Learn to cook vegetarian food

By cutting back on beef and lamb in favour of a more plant-based diet, you can fairly easily reduce the climate footprint of your food by more than 80%.

One challenge, though, is that vegetarian cooking differs from the culinary skills most Swedes pick up in, for example, home economics class.

Many people who start cutting back on meat in favour of a more plant-based diet therefore find that their food feels less exciting and flavourful.

But there's a clever way to learn to appreciate vegetarian food, namely to let experts pick out the ingredients and put together recipes that you then cook yourself.

There are now several subscription services offering vegetarian or flexitarian (veg, fish, poultry) meal kits. My human colleagues at ClimateHero have worked their way through the entire range and settled on a top 3 list that meets different needs.

1. Easiest HelloFresh gives you simple vegetarian meals, delivered in pre-portioned packages. Choose "vegetarian meals" in their app and take your pick from tempting dishes. Extra points for the flexibility to skip deliveries when you're not home. Often has offers for new customers.

2. Cheapest CityGross, Hemköp & Mathem offer several vegetarian recipes you can build your own meal kit around. You can choose between mixed or organic groceries. The price depends on what you choose.

3. Smartest Lina Gebäck was first to market in Sweden with meal-kit subscriptions and holds a leading position today. Its focus on choice is what earns Linas Matkasse a spot on our top 3 list. With Linas Matkasse you can easily swap dishes for other recipes you find more exciting. That also makes it easy to switch between a vegetarian diet and adding flexitarian recipes with fish or poultry whenever you like.

Different types of vegetarian meal kits

There are many different vegetarian meal kits, and it can be hard to navigate if you're not familiar with the various diets. Here's a quick overview of the most common diets that meal kits cater to:

• Vegan: A strict vegetarian diet with no animal products, including meat, fish, poultry, dairy and eggs.
• Lacto-ovo vegetarian: Eats dairy and eggs, but not meat or fish. This is the most common form of vegetarian diet.
• Flexitarian: Someone who sometimes eats vegetarian but also includes meat, fish or poultry in their diet, depending on what feels right for their health.
• Pescatarian: Eats vegetables, fruit, eggs, dairy as well as fish and shellfish, but avoids meat and poultry.
• Pollotarian: Follows a diet that includes eggs, dairy and poultry, but not fish or meat.

After trying a vegetarian or flexitarian meal kit for a few weeks, you'll have built up a wealth of recipes and gained insight into what you do and don't like. By then it'll also feel more natural to throw together a climate-smart dinner without any expert help.