... and try fund backing healthy farming

HEALTHY eating can be a minefield – trying to find food that is genuinely good for you and genuinely fresh. Apples, for example, can be up to a year old when they hit the supermarket shelf.

Other fruit and vegetables can also spend months in storage before they are sold. They are not bad or off – but they have almost certainly lost some of their goodness along the way.

Pictet Nutrition strives to promote better practices among big businesses by investing in firms that promote sustainable farming and improve access to healthy, high-quality food.

The fund i s run by Swiss investment house Pictet Asset Management, which specialises in so-called thematic investing, building funds around themes and trends that should generate returns over the long term.

Born out of an agriculture f und, Pictet Nutrition was launched in 2017.

Investments range from multinational groups, such as Nestle and Danone, to American freerange egg producer Vital Farms to the UK’s Ocado because the online delivery firm has put money into vertical farms, where produce is grown indoors, close to the end-consumer. Nestle may seem an unusual investment choice as the company makes KitKat, Nesquik and all kinds of sugar-laden confectionery. But the group is shifting towards healthier products, such as bottled water and whole-grain cereals, while even KitKat uses sustainable cocoa. Pictet Nutrition also invests in companies pioneering ways to grow crops using less water and fertiliser, as well as firms that make ingredients from natural sources.

Pictet Nutrition is designed to be a long-term investment but recent performance is encouraging, with returns of more than 29 per cent over the past three years and 17 per cent in 2020 alone. For investors looking to promote good food and make money along the way, the fund is worth a closer look. It is traded on the main market.

To invest use the stock market code: LU0366534856:Gbp.