 12 produce types, the normally wasted components contain more fibre than the commonly consumed parts. Butternut squash seeds and skin, for example, contained 9.25 grams of fibre per 100 grams, compared with 2 g of fibre per 100 g of squash flesh. Meanwhile, the skin and core of a pineapple core contains 450 per cent more fibre than the flesh. These skin and core components are often tough to chew, but the researchers say they can be blended, grated or roasted to make them more palatable.

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Just 4 per cent of British adults meet the recommended minimum daily intake of 30 g of dietary fibre, with the average adult consuming around half that per day.

Gibson suggests caterers could use the findings to design fibre-rich meals using more produce that would otherwise go to waste. This could reduce food waste and cut costs for commercial kitchens, as well as increasing dietary fibre intake, she says.

King’s College London’s canteen piloted a “root to tip” menu in May 2025. Meals included a West African peanut stew made with all of a butternut squash, kale stalks and leek tops, and a watermelon salad featuring pickled watermelon rind.

Simple menu tweak can nudge people into choosing climate-friendly food

Rejigging the meal choices on offer in a canteen can prompt people to make healthier, climate-friendlier decisions

Eating a larger proportion of harvested fruit and vegetables will also improve the resilience of the food system in the face of climate shocks, says Gibson. “Everything we pull out of the ground that we can eat, we should be eating.”

at City St George’s University of London says the research is an “exciting investigation”. But he points out that the most carbon-intensive food waste is meat and dairy products. Reducing fruit and vegetable waste is therefore “part of the solution, but it’s not the only thing we need to do”, he says.

A record El Niño climate phase will unleash unprecedented heat and extreme weather, and the UK food system is vulnerable, climate minister Katie White told New Scientist.

At the same time, she pushed back against “panic and fear” after environment minister Angela Eagle told Britons they should “store a bit of food that can keep you going for a while” in case of El Niño storms and flooding.

“Look, am I going out and buying loads of extra beans? I’ve always got a few cans of beans, but that’s mainly so I’m ready for when I’ve not had a chance to go to the shop,” said White. “So I’m not going out and doing that.”

The UK Met Office, the national weather service, has that the UK is likely to face an unusually warm, wet and stormy autumn and winter due to El Niño, which occurs every two to seven years. While late winter in the UK has often been cold and dry during El Niño, the current event is so strong that it could remain warm and rainy into spring.

If fields become too muddy, tractors may not be able to sow crops like winter wheat, as happened in the 2023-24 El Niño, or the plants could fail to sprout. Continued wet weather could undermine spring barley. Farmers could be forced to spend more on livestock feed and housing, raising meat and dairy prices as well.

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Closer to the tropics, crops like rice could fail due to heat, drought and weakened monsoons. A UK government last week warned that El Niño could increase UK prices for imported foods such as rice, cocoa and coffee. This comes after heatwaves and drought linked to global warming reduced crop yields in the northern hemisphere this summer, resulting in the worst-ever wheat, barley, rape and oat harvest in the UK.  

“We will have a wetter start to this winter… On the back of a very dry summer, that is difficult,” said White. “The food system is vulnerable.”

Large countries including China, Brazil and Germany have been building up stores of key foods like wheat, rice, corn and sugar. But the UK doesn’t keep substantial public food reserves.

White argued that the UK would be better off helping local farms and groceries to become more resilient to climate shocks. A task force she established that includes military experts and scientists will meet in October to scrutinise readiness for climate security threats, including to food.

“I don’t think we need to be in a position of grain stores, but I do think we do need to be looking at where the vulnerabilities are in the food system and how we support local production in the most sustainable way,” she said. “That’s going to be working with farmers and also on local supply chains.”

Farmers will probably have to plant more weather-resistant varieties or different crops entirely, according to at the University of Oxford. The UK also needs to reduce its reliance on imports for 40 per cent of its food. But “grain storage is definitely part of the answer” as well, she says.

El Niño flooding could also threaten housing and infrastructure, and these risks will continue as climate change makes most of the world warmer and wetter. The UK should not only build anti-flood engineering works such as the Thames Barrier, but also restore ecosystems like wetlands to absorb excess water, said White. Extreme heat, which killed at least 35,000 people in Europe this year, is likely to bake the continent again next summer.

The long-term solution is for the UK and other countries to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, she said, a goal that right-wing parties have been increasingly attacking in the UK, the European Union and the US.

Yet the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, which White is a part of, is reportedly set to the Jackdaw gas field off Scotland, and may consent to the Rosebank oil field as well. These would result in at least 275 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetime, equivalent to about three-quarters of the UK’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions.

White said she couldn’t comment as the approvals are up to energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh, but noted that “oil and gas is part of our mix going forward”.

She argued that the growth of renewable energy, which now generates more than half of UK electricity, would reduce fossil fuel emissions over time, pointing out that the UK has almost as many public electric vehicle chargers as petrol pumps. Her department also just £30 million of funding for 1000 community-owned solar, hydro and wind projects.

This month, the UN the world will soon fail the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and will have to rely on CO2 removal – ranging from tree planting to carbon-sucking machines – to bring temperatures back down in the future. The UK’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency is funding £57 million of research into geoengineering techniques like spreading sun-blocking particles in the atmosphere.

White said the UK has no plans to deploy geoengineering and she is concentrating on reducing climate impacts in the near term.

“My focus as climate minister is… adaptation and resilience because I know that next summer is likely to be very, very hot,” she said. “But also for this winter, how do we accelerate electrification? Because that is the best way to bring people’s bills down.”