The Leading Voices in Food

So even the people that follow the topic closely are stunned by the digital landscape that engulfs our children, how quickly it evolves, and the potential social cost. Two people in a unique position to explain all this are our guest today, Jeffrey Chester and Kathryn Montgomery, both from the Center for Digital Democracy. Jeff is executive director of the Center, and Kathryn is its research director and senior strategist, as well as professor emerita of communication at American University. Jeff and Kathryn have been pioneers in this work and have been uniquely strong voices for protecting children. Interview Summary Let me congratulate the two of you for being way ahead of your time. I mean the two of you through your research and your advocacy and your organizational work, you were onto these things way before most people were. I'm really happy that you're joining us today, and welcome to our podcast. Kathryn, let me begin with you. So why be concerned about this digital landscape? Kathryn - Well, certainly if we're talking about children and youth, we have to pay attention to the world they live in. And it's a digital world as I think any parent knows, and everybody knows. In fact, for all of us, we're living in a digital world. So young people are living their lives online. They're using mobile phones and mobile devices all the time. They're doing online video streaming. They form their communications with their peers online. Their entire lives are completely integrated into this digital media landscape, and we must understand it. Certainly, the food and beverage industry understand it very well. And they have figured out enormously powerful ways to reach and engage young people through these digital media. You know, the extent of the kids' connection to this is really remarkable. I just finished a few minutes ago recording a podcast with two people involved with the Children and Screens organization. And, Chris Perry, who's the executive director of that organization and Dmitri Christakis who was with us as well, were saying that kids sometimes check their digital media 300 times a day. I mean, just unbelievable how much of this there is. There's a lot of reasons to be concerned. Let's turn our attention to how bad it is, what companies are doing, and what might be done about it. So, Jeff, tell us if you would, about the work of the Center for Digital Democracy. Jeff - Well, for more than a quarter of a century, we have tracked the digital marketplace. As you said at the top, we understood in the early 1990s that the internet, broadband what's become today's digital environment, was going to be the dominant communications system. And it required public interest rules and policies and safeguards. So as a result, one of the things that our Center does is we look at the entire digital landscape as best as we can, especially what the ultra-processed food companies are doing, but including Google and Meta and Amazon and GenAI companies. We are tracking what they're doing, how they're creating the advertising, what their data strategies are, what their political activities are in the United States and in many other places in the world. Because the only way we're going to hold them accountable is if we know what they're doing and what they intend to do. And just to quickly follow up, Kelly, the marketers call today's global generation of young people Generation Alpha. Meaning that they are the first generation to be born into this complete digital landscape environment that we have created. And they have developed a host of strategies to target children at the earliest ages to take advantage of the fact that they're growing up digitally. Boy, pretty amazing - Generation Alpha. Kathryn, I have kind of a niche question I'd like to ask you because it pertains to my own career as well. So, you spent many years as an academic studying and writing about these issues, but also you were a strong advocacy voice. How did you go about balancing the research and the objectivity of an academic with advocacy you were doing? Kathryn - I think it really is rooted in my fundamental set of values about what it means to be an academic. And I feel very strongly and believe very strongly that all of us have a moral and ethical responsibility to the public. That the work we do should really, as I always have told my students, try to make the world a better place. It may seem idealistic, but I think it is what our responsibility is. And I've certainly been influenced in my own education by public scholars over the years who have played that very, very important role. It couldn't be more important today than it has been over the years. And I think particularly if you're talking about public health, I don't think you can be neutral. You can have systematic ways of assessing the impact of food marketing, in this case on young people. But I don't think you can be totally objective and neutral about the need to improve the public health of our citizens. And particularly the public health of our young people. I agree totally with that. Jeff let's talk about the concept of targeted marketing. We hear that term a lot. And in the context of food, people talk about marketing aimed at children as one form of targeting. Or, toward children of color or people of color in general. But that's in a way technological child's play. I understand from you that there's much more precise targeting than a big demographic group like that. Tell us more. Jeff - Well, I mean certainly the ultra-processed food companies are on the cutting edge of using all the latest tools to target individuals in highly personalized way. And I think if I have one message to share with your listeners and viewers is that if we don't act soon, we're going to make an already vulnerable group even more exposed to this kind of direct targeted and personalized marketing. Because what artificial intelligence allows the food and beverage companies and their advertising agencies and platform partners to do is to really understand who we are, what we do, where we are, how we react, behave, think, and then target us accordingly using all those elements in a system that can create this kind of advertising and marketing in minutes, if not eventually milliseconds. So, all of marketing, in essence, will be targeted because they know so much about us. You have an endless chain of relationships between companies like Meta, companies like Kellogg's, the advertising agencies, the data brokers, the marketing clouds, et cetera. Young people especially, and communities of color and other vulnerable groups, have never been more exposed to this kind of invasive, pervasive advertising. Tell us how targeted it can be. I mean, let's take a 11-year-old girl who lives in Wichita and a 13-year-old boy who lives in Denver. How much do the companies know about those two people as individuals? And how does a targeting get market to them? Not because they belong to a big demographic group, but because of them as individuals. Jeff - Well, they certainly are identified in various ways. The marketers know that there are young people in the household. They know that there are young people, parts of families who have various media behaviors. They're watching these kinds of television shows, especially through streaming or listening to music or on social media. Those profiles are put together. And even when the companies say they don't exactly know who the child is or not collecting information from someone under 13 because of the privacy law that we helped get enacted, they know where they are and how to reach them. So, what you've had is an unlimited amassing of data power developed by the food and beverage companies in the United States over the last 25 years. Because really very little has been put in their way to stop them from what they do and plan to do. So presumably you could get some act of Congress put in to forbid the companies from targeting African American children or something like that. But it doesn't sound like that would matter because they're so much more precise in the market. Yes. I mean, in the first place you couldn't get congress to pass that. And I think this is the other thing to think about when you think about the food and beverage companies deploying Generative AI and the latest tools. They've already established vast, what they call insights divisions, market research divisions, to understand our behavior. But now they're able to put all that on a fast, fast, forward basis because of data processing, because of data clouds, let's say, provided by Amazon, and other kinds of tools. They're able to really generate how to sell to us individually, what new products will appeal to us individually and even create the packaging and the promotion to be personalized. So, what you're talking about is the need for a whole set of policy safeguards. But I certainly think that people concerned about public health need to think about regulating the role of Generative AI, especially when it comes to young people to ensure that they're not marketed to in the ways that it fact is and will continue to do. Kathryn, what about the argument that it's a parent's responsibility to protect their children and that government doesn't need to be involved in this space? Kathryn - Well, as a parent, I have to say is extremely challenging. We all do our best to try to protect our children from unhealthy influences, whether it's food or something that affects their mental health. That's a parent's obligation. That's what a parent spends a lot of time thinking about and trying to do. But this is an environment that is overwhelming. It is intrusive. It reaches into young people's lives in ways that make it virtually impossible for parents to intervene. These are powerful companies, and I'm including the tech companies. I'm including the retailers. I'm including the ad agencies as well as these global food and beverage companies. They're extremely powerful. As Jeff has been saying, they have engaged and continue to engage in enormous amounts of technological innovation and research to figure out precisely how to reach and engage our children. And it's too much for parents. And I've been saying this for years. I've been telling legislators this. I've been telling the companies this. It's not fair. It's a very unfair situation for parents. That makes perfect sense. Well, Jeff, your Center produces some very helpful and impressive reports. And an example of that is work you've done on the vast surveillance of television viewers. Tell us more about that, if you would. Jeff - Well, you know, you have to keep up with this, Kelly. The advocates in the United States and the academics with some exceptions have largely failed to address the contemporary business practices of the food and beverage companies. This is not a secret what's going on now. I mean the Generative AI stuff and the advanced data use, you know, is recent. But it is a continuum. And the fact is that we've been one of the few groups following it because we care about our society, our democracy, our media system, et cetera. But so much more could be done here to track what the companies are doing to identify the problematic practices, to think about counter strategies to try to bring change. So yes, we did this report on video streaming because in fact, it's the way television has now changed. It's now part of the commercial surveillance advertising and marketing complex food and beverage companies are using the interactivity and the data collection of streaming television. And we're sounding the alarm as we've been sounding now for too long. But hopefully your listeners will, in fact, start looking more closely at this digital environment because if we don't intervene in the next few years, it'll be impossible to go back and protect young people. So, when people watch television, they don't generally realize or appreciate the fact that information is being collected on them. Jeff - The television watches you now. The television is watching you now. The streaming companies are watching you now. The device that brings you streaming television is watching you now is collecting all kinds of data. The streaming device can deliver personalized ads to you. They'll be soon selling you products in real time. And they're sharing that data with companies like Meta Facebook, your local retailers like Albertsons, Kroger, et cetera. It's one big, huge digital data marketing machine that has been created. And the industry has been successful in blocking legislation except for the one law we were able to get through in 1998. And now under the Trump administration, they have free reign to do whatever they want. It's going to be an uphill battle. But I do think the companies are in a precarious position politically if we could get more people focused on what they're doing. Alright, we'll come back to that. My guess is that very few people realize the kind of thing that you just talked about. That so much information is being collected on them while they're watching television. The fact that you and your center are out there making people more aware, I think, is likely to be very helpful. Jeff - Well, I appreciate that, Kelly, but I have to say, and I don't want to denigrate our work, but you know, I just follow the trades. There's so much evidence if you care about the media and if you care about advertising and marketing or if you care, just let's say about Coca-Cola or Pepsi or Mondalez. Pick one you can't miss all this stuff. It's all there every day. And the problem is that there has not been the focus, I blame the funders in part. There's not been the focus on this marketplace in its contemporary dimensions. I'd like to ask you both about the legislative landscape and whether there are laws protecting people, especially children from this marketing. And Kathy, both you and Jeff were heavily involved in advocacy for a landmark piece of legislation that Jeff referred to from 1998, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. What did this act involve? And now that we're some years in, how has it worked? Kathryn - Well, I always say I've been studying advertising in the digital media before people even knew there was going to be advertising in digital media. Because we're really talking about the earliest days of the internet when it was being commercialized. But there was a public perception promoted by the government and the industry and a lot of other institutions and individuals that this was going to be a whole new democratic system of technology. And that basically it would solve all of our problems in terms of access to information. In terms of education. It would open up worlds to young people. In many ways it has, but they didn't talk really that much about advertising. Jeff and I working together at the Center for Media Education, were already tracking what was going on in that marketplace in the mid-1990s when it was very, very new. At which point children were already a prime target. They were digital kids. They were considered highly lucrative. Cyber Tots was one of the words that was used by the industry. What we believed was that we needed to get some public debate and some legislation in place, some kinds of rules, to guide the development of this new commercialized media system. And so, we launched a campaign that ultimately resulted in the passage of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Now it only governs commercial media, online, digital media that targets children under the age of 13, which was the most vulnerable demographic group of young people. We believe protections are really, really very important for teenagers. There's a lot of evidence for that now, much more research actually, that's showing their vulnerable abilities. And it has required companies to take young people into account when developing their operations. It's had an impact internationally in a lot of other countries. It is just the barest minimum of what we need in terms of protections for young people. And we've worked with the Federal Trade Commission over the years to ensure that those rules were updated and strengthened so that they would apply to this evolving digital media system. But now, I believe, that what we need is a more global advocacy strategy. And we are already doing that with advocates in other countries to develop a strategy to address the practices of this global industry. And there are some areas where we see some promising movement. The UK, for example, passed a law that bans advertising on digital media online. It has not yet taken effect, but now it will after some delays. And there are also other things going on for ultra processed foods, for unhealthy foods and beverages. So, Kathryn has partly answered this already, Jeff, but let me ask you. That act that we've talked about goes back a number of years now, what's being done more recently on the legislative front? Perhaps more important than that, what needs to be done? Well, I have to say, Kelly, that when Joe Biden came in and we had a public interest chair at the Federal Trade Commission, Lena Khan, I urged advocates in the United States who are concerned about unhealthy eating to approach the Federal Trade Commission and begin a campaign to see what we could do. Because this was going to be the most progressive Federal Trade Commission we've had in decades. And groups failed to do so for a variety of reasons. So that window has ended where we might be able to get the Federal Trade Commission to do something. There are people in the United States Congress, most notably Ed Markey, who sponsored our Children's Privacy Law 25 years ago, to get legislation. But I think we have to look outside of the United States, as Kathryn said. Beyond the law in the United Kingdom. In the European Union there are rules governing digital platforms called the Digital Services Act. There's a new European Union-wide policy safeguards on Generative AI. Brazil has something similar. There are design codes like the UK design code for young people. What we need to do is to put together a package of strategies at the federal and perhaps even state level. And there's been some activity at the state level. You know, the industry has been opposed to that and gone to court to fight any rules protecting young people online. But create a kind of a cutting-edge set of practices that then could be implemented here in the United States as part of a campaign. But there are models. And how do the political parties break down on this, these issues? Kathryn - I was going to say they break down. Jeff - The industry is so powerful still. You have bipartisan support for regulating social media when it comes to young people because there have been so many incidences of suicide and stalking and other kinds of emotional and psychological harms to young people. You have a lot of Republicans who have joined with Democrats and Congress wanting to pass legislation. And there's some bipartisan support to expand the privacy rules and even to regulate online advertising for teens in our Congress. But it's been stymied in part because the industry has such an effective lobbying operation. And I have to say that in the United States, the community of advocates and their supporters who would want to see such legislation are marginalized. They're under underfunded. They're not organized. They don't have the research. It's a problem. Now all these things can be addressed, and we should try to address them. But right now it's unlikely anything will pass in the next few months certainly. Kathryn - Can I just add something? Because I think what's important now in this really difficult period is to begin building a broader set of stakeholders in a coalition. And as I said, I think it does need to be global. But I want to talk about also on the research front, there's been a lot of really important research on digital food marketing. On marketing among healthy foods and beverages to young people, in a number of different countries. In the UK, in Australia, and other places around the world. And these scholars have been working together and a lot of them are working with scholars here in the US where we've seen an increase in that kind of research. And then advocates need to work together as well to build a movement. It could be a resurgence that begins outside of our country but comes back in at the appropriate time when we're able to garner the kind of support from our policymakers that we need to make something happen. That makes good sense, especially a global approach when it's hard to get things done here. Jeff, you alluded to the fact that you've done work specifically on ultra processed foods. Tell us what you're up to on that front. Jeff - As part of our industry analysis we have been tracking what all the leading food and beverage companies are doing in terms of what they would call their digital transformation. I mean, Coca-Cola and Pepsi on Mondelez and Hershey and all the leading transnational processed food companies are really now at the end of an intense period of restructuring to take advantage of the capabilities provided by digital data and analytics for the further data collection, machine learning, and Generative AI. And they are much more powerful, much more effective, much more adept. In addition, the industry structure has changed in the last few years also because of digital data that new collaborations have been created between the platforms, let's say like Facebook and YouTube, the food advertisers, their marketing agencies, which are now also data companies, but most notably the retailers and the grocery stores and the supermarkets. They're all working together to share data to collaborate on marketing and advertising strategies. So as part of our work we've kept abreast of all these things and we're tracking them. And now we are sharing them with a group of advocates outside of the United States supported by the Bloomberg Philanthropies to support their efforts. And they've already made tremendous progress in a lot of areas around healthy eating in countries like Mexico and Argentina and Brazil, et cetera. And I'm assuming all these technological advances and the marketing muscle, the companies have is not being used to market broccoli and carrots and Brussels sprouts. Is that right? Jeff - The large companies are aware of changing attitudes and the need for healthy foods. One quick takeaway I have is this. That because the large ultra processed food companies understand that there are political pressures promoting healthier eating in North America and in Europe. They are focused on expanding their unhealthy eating portfolio, in new regions specifically Asia Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. And China is a big market for all this. This is why it has to be a global approach here, Kelly. First place, these are transnational corporations. They are creating the, our marketing strategies at the global level and then transmitting them down to be tailored at the national or regional level. They're coming up with a single set of strategies that will affect every country and every child in those countries. We need to keep track of that and figure out ways to go after that. And there are global tools we might be able to use to try to protect young people. Because if you could protect young, a young person in China, you might also be able to protect them here in North Carolina. This all sounds potentially pretty scary, but is there reason to be optimistic? Let's see if we can end on a positive note. What do you think. Do you have reason to be optimistic? Kathryn - I've always been an optimist. I've always tried to be an optimist, and again, what I would say is if we look at this globally and if we identify partners and allies all around the world who are doing good work, and there are many, many, many of them. And if we work together and continue to develop strategies for holding this powerful industry and these powerful industries accountable. I think we will have success. And I think we should also shine the spotlight on areas where important work has already taken place. Where laws have been enacted. Where companies have been made to change their practices and highlight those and build on those successes from around the world. Thanks. Jeff, what about you? Is there reason to be optimistic? Well, I don't think we can stop trying, although we're at a particularly difficult moment here in our country and worldwide. Because unless we try to intervene the largest corporations, who are working and will work closely with our government and other government, will be able to impact our lives in so many ways through their ability to collect data. And to use that data to target us and to change our behaviors. You can change our health behaviors. You can try to change our political behaviors. What the ultra-processed food companies are now able to do every company is able to do and governments are able to do. We have to expose what they're doing, and we have to challenge what they're doing so we can try to leave our kids a better world. It makes sense. Do you see that the general public is more aware of these issues and is there reason to be optimistic on that front? That awareness might lead to pressure on politicians to change things? Jeff - You know, under the Biden administration, the Federal Trade Commission identified how digital advertising and marketing works and it made it popular among many, many more people than previously. And that's called commercial surveillance advertising. The idea that data is collected about you is used to advertise and market to you. And today there are thousands of people and certainly many more advocacy groups concerned about commercial surveillance advertising than there were prior to 2020. And all over the world, as Kathryn said, in countries like in Brazil and South Africa and Mexico, advocates are calling attention to all these techniques and practices. More and more people are being aware and then, you know, we need obviously leaders like you, Kelly, who can reach out to other scholars and get us together working together in some kind of larger collaborative to ensure that these techniques and capabilities are exposed to the public and we hold them accountable. Bios Kathryn Montgomery, PhD. is Research Director and Senior Strategist for the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD). In the early 90s, she and Jeff Chester co-founded the Center for Media Education (CME), where she served as President until 2003, and which was the predecessor organization to CDD. CME spearheaded the national campaign that led to passage of the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) the first federal legislation to protect children's privacy on the Internet. From 2003 until 2018, Dr. Montgomery was Professor of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., where she founded and directed the 3-year interdisciplinary PhD program in Communication. She has served as a consultant to CDD for a number of years and joined the full-time staff in July 2018. Throughout her career, Dr. Montgomery has written and published extensively about the role of media in society, addressing a variety of topics, including: the politics of entertainment television; youth engagement with digital media; and contemporary advertising and marketing practices. Montgomery's research, writing, and testimony have helped frame the national public policy debate on a range of critical media issues. In addition to numerous journal articles, chapters, and reports, she is author of two books: Target: Prime Time – Advocacy Groups and the Struggle over Entertainment Television (Oxford University Press, 1989); and Generation Digital: Politics, Commerce, and Childhood in the Age of the Internet (MIT Press, 2007). Montgomery's current research focuses on the major technology, economic, and policy trends shaping the future of digital media in the Big Data era. She earned her doctorate in Film and Television from the University of California, Los Angeles. Jeff Chester is Executive Director of the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), a Washington, DC non-profit organization. CDD is one of the leading U.S. NGOs advocating for citizens, consumers and other stakeholders on digital privacy and consumer protections online. Founded in 1991, CDD (then known as the Center for Media Education) led the campaign for the enactment of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA, 1998). During the 1990s it also played a prominent role in such issues as open access/network neutrality, diversity of media ownership, public interest policies for children and television, as well the development of the FCC's “E-Rate” funding to ensure that schools and libraries had the resources to offer Internet services. Since 2003, CDD has been spearheading initiatives designed to ensure that digital media in the broadband era fulfill their democratic potential. A former investigative reporter, filmmaker and Jungian-oriented psychotherapist, Jeff Chester received his M.S.W. in Community Mental Health from U.C. Berkeley. He is the author of Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy (The New Press, 2007), as well as articles in both the scholarly and popular press. During the 1980s, Jeff co-directed the campaign that led to the Congressional creation of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) for public TV. He also co-founded the National Campaign for Freedom of Expression, the artist advocacy group that supported federal funding for artists. In 1996, Newsweek magazine named Jeff Chester one of the Internet's fifty most influential people. He was named a Stern Foundation “Public Interest Pioneer” in 2001, and a “Domestic Privacy Champion” by the Electronic Privacy Information Center in 2011. CDD is a member of the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD). Until January 2019, Jeff was the U.S. co-chair of TACD's Information Society (Infosoc) group, helping direct the organization's Transatlantic work on data protection, privacy and digital rights.

As any parent knows, it is really important to help our children to make healthy food choices. I know as a father who cooks for my child, it is really critical that I introduce her to fruits and vegetables and encourage whole grains and try to manage the amount of additional sugars, but it's hard. We do this with the goal of trying to make sure that our child is able to eat healthy once she leaves the home. That she's able to make healthy choices there. But it's not just about the future. My child is making choices even today at school and outside of school, and the question is, can we help her make those choices that are going to lead to healthy food outcomes? Do food labels on products encourage children to make healthy food choices if it indicates good ingredients? Or would labels that warn against nutrients of concern actually discourage kids from using those or consuming those products? Today we're going to actually explore those questions in a particular context- in Chile. In 2016, the Chilean government implemented a comprehensive set of obesity prevention policies aimed at improving the food environment for children. Last year on this podcast, we actually explored how the Chilean food laws affected school food purchases. But now today, we're going to explore how food labels are influencing youth outside of school. It is my pleasure to welcome back my colleagues, Gabriela Fretes, who is an associate research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute, or IFPRI; and Sean Cash, who is an economist and chair of the Division of Agriculture, food and Environment at Tufts University at the Friedman School of Nutrition, Science and Policy. Interview Summary Gabi and Sean, I'm excited to discuss our new paper, Front of Pack Labels and Young Consumers an Experimental Investigation of Nutrition and Sustainability Claims in Chile that was recently published in a Journal of Food Quality and Preference. Gabi, let's begin with you. So why look at Chile? Can you explain the focus of the Chilean labeling and food environment policies there? So, the setting of our study, as in the previous study, was Chile because recently the country implemented the law of food labeling and advertising, which includes three main components. The first one being mandatory front of package warning labels on packaged goods and beverages. The second one being restrictions on all forms of food marketing directed to children younger than 14 years. So, including printed media, broadcast, and also all digital media. And the third component being at school regulations at different levels including preschool, elementary, and high school levels. Briefly, food manufacturers in Chile must place front of package labels on packaged foods or beverages that are high in specific nutrients of concern, including added sugars, saturated fats, sodium, and or energy. This law was implemented in three stages, starting in June 2016. The last stage was implemented in June 2019. So, it has been already six or seven years since the full implementation of the regulation. Specifically talking about the school component because this, yeah, it relates to children and adolescents. The law mandates that foods and beverages with at least one front of pack warning label cannot be sold, promoted, or marketed inside schools. And this includes the cafeteria, the school kiosks, and even events that are happening inside the schools. And additionally, food and beverages that have at least one front pack warning label cannot be offered as part of school meal programs. In addition to this front of pack warning label regulation, Chile also implemented voluntary eco labels starting in 2022 that provide information about the recyclability of food packages specifically. There is a certification process behind this labeling regulation and the eco label can be displayed if the food or beverage package is at least 80% recyclable. Wow. This is a really comprehensive set of policies to encourage healthier food choices, both at the school and then also outside of the school. I'm excited to discuss further what this may do to food choices among children. Sean, that really brings up the question, why is it important to look at young consumers and their food choices and what makes them unique compared to adults? Thanks for asking Norbert. This is an area where I've been interested in for a while. You know, young consumers play a crucial role in shaping the demand for food and long-term dietary habits. And young consumers might be more open to incorporating dietary advice into those long-term habits than adults might be. Just perhaps kids are less set in their ways. Children and adolescents are both current, but also future consumers with growing autonomy in what they choose around food as they get older. To marketers, we sometimes would say they might represent a three-in-one market. First, they spend their own money on snacks. What you could think of as the primary market. And how children spend money autonomously is really something that hasn't been studied enough by researchers. Although it's an area where I have tried to make a contribution. Second, kids influence household purchases. This is sometimes called pester power. You can think of a kid in the supermarket begging a parent to buy a favorite snack or a certain brand of cereal. But this can also be more socially positive in that kids might be agents of change within their households. Encouraging perhaps other family members to buy healthier food items if they get more interested in that. And third, this three-in-one market is rounded out by the fact that children represent future purchasing power as future adults. So, the habits that they're forming now might influence what they do when they're older. Despite this importance for marketers, but also for pro-social behavior change, there really hasn't been a lot of research on youth food purchasing behaviors. And this question that we are looking at here of how kids might respond to front to package labels has been particularly limited. In this project, we wanted to understand how Chilean adolescents might respond both to nutrition warning labels, but also eco labels, and how they consider price when choosing snacks. We were lucky to be able to recruit a sample of over 300 kids, aged 10 to 14, to participate in these experiments. I know we're going to chat a bit more about what we found, but in general, our results suggest that while price is perhaps the biggest factor in explaining what the kids chose in our experiment, that some of these youth showed preferences for the eco labels, which could be indicative of an emerging interest in sustainability issues. But overall, understanding these behaviors is really important because the food choices made during childhood and adolescence can persist in adulthood. And this can be really something that helps change long-term health outcomes.   Gabi, let's talk a little bit more about eco labels for a moment. What are they, and how do these echo labels influence children's snack choices? What did they tell us about their awareness of sustainability? That's a great question, Norbert. Thanks. In our study specifically, we found that eco labels, had a greater influence on adolescents' snack choices than nutrition warning labels these black and white octagons that are displayed on the front of the package of products in Chile. And this suggests that some young consumers are becoming more aware of environmental issues, or at least in our sample. One possible explanation for this could be that eco labels suggest positive emotions rather than warnings, as with the nutrition labels. Which might feel more restrictive. Unlike the nutrition labels that tell consumers what not to eat, eco labels, on the other hand, highlight a product's benefits, making it more appealing. This could be one of the reasons. Related to that, adolescents may also associate eco-friendly products with social responsibility aligning with increasing youth-driven environmental movements that are very prevalent around the world. However, not all adolescents in our sample responded equally to the eco labels that were presented to them in the snacks. Our study specifically found that those who receive pocket money were more likely to choose eco label snacks. And this could be possibly because they have more autonomy over their purchases and their personal values could be playing a bigger role in their choices. If eco labels are really influencing children and adolescents with choices, one intervention that could be potentially beneficial could be to incorporate sustainability messaging in school food and nutrition education in order to reinforce those positive behaviors. And make them part of the daily food choices that they make. In making sustainable food more affordable, government incentives or retailer promotions could encourage youth to choose more eco-friendly snacks. Given that price, as we saw in our study, remains a key factor for choice. Lastly, not all eco labels are created equal. And this suggests that clear standardization and regulation are needed to prevent misleading claims. And ensure that adolescents receive accurate information about the sustainability of their food choices. Ultimately, the eco labeling, of course, is not a silver bullet. It's not going to solve all the environmental issues, but it represents a promising tool to nudge consumers. So our better dietary and environmental behaviors. Gabi, you talked about how the eco labels have a bigger effect than nutrition warning. And overall, the nutrition warning labels didn't really have that big of an effect on snack food choices. Why do you think that's the case? Yes, this was really one surprising finding in our study. That front of pack nutrition warning labels did not significantly impact children's and adolescents' snack choices. And this kind of contradicts some previous research suggesting that warning labels can help consumers make healthcare choices. And there are several possible explanations for why this could be happening. The first one could be just lack of interest. So compared to adults, children and adolescents may be just more responsive to positive rather than negative messaging. Because negative messages related to nutrition might not seem relevant to them because they feel healthy in the present. They just are not interested in those kinds of messages. The second could be label fatigue. We discuss this in our paper and basically it is because Chile's regulation was already introduced in 2016. Given that it has been already some time since implementation, young consumers may have become habituated to seeing the warning labels on food products. So, like how adults also experience label fatigue, and this is documented in the evidence, children and adolescents might no longer pay attention or pay less attention to the warning. Third possible explanation is it relates to taste and brand loyalty. For this point, research shows that for youth specifically, taste remains the top priority when they choose food. So often outweighing any other factors including health concerns. If a favorite snack, for example, has warning labels but remains tasty and familiar to the kid, the label alone may not discourage them from choosing that snack. And lastly, social and environmental factors. Our study found, as we already mentioned, that eco labels had a stronger influence that nutrition warnings, and this could indicate that children and adolescents are just more responsive to messages about sustainability than to warnings, which they may perceive as less immediate. Thank you for sharing that. And at this moment in the US there is a conversation about front of pack labels. And the work that you are showing in this paper may even point to some of the things that may happen if we see similar front of pack labels here in the US. I'll be looking forward to see what happens with that effort right now. Sean, I want to turn to you and ask an economist type question. What role does price play in adolescent food choices? Not only price, but the availability of pocket money? And how do you think that should influence policy? Our study shows that price is the most significant factor influencing the snack choices of the kids in our study. And higher prices definitely reduce the likelihood of seeing a certain product being selected. It was kind of interesting. Interestingly, this effect was consistent regardless of whether the kids regularly received pocket money. Suggesting that even those that don't receive spending money still are paying attention to price. And this was a little bit different from what we found in some other studies that I've been able to work on, in the US and Germany, that suggested that previous experience with pocket money, or getting an allowance, was really important for understanding which kids might be most careful about spending their own money. I don't know if that's something different in the Chilean context than those other contexts. Or if that was just about what the kids in this particular study were paying attention to because we're asking about different things. But when we look more closely at the kids in our Chilean study, we found some important differences. As Gabi already mentioned, those kids who received pocket money were the ones who were more positively inclined to choosing products with the eco labels. And that suggests that they might be valuing sustainability a little bit more when making their own choices. Perhaps because they're already a little bit more familiar with some of those dynamics of spending their own money. Whereas those without pocket money were more likely to choose cheaper options or sometimes the healthier options like the apples that we provided as an option in our study. And suggesting they're focused more on affordability or health. So, what this means for policy, given the strong influence of price, it means that policy interventions that focus on price, like taxes on unhealthy foods or perhaps subsidies for healthier options, might be effective tools in guiding better choices for these kids. But also, programs promoting budgeting skills and food literacy might help adolescents make more informed decisions both about the nutrition and the sustainability of the foods they're eating. Finally, since some kids are responding positively to eco labels, integrating sustainability messages with the nutrition education could enhance the impact of food labeling policies. Overall, combining price policies and education labeling strategies could be really effective in driving meaningful changes in children and adolescent food choices. Sean, thank you. And it's really important to appreciate the differences that may occur when we think about a country like Chile versus the US or in some of your other work in Germany. And understanding that youth culture may be different and may be shaping these behaviors. But it's very clear that all people, it sounds like, are responding to price. And that's a constant that we're seeing here. Sean, here's my final question for you. What is the take home implications of this study? Well, first and foremost, our findings here suggest that nutrition labeling alone isn't necessarily going to be enough to drive healthier choices among children and adolescents. It can be part of an answer, but policymakers looking to promote healthier food choices might need to compliment labeling with education campaigns that reinforce the meaning of these warnings and integrate them into school-based nutrition programs. That said, I think that Chile has already been a leader in this regard, because the food items that get the warning labels in the Chilean context are the same ones that are subject to different restrictions on marketing or sales in schools, as well. I do think that we're going to see kids and eventually adults just become more familiar with these categorizations because of the consistency in the Chilean law. Also, on the eco label side, leveraging that kind of eco labeling alongside nutrition messaging might be an effective combination to help promote both healthier and more sustainable food choices. And finally we've been talking about new front to pack labeling schemes here in the United States. And it's really important to make sure we learn as much as possible from the experiences with such policies in other countries. Chile's really been a world leader in this regard and so I'm very happy to have tried to contribute to an understanding of how people use these labels through this study and through some of the other projects that Gabi, you and I have all been involved in. Bios Gabriela (Gabi) Fretes is an Associate Research Fellow in the Nutrition, Diets, and Health (NDH) Unit of the International Food Policy Research Institute. She received her PhD in Food and Nutrition Policies and Programs at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, USA in 2022 and holds a master's in food and nutrition with a concentration on Health Promotion and Prevention of Non-Communicable Diseases from the Institute of Nutrition and Food Technology, University of Chile. Her research interests are at the intersection of child obesity prevention, food policy and consumer behavior, and her doctoral thesis involved evaluation of a national food labeling and advertising policy designed to improve the healthfulness of the food environment and address the obesity epidemic in Chile, particularly among children. She has worked with a broad range of government, international organizations, academia, public and private sector stakeholders and decision-makers in Paraguay, Chile, and the United States of America. Sean Cash is an economist and Chair of the Division of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. He conducts research both internationally and domestically on food, nutrition, agriculture and the environment. He is interested in environmental impacts on food and beverage production, including projects on crop quality and climate change, consumer interest in production attributes of tea and coffee, and invasive species management. He also focuses on how food, nutrition, and environmental policies affect food consumption and choice, with specific interest in children's nutrition and consumer interest in environmental and nutritional attributes of food. He teaches courses in statistics, agricultural and environmental economics, and consumer behavior around food. He is currently Specialty Chief Editor of the Food Policy and Economics section of Frontiers in Nutrition, and has previously served as an Editor of the Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics as well as the Chair of the Food Safety and Nutrition Section of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

The amount of time children and adolescents spend with a screen is absolutely stunning. Lots of people, including parents, health leaders, educators, elected leaders from both parties I might mention, and even children themselves, are highly concerned and are discussing what might be done about all this. I'm delighted to begin this series of podcasts on children and screen time. Today we're welcoming two very special guests who can talk about this topic in general, and especially about what's being done to protect children and adolescents. Several podcasts will follow this one that deal with food and nutrition in particular. Our first guest, Kris Perry, is Executive Director of Children and Screens, an organization devoted to protecting children. In the digital world by addressing media's impact on child development, communicating state-of-the-art information, and working with policymakers. Prior to joining children in Screens, Kris was senior advisor of the Governor of California and Deputy Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency. Our other guest, Dr. Dimitri Christakis is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and director of the Center for Child Health Behavior and Development at Seattle Children's. He's also editor-in-chief of JAMA Pediatrics and both Chief Scientific Officer and Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Children and Screens. He's also the co-editor of a new book that I'm very excited to discuss. Interview Summary Download The Handbook of Children and Screens: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-69362-5 Kris, let's start with you. Could you set the stage and give us some sense of how much time children spend in front of screens, children and adolescents, and what devices are being used and what kind of trends are you seeing? Yes, I'd be happy to. I had better news for your listeners, but as you might imagine, since the advent of the smartphone and social media, the youth digital media use has been increasing each year. Especially as children get older and have increasing demands on their time to use screens. But let's just start at the beginning of the lifespan and talk about kids under the age of two who shockingly are spending as much as two hours a day on screens. Most spend about 50 minutes, but there's a significant chunk spending up to two hours. And that rises to three or three to five hours in childhood. And eventually in adolescence, approximately eight and a half hours a day our adolescents are spending online. Also wanted to talk a little bit about middle childhood children, six to 12 years of age. 70% of them already have a social media account, and we all know social media wasn't designed for children. And there are restrictions on children under 13 using them, and yet children six to 12 most have an account already. Over half of four-year-olds have a tablet and two thirds of children have their own device by the age of eight; and 90% of teens. This probably won't be surprising, and yet we should really think about what this means; that 90% of teens are using YouTube, 60% are on TikTok and Instagram, and 55% use Snapchat. I'll stop by ending on a really alarming statistic. Oh my, there's more? There's more. I know it! I told you. I'll be the bearer of bad news so that we can talk about solutions later. But, children are checking their devices as often as 300 times per day. 300 times. 300 times per day, and we're talking about screen time right now. And we know that when you're using time to be on screens, you are not doing something else. And we know that childhood is full of challenges and skill building and mastery that requires repetition and tenacity and grit and effort. And the more children are on their screens, whether it's social media or other entertainment, they're not doing one of these other critical child development tasks. That's pretty amazing. And the fact that the older kids are spending more time on before a screen than they are in school is pretty alarming. And the younger, the really youngest kids, that's especially alarming. So, Dimitri, why should we fret about this? And I realize that fret is kind of a mild word here. Maybe all I'll panic would be better. But what are some of the major concerns? Well, I don't think panic is ever the right reaction, but the numbers Kris conveyed, you know, I think do paint a, let's say, concerning story. You know, the simple reality is that there's only so much time in a day. And if you think about it, teenagers in particular should sleep for eight to 10 hours a day at a minimum. They really should be in school six and a half, seven hours a day. And then when you add the numbers, Kris conveyed, you realize that something's giving because there isn't enough time left to spend eight and a half hours a day. The two things at a minimum that are giving are sleep. Kids are losing sleep to be on screens. And I'm sorry to say that they're losing school while they're on screens. We just published a paper that used passive sensing to see where and when children are on their screens. And found that the typical child in the United States spends an hour and a half during the school day on their device. And it's not, before any of your guests ask, on Wikipedia or Encyclopedia Britannica. It's on the usual suspects of social media, TikTok, etc. So, you know, we talk about displacement, and I think it's pretty obvious what's being displaced during school hours. Its time focused on learning if it's in the classroom, and time focused on being authentically present in real time and space if it's during recess. School hours are precious in that way, and I think it is concerning that they're spending that much time in school. And I told you the median. Of course, some kids are above that, a significant half of them are above it. And at the high end, they're spending 30 to 40% of school time on screens. Now, some schools have enacted policies. They don't typically enforce them very well. One of the things that drives me nuts, Kelly, is that as an academic, you know we love to argue amongst ourselves and hem and haw. And this issue about whether or not there's such a phenomenon as digital addiction is still being hotly debated. Honestly, the only behavioral addiction that's being seriously considered at this point is gaming disorder. The DSM-5 didn't consider gaming, considered it, but didn't include, it said it needed further study in 2013. In 2022, the WHO did include gaming disorder as an ICD-11 diagnosis. But just as further evidence how slow science is compared to technology., I mean gaming, while it's still an entity, represents a small fraction of most people's screen time. And the numbers that Kris conveyed, a small fraction of that for some on average was gaming. For some people, it's their screen use of choice, but for many, it's social media. YouTube, although I consider YouTube to be a social media, etc. And at the high end when you hear the numbers Kris conveyed in my mind that's a behavioral addiction any way you define it. Well, and if you think about things that we all agree are addictive, like nicotine and alcohol and heroin, people aren't doing it 300 times a day. So it's really pretty remarkable. And that's exactly right. One of the salient criteria for those addictions is that it's interfering with activities of daily living. Well, you can't be on a screen for nine hours a day when you're supposed to be asleep for 10 and at school for six without interfering with activities of day. The math isn't there. And things like being physically active and going out and playing. That's right. It doesn't add up. So, you don't need the DSM-5. You don't need a psychiatrist. You need a mathematician to tell you that there's too much time on this thing. Alright, so Kris, talk to us if you will, about the Children and Screens organization. I have a lot of respect for the organization and its work. Tell us how it got started and what its objectives are. Well, it's so great to be on this show with you and get to see you in your day job, Kelly. Because you've been an advisor, like Dimitri, to the institute almost since its inception, which is in 2013. As you know, our founder, Dr. Pamela Hurst-Della Pietra, really became concerned as a parent about the way digital media was impacting her children and sought out some answers. Well, what does this mean? Why is this happening? What should I do? And found out that this, of course, is 2013, this is a long time ago. There wasn't that much research yet. And it was multidisciplinary. In other words, there might be a study among neuroscientists or developmental psychologists, even ophthalmologists. But there really hadn't been, yet, a concerted effort to bring these different disciplines and the research together to try to answer some of these hard questions about the impact on kids. And lo and behold, here we are, almost 13 years since the advent of the smartphone and social media. And there is an astounding amount of research across disciplines. So, what we do at the institute is we try to translate it as fast as we can and make it actionable for parents, providers, and policy makers. And we do that through our Ask the Experts webinar series where we bring the experts themselves directly to our audience to talk about these impacts and answer questions. We also create printables, you might say, like tip sheets and Research at a Glance Digest, and newsletters and FAQs and we've upgraded our website to make it very navigable for parents of kids of all ages. I even started my own podcast this year, which has been really fun. Dimitri was my first guest, so it's great to see him here. And we have convenings. We're having our third Digital Media Developing Mind Scientific Congress this summer where the experts come together in person to discuss issues. And we really try to focus them on advancing research and supporting it, translating it, and positioning the issue as a policy priority. We'll be in Washington, DC where we know lawmakers are grappling with the impact of digital media on child development, how to make online, products safer for kids and protect their data. The Institute is in the middle of all of this, trying to facilitate more discussion, more results and more support for parents primarily. Kris, a couple of things occur to me. One is that the breadth of work you do is really very impressive because you're not only having very hands-on kind of in the real world ex advice for parents on how to navigate this world, but you have advice for and helpful resources for policy makers and for researchers and people. It's really quite an impressive breadth of work. The other thing that occurred to me is that I don't think you and I would have any podcast career at all if it hadn't been for Dimitri helping us out. So thanks Dimitri. Yeah. So, let me ask you, Dimitri, so I know that both you and Kris are committed to an evidence-based approach to making policy. Yeah. But technology advances way more quickly than scientists can evaluate it. Much less come up with policies to deal with it. And by the time research gets funded, completed, published, you're on to eight new levels of technology. So how does one handle this fundamental problem of pace? It's a really good question. I mean, I can tell you that we should at a minimum learn from the mistakes we've made in the past. And, you know, one of the most critical, frankly, that most people don't really understand is that we talk about the age at which children get social media accounts in this country. Kris pointed out that actually pre-teens routinely have social media accounts. Social media companies do very little to age gate. They're trying to do more now, but even the age at which we've accepted it is being normative is 13. Few people know where that comes from. That doesn't come from talking to pediatricians, psychologists, parents about what age is the appropriate age. It comes entirely from COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act), which basically was the original privacy act that said that before the age of 13, companies could not collect data from children. So, because these companies were interested in collecting data, they set the age at 13 so as to not have any constraints on the data they collected. Well, that's not even common sense-based policy, let alone evidence-based policy. And it's never been revisited since. It's very troubling to me. And as things move forward, I think we have to learn from those mistakes. Medicine has a maxim which is do no harm. We use that phrase a lot and I think it's a good one in this case. I think it's a particularly good one as we see the new technologies emerging around artificial intelligence. And you know, again, like any new technology, it has incredible upside. We made the mistake and we're still paying for it, about not appreciating the downsides of social network sites, and frankly, the internet in general. And I would hope we put guardrails in place now. And if you will apply the same standard we apply to other non-technology based products. You can't introduce a new pharmaceutical to anybody, let alone to children, until you show it's safe and effective. You can't bring toys to the world that are dangerous. Why do we have more safety precautions around toys than we do around websites for children? You know, a lot of it involves changing defaults, doesn't it? Because if the default is that government or somebody out there has to prove that something is harmful before it gets taken away. That changes everything then if you began at a different point where these companies have to prove that these things are safe. Correct. Or they're permitted. Then the companies would find workarounds and they would play games with that too, but at least that would help some. Well, it would help some. And at least we'd be philosophically in the right place. By the way, Kris didn't say it, so I'll say it. You know, the mission of Children and Screens, lest we sound like Luddites here, is not get kids away from technology. Take away their smartphones. We all recognize that technology is here to stay. I think all of us appreciate the incredible upside that it brings to children's lives. The mission of Children and Screens is to help children lead healthy lives in a digital world. And part of the reason she and I often talk about the concerns we have is because the pros make the case for themselves. I mean, you know, no one needs to come here and tell you how amazing it is that you could Google something or that you could get somewhere with GPS. I mean, we know it's amazing and we all rely on it. And none of us are ever talking about getting rid of that stuff. That makes good sense. It's like, you know, children benefit from the fact that they can get around with their parents in the automobile. But you want to have car seats in there to protect them. Exactly. And that's exactly right. There needs to be assurances of safety and they're none. I mean, they're really virtually none. The age getting is a joke. And even if we accept it as effective, the age set of 13 is too young, in my opinion. We started this conversation talking about these medias being addictive, I believe they're addictive. There are legitimate academics that will debate me on that, and I'm happy to join that debate. But as I said before, it's a tough argument to win when people spending upwards of 10 to 16 hours a day doing it. I don't know what you call that besides addictive. We can argue about what percentage are doing that, but nevertheless, once you accept something as addictive, for other addictive things we immediately age gate it above 18 or 21, right? Mm-hmm. We don't believe that the teenagers have the ability to regulate their alcohol or tobacco or gambling, all of which we accept are addictive. In fact, in the case of alcohol, we raised the age from 18 to 21 because we thought even 18-year-olds weren't able to do it. And yet somehow for this behavior, we think of it as just so different that it doesn't require greater cognitive capacity. And I don't believe that. Yeah, very good point. Kris, let me ask you a question about how you and your colleagues at Children and Screens set priorities because there are a lot of things that one could potentially worry about as outcomes. There's violence that kids see on social media. There's cognitive and brain development, social developments, social interactions, and bullying. Mental health, body image, diet, all these things are out there. How do you decide what to work on? Well, we try to work on all of it. And in fact, we've built up a fair amount of expertise and resources around almost 25 different topics. And we also understand that, you know, childhood is a long period of time. Birth to 18, birth to 21, birth to 25, depending on who you talk to. So, we're able to take those 25 topics and also provide deeper, you might say, resources that address the different stages of development. We're really trying to do as much as we can. What's been interesting over these last few years is trying to figure out when to be reactive, when to be proactive. And by being proactive, we go out looking for the research, translating it, digesting it, and creating materials with it that we think are really accessible and actionable. At the same time, as Dimitri points out, there are policy windows and there are opportunities that present themselves that you have to react to. If you just only talk about what you want to talk about to each other you're missing some of these external opportunities to inform policy and policy makers. Help influence the way that parents and providers are talking about the issue. Framing it in such a way that engages youth and makes them want what we want for them. We're really excited by increasing opportunities to partner in coalitions with others that care about kids and teachers and nurses and doctors. But we also are speaking directly to leaders in states and school districts at the federal level, at the local level. You would be, I'm sure, not surprised to hear that we are contacted every day by groups that support parents and families. Asking for resources, asking for support, because they're seeing the impact now over many years on their children, their development. Their academic ability. Their cognitive and analytical ability. Their social emotional ability. Their ability to pay attention to tasks that we all know are critical in building that foundation for essentially, you know, future success. The Institute is being pulled in many directions. Ee try really hard to be strategic about what are people asking us for? What does the research say and how can we get that to them as quickly as possible? Dimitri - Can I add to that? You know, I want to emphasize that the concern around the effects of screen use on children's lives is shared by parents on both sides of the aisle. 75% of parents are concerned about the impact of screens on their children's lives. 35% of teenagers are concerned about their dependents on screens and that it has a negative effect on their lives. Actually by some studies, some surveys, even more than 35 to 50% of teenagers are concerned. And both sides of the political aisle agree in large part of this. And Kris and Kelly, you guys are the policy wonks, you can speak more to that. So it's a serious indictment on us as grownups and as a society that we have not done more to deliver on this issue. Why? When there's bipartisan agreement amongst many policymakers. This is not a political [00:22:00] issue to speak of and there is widespread concern on the part of parents and even teenagers. Why is nothing happening? Well, one has to look no further than where the money is. And that's a problem. I mean, that's a serious indictment on our political system when we can't deliver something that is needed and basically wanted by everybody but the industry itself. We'll come back and talk in a few moments about the policy issues and where industry gets involved here. But let me take just a bit of a detour from that and talk about the book that I mentioned earlier, because I think it's such a valuable resource. Now, when I mention the name of this book I'm urging our listeners to write this down or to remember it because you can get the book at no cost. And I'll come back, Kris, and explain what made that possible and why the decision was to make this an open access book. But Dimitri, let's begin with you. So you, along with Lauren Hale, edited this book that's entitled, The Handbook of Children and Screens: Digital Media Development and Wellbeing From Birth Through Adolescence. I think it's an extraordinary piece of work, but tell, tell us about the book.  It was an extraordinary undertaking. There's I think 178 or 180 authors. Literally, it's a who's who of experts in children and media research in all disciplines. It represents pediatrics, psychiatry, psychology, communications experts, demography, lawyers, neuroscientists. I don't know who I'm forgetting. Every single discipline is represented. Leading scientists in all of those areas. Virtually every topic that someone might be of interest to people. And we deliberately made the chapters short and easily accessible. So, it is, I think, a great resource for the constituents we serve. For teachers, for parents, for researchers, for policymakers. And it is free. The hardest part of it, to be honest, as an editor, was getting peer reviewers because unfortunately, every expert was conflicted since they all had an article in it. But it was a long time coming. And again, this was really the brainchild of Pam (Pamela Hurst-Della Pietra) and we're grateful to have brought it along. So, you go all the way from the neuroscience, how children's brains are reacting to this, all the way out there into the public policy and legal arena about what can be done about it. And then kind of everything in between. It's remarkable how much the book covers. It's almost a thousand pages. I mean, it is a tome to be sure. And don't forget to mention, Dimitri, we aren't even two months post publication, and we have 1.6 million views of the document, despite its gargantuan size. I think that is really a tribute to experts like you and others that have really studied this issue and can speak directly to its impacts. It's been great to see the success so far. You know, not a small number of those views is from me logging on. And then a million from me and then we got there. So, it is free because it's online and you can download it. You can also order a hard copy for I think, $60, but I'm not sure why you would do that if you can download it for free. But it's up to you. So, Kris, it's unusual for a book like this to be made open access and free to the general public. What made that possible and why was that so important? We want the maximum number of people to use it and treat it like the premier resource that it is. And the only way you can really do that is to fund it to be open access and find a publisher that does open access publishing, which we did with Springer. I mean, most journal articles are behind a paywall and publishers do require you to purchase either a subscription or the document itself to download it or order it. And we just really wanted maximum access. So, we funded it to be published in that way. And I think honestly, it helped us even sort of create it in the first place. People want to be a part of something that has that level of access and is available so widely. So, I think it was a kind of mutually beneficial. It gets more people to read it, but it got more people to write for it too, I think. Right, Dimitri? Dimitri - I agree. I mean, you know, the numbers 1.6 million are extraordinary. I mean, Kelly, you've been internal editor. I mean, as a editor of JAMA Pediatrics, if an article gets 70,000 views, it's in our top 1%, you know, 200,000 views is 0.01%. 1.6 million in growing is really extraordinary. And that's about the number of people that read my articles. 1.6. And of course, they're not all scientists. I mean, many of them are parents and maybe are policy makers, but that's Kris's point, you know. The moment anyone hits a paywall, even if it's a dollar or two, they're going to walk away. It's great to see it get so much traction. Alright, so again, for our listeners, the title of the book is The Handbook of Children and Screens. And it's really a terrific resource. Alright, so let's turn our attention to a really important matter. And we've sort of touched on this, but who's in charge of protecting our children? You know, Dimitri at the end of the day help survey this landscape for us. I mean, is it congress, is it the administrative branch of government? What role do the courts play? Are there legal actors taking meaningful action? What's being done does it come anywhere near, meeting the need. Tell us about what that landscape is like? Well, there isn't adequate protections for children. And we talked a little bit about that earlier. There's been an enormous loophole, unfortunately, created by Congress when they added the Section 230 to the Communications Decency Act in 1996. And that was put in place essentially to provide protections for internet companies. And it basically said that they should be treated like bookstores and not publishers. That they weren't responsible for content they were just conveying it. And what that means, in effect, was that the companies had sort of carte blanche to do whatever they want. And they've used that very effectively, legally, to argue that any restriction, any culpability on their part, is protected by that Act. That they're exonified for any ill that occurs as a result of their product. The only exception that's been made of it, to date, was around sex trafficking on back page, if anyone remembers that. But other than that, social media sites and internet sites in general have been able to say that they're not liable for anything that's done. And I think that was a huge mistake that was made. It needs to be rectified. It's being challenged in the courts presently. My own belief is that, and I'm not speaking as a lawyer, is that when that law was passed, it was under the assumption as I said, that they were just conveying information. No one at the time foresaw the development of algorithms that would feed the information. It's really not a bookstore when you are making recommendations. Once you start recommending things, I think you're no longer merely a purveyor of product. You're actually pushing it. So, Kris, tell us about the Children and Screens and the role the organization plays in this space. And how do you deal with policy and is it possible to be bipartisan? Yeah, I mean, it's essential. There's no way to get anything done, anywhere on these policy matters at a population level without working in a bipartisan or non-partisan manner, which is what we've always done. And it's easy to do that when you're following the science, not ideology. And you're putting the science first and you're creating resources and tools and support for those mostly staffers, honestly, that are trying to help their bosses get smarter and better at talking about these issues as they evolve and become more complicated over time. It takes more effort to staff a lawmaker on this front. And they're very anxious to learn and understand because they're meeting with parents of children who have been harmed. Or frankly didn't even survive their childhood because of the social media platform. There's great urgency on the part of policymakers. We've heard everything from school phone bans to outright social media bans proposed as policies. And one thing I like to come back to is it's one thing to want to take action and make your best guess at what would have the best impact. But it's another thing to study whether or not that policy actually achieved its result. And it's a part of this that by staying bipartisan, nonpartisan allows us to say, 'Hey lawmaker, if you're able to get that to happen, we'd really like to come in and help study whether or not your idea actually achieves the results that you wanted, or if it needs to be adjusted or amended over time.' Fantastic. That's so important to be doing that work, and I'm delighted the organization is doing it. Let me ask a question here. If you think about some of the areas of public health that I've been following, like tobacco, for example. Opioids more recently. Vaping products. And in the case of my own particular work food policy. The administrative legislative branches of government have been almost completely ineffective. If I think about food policy over the years, relatively little has been accomplished. Even though lots of people have worked really hard on it. Same thing happened with tobacco for many years. Opioids, same thing.  And it's until you get the third branch of government involved, the judiciary, and you start suing the actors who were causing the harm do you get much action. Not only do the lawsuits seem to have an effect, but they soften the ground for legislative things that then can occur because public opinion has changed. And then those things help make a difference as well. What do you think about that kind of issue in this space?  I think you're exactly right. I mean, I think the failure of our legislative branch to enact policy leaves us with very few options at this point anyway, except to try to pursue it through the judiciary. There are challenges there. First and foremost, it's a big and well-funded industry, not unlike tobacco or big food, as you mentioned and there's this Section 230 that's given them kind of blanket immunity to date. But there are many, many very large pending cases in several jurisdictions brought by individuals, brought by school districts, brought by states. And those, at least provisionally have gotten further than prior cases have with which have been thrown out based on Section 230. So, we'll see what happens with that litigation. But right now, my guess is it's the best chance we have to set some guardrails. And I think there are plenty of guardrails that could be set. Everything that these companies have done to make their products addictive can be undone. Can be made protective. The tobacco company deliberately designed their products to be addictive. While they tried to make the claims that they were less addictive, you know. They made light cigarettes that had holes in the filter so that it would diffuse the carbon and nicotine, but people quickly learned they could cover those up with their fingers and think they were smoking light cigarettes, and smoke more of them. There's a lot of things that can be done in this space to undesign the problematic nature of the products. And quite apart from the financial settlements, which will get companies attention, I hope that that's part of any settlement if it gets that far. It'll be interesting to see where those go. And, also historically, one important part of these lawsuits is what gets turned up in discovery. And what sort of intent the companies have and how much do they know about harms. And how much do they know about addiction and things like that. And how they might have proceeded in the face of that information that then doesn't get disclosed to the public. In any event, we'll see where that goes. Dimitri, what about the argument that responsibility resides with parents. It's up to parents to protect their kids from this, and government doesn't need to be involved. I've never understood that argument. I mean parents obviously are children's most important safeguard, but as a society, we enact policies and laws to assist parents in that. I mean to me, if I made the argument, well, why, why do we have minimum ages of drinking. It's parents' job to make sure their kids don't drink. How would that possibly play out? Look, it's hard enough as a parent anyway, because kids do get around these laws. But we still have them and it's a lot easier as a parent. I think most parents would agree their life's made easier by minimum age restrictions on certain things. We have seatbelt laws. I mean, why do we have seatbelt laws? Why don't we just tell its parents' job to make sure their kids buckle up? The truth is its society and parents working hand in hand to try and keep children safe. And I think it also helps parents to be able to say that there are laws around this, and I expect you to follow the laws. So, I don't think it's an either or. Okay, well, I think that's a very good way to frame it. There are many, many precedents where we protect children. And why not do it here too? So let me end with a question I'd like to ask both of you. So, in this sea of concerns that we've discussed, is there a reason for optimism? And Kris, let me start, start with you. What do you think? Absolutely. I think the young people I've met that are leading among their peers are incredibly impressive and are armed with the research and their energy and their own lived experience in ways that are very compelling. At the same time, I think the vast amount of research that has now been compiled and translated and acted upon, whether in courtrooms or in state houses, it's becoming more, and we're all getting more steeped and aware of more nuanced information. And finally, I would just say, there is a tipping point. We are reaching as a society, adults and kids alike, we are reaching a tipping point where we can't withstand the pressure of technology in every aspect, every corner of our day, our life. And we want relief. We deserve relief. And I think that's what's going to take us over the finish line. Good. Well, I'm glad to hear those optimistic notes. Dimitri, what about you? I can find reasons to be optimistic. I mean, look, the reality is that technologies have enriched our lives in many ways. And I think if we put guardrails in place, we can make sure that future ones do even better. I have a piece coming out in JAMA Pediatrics around the use of AI, which people are very concerned about, I think rightly. But specifically, about the use of AI and people with intellectual developmental disabilities, making the use case, that there are ways in which it could be extremely beneficial to that population. A population I care deeply about in my role as the Chief Health Officer at Special Olympics International. And in particular, let's say in terms of the doctor patient interaction where it could facilitate their communication with their provider, and it could also help the provider better communicate with them. Look, that use case isn't going to be a priority for the purveyors of artificial intelligence. It's a small, non-lucrative use of a technology. But it's a good one. And if we created the right incentives and put in the right guardrails, we could find many other ways that technology can serve the needs of all of us going forward. I think the problem is that we've tended to be reactive rather than proactive. And to not start with the do no harm first premise, particularly when it comes to children. AI is another example of that where I hope we don't make the same mistake we made with social media. Bios Kris Perry is the executive director of the Children and Screens Institute. Kris most recently served as Senior Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom of California and Deputy Secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency where she led the development of the California Master Plan for Early Learning and Care and the expansion of access to high-quality early childhood programs. She led systems change efforts at the local, state and national levels in her roles as executive director of First 5 San Mateo, First 5 California and of the First Five Years Fund. Through it all, Perry has fought to protect children, improve and expand early learning programs, and increase investments in low-income children. Perry was instrumental in returning marriage equality to California after the landmark 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling Hollingsworth v. Perry, which she wrote about in her book Love on Trial (Roaring Forties Press, 2017). Dimitri Christakis, MD, MPH is the Children and Screens Institute's inaugural Chief Science Officer. He is also the George Adkins Professor at the University of Washington, Editor in Chief of JAMA Pediatrics, and the Chief Health Officer at Special Olympics International. Christakis is a leading expert on how media affects child health and development. He has published over 270 peer reviewed articles (h-index 101) including dozens of media-related studies and co-authored a groundbreaking book, The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids. His work has been featured on Anderson Cooper 360, the Today Show, ABC, NBC, and CBS news as well as all major national newspapers. Christakis received his undergraduate degree at Yale University and his medical training at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed his residency and Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Fellowship at the University of Washington School of Medicine. 

How big is too big? When it comes to corporate concentration many observers raise concerns about the tech industry. However, in the new book, Titans of Industrial Agriculture: how a few giant corporations came to dominate the farm sector and why it matters, political economist Jennifer Clapp draws attention to the overwhelming shadow a small handful of transnational corporations cast over the global agricultural sector. Professor Clapp argues that these corporations hold concentrated power over the agricultural sector that keep industrial agricultural practices entrenched in patterns of production, despite the concerns of the social, ecological and health impacts to society. She explains how we got to this point and what it might take to make changes. Jennifer's work at the intersection of the global economy, food security, and food systems, and the natural environment, looks specifically at issues of global governance. She is currently a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub.  Interview Summary Norbert - Jennifer, let's just jump right in and I'd love for you to help our listeners understand a little bit more about your book. You write about corporate concentration in the agricultural input sector. Can you explain what this involves and what products are we really talking about?    Yes. The book is about what we call the agricultural inputs industry. And that's really four different product types typically, and maybe a fifth that we can talk about. So, one of them is farm machinery, and that's really referring to things like plows and tractors, harvesters, etc. That kind of machinery on the farm. The second industry is the fertilizer industry, which is all about, you know, the nutrients that we bring to the soil through fertilizer products like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potash. And the seed industry. That's another industry that is a key input for farmers. And then also pesticides. And when we talk about pesticides, we're referring to things like insecticides, chemicals that kill insects, but also chemicals that kill weeds and fungus. And so those are the four sort of big inputs that I talk about in the book. But also, the book covers a fifth input, an emerging input, which is data. And this is, especially as we're seeing the datafication and digitalization of farming. Increasingly data has now become a commodity that is bought and sold as an input into farming. Norbert - Great. I have to ask, what drew you to the input industry? I mean, let's be honest, that's not the thing that most people get excited about. Why should we be concerned? Yeah, that's a great question. I've actually had a very long interest in the seed in chemical industry. That goes way back to the start of my career because I did studies in agriculture for my PhD dissertation. But then I got quite interested in toxic waste and then that sort of drew me to this question of the global pesticide trade. And when I learned that, you know, oftentimes, like in the US there might be a banning of a pesticide that's no longer in use. But it was still being traded globally. And this, I found this very fascinating and how that industry worked. And that kind of drew me into understanding the connections between seeds and chemicals. And then when the digitalization of farming came along and in recent decades it became really clear that it wasn't just chemical and seed industry involved in that digitalization. It was also the fertilizer and the farm machinery sector. It made me want to understand the interconnections between these industries. I know it's like, maybe a bit specific, but they have huge consequences in terms of the way our food systems look like. And so that really drew me to understand where did these inputs come from? And why are they controlled by just a few large companies? Erika - Jennifer, I want to ask you a question about why this sector, especially related to the inputs, is so important when we're talking about food systems. And especially their social and ecological dimensions. And specifically in the book, you tease out many of the social and ecological costs of inputs such as pesticides. Also the social and ecological consequences of even farm machinery. So it would be great if you could elaborate on their importance.  Thanks, Erika. That's a great question and that's part of the reason why I was really drawn to study these inputs. Because I'm in a school of environmental studies, I'm very interested in these interconnections between food systems and environmental outcomes. I was really interested in learning more about where these industries came from, and as I was teasing out where they came from. And how they became dominated by such large companies, I also learned in much more depth about the ecological consequences of these inputs. I can just say a little bit about some of them because these consequences are so big that we almost forget to talk about them. They become embedded in the product itself. And so, one example is farm machinery. Farm machinery was originally seen as quite revolutionary and that it allowed farmers to harvest their fields much more quickly than they used to be able to before. But that also meant then that to make the equipment efficient and pay for them they might as well extend the size of their farm. And as farmers extended the size of their farm, in the US anyway, they moved west and displaced its indigenous people from the land, in terms of taking that land for farm production. But also, as farms began to consolidate and get larger, as mechanization continued, it also displaced others from the land. Poor farmers, black farmers, those who were renting land and didn't have access to their own. And so, people who were marginalized and we still considered marginalized in society today, were really being displaced from the land as a direct consequence of farm machinery. It's not that farm machinery is like necessarily something that we want to do away with today, but I think we need to recognize those historical connections. And really understand that when, you know, you see a book for a small child about farming and there might be a picture of a farmer and it's usually a white guy sitting on a tractor. We can forget that image has a lot of baggage associated with it in terms of displacement and inequality. And I think we need to recognize that. But it does not just stop there. There's also plowing disturbs the soil, heavy machinery compacts the soil so it can harm fertility of the soil as well. And the machinery part of the equation has long been a source of inequality in terms of being very expensive for farmers. It's been one of the main reasons farmers have often been driven into debt. Farm machinery might have been liberating in one sense to allow increased production, but it did come with costs that we should acknowledge. We also need to recognize the ecological and social costs associated with the fertilizer industry. And this industry goes way back to the 1840s and we saw the rise of the guano trade. And we can think immediately of the working conditions of the workers who were digging the guano in the Chincha islands of Peru. And often they were coming from Asia and facing really harsh working conditions. But then when we saw the rise of synthetic nitrogen in the early 20th Century, the cost shifted in a way towards the cost of fossil fuels. The huge amount of natural gas used in the synthesis of nitrogen. And also, the climate consequences of the nitrous oxides that come from the application of synthetic nitrogen into the soil. So again, there's like enormous ecological and social impacts from that particular input. Similarly, when we talk about seeds, the hybridization of seeds in the 1920s and 1930s also raise huge concerns about plant genetic diversity. And we know that in the last century or so we've lost around 75% of plant genetic diversity for crop genetic diversity. And this is because of the way in which we started to see the uniformity of the genetic makeup of seeds. The monocultural planting of seeds really reduced that kind of diversity. And then intellectual property protection on seeds that came with the hybridization of seeds also led to a decreased ability of farmers to save their own seed and exchange their own seed with their neighbors. So again, social ecological costs. And finally, when we talk about pesticides, we have seen enormous issues with respect to pollution runoff. This kind of bioaccumulation of these toxic chemicals that have enormous health consequences. So, all of these inputs have very large impacts in terms of their social and ecological costs. And we can even extend that to the issue of data today. There's a lot of concern about data platforms for digital farming where farmers are signing away the rights to the data that are coming from their own farms. And they don't have the kind of interoperability with other data sharing systems. And there's also a lack of clarity about who owns that data. So again, there's big issues with respect to these inputs and how they are affecting both social and ecological dynamics within the food system.  Erika - Thank you for helping us understand the social and ecological impacts of these inputs into the farming industry. Norbert - This is a really rich conversation and I want to understand a little bit more. There's a big part of your text that's about the concentration in the input sector. What does it look like today and was it always this way? That's a great question because it's almost a trick question because we tend to assume that this high level of concentration that we see today is something that's new. But what I found in my research is that the high degree of concentration actually has a long history that goes back about a century or more in some cases. And when we're looking at each of these sectors, the farm machinery, for example, is controlled. Most of the market is controlled by about just four firms. And they control around 50% of the global market. But when you look specifically at national markets in the US, for example, John Deere, you know, the largest company that makes farm machinery, it controls over 50% of the tractor market. So that's just one firm alone. It's similar dynamics when we look at fertilizer, seeds and pesticides and fertilizer, for example. Just two firms control a hundred percent of North American potash production. The four key companies control a large amount of the global fertilizer trade. In seeds, it's also very similar and in pesticides. In the seeds and pesticides that's especially interesting because since the 1980s and 1990s, the seed and pesticide companies actually merged with each other. We can't even say there's a set of seed companies and a set of chemical companies. It's actually seed and chemical companies. That's one set. And they control around 60% of the global seed market and around 70% of the global pesticide market. And that's really what prompted me to want to work on this book is that after 2015, there was a set of mergers in the seed and chemical sector that concentrated those firms even further. They used to be dominated by six firms. We used to call them the Big Six, and then they had major mergers where Bayer bought Monsanto, Dow and DuPont merged and formed Corteva. Syngenta group was bought by Chem China, and then bought by Sino Chem, a big Chinese chemical company. And then BASF bought up all the bits that the other companies were forced to sell to pass regulatory hurdles. And so, we ended up with a Big Four. And these companies produce both seeds and chemicals and have a quite an enormous impact in terms of their market dominance. Norbert - Wow. This is really important and I think it's a topic that many of us who look at the food industry aren't paying attention to. And I'm really appreciative of you laying out this concentration that's taking place. Jennifer, when reading the book, I was really struck by the fact that this is not just a book about the farmers themselves and the farming industry and the companies that provide the inputs. But you also touch upon the role of universities and university science and scientists; and also the role of government in helping to fuel or seed innovation in this sector. And, you know, here I was hoping you could talk about this important role for universities and also the government given that we're in a current moment where we're seeing a retrenchment from investments by government, and also the ability of universities to continue to seed innovation. So I was hoping you could share some of your insights.  Yes, it's certainly an interesting time on the landscape of spending on innovation and with a retrenchment of state pulling back away from supporting technological innovation and other innovations. And that's certainly true in the farm sector, and that's very different from the situation if we go back to the 1800s and see, as you mentioned, the role that the state played in terms of really trying to support innovation in these sectors. And what I argue in the book is that these firms, they got big in the first place, and they were able to consolidate in the first place, through a series of what I call market technology and policy factors. And it's kind of messy. I put them in these three big categories. But in terms of these market factors, that's what most people tend to think about when they think, 'oh, a firm got big. Maybe it's just more efficient. It's able to produce products more cheaply and therefore it just grew to be big.' And that's much more complicated than that of course. And that's because, as you said this role of technological change in which universities have played a really important role. And government support and throughout history in the US, a lot of the book focuses on the US because we have good information and data there. And the US set up the land grant college system really to support development in the agricultural sector. And that gave us, you know, a lot of the innovations that led to, for example, the hybridization of seeds. And the corporations that took up that innovation that the state supported through university research, those firms also work directly with universities in many instances, to have these kinds of collaborative relationships, to develop, herbicides, to develop seeds, to develop further farm machinery, etc. So that role of technological innovation is really important, and that innovation doesn't just come from nowhere. It doesn't just pop up. It doesn't just show up one day. Right? It comes from investment. Investment in universities and research and development. And so that has been a really important strand to develop this kind of industrial agriculture. And now we know from university research, etc., that there are some problems associated with it. Yet it's proving hard to get that kind of funding to spur a new transformation towards a more sustainable agriculture because we're not giving that kind of state support, and support to universities to do that research and innovative work to lead us towards more sustainable agriculture. So, I think there's a lot there that we need to work on. And that's some of the recommendations that I make at the end of the book. Is that we need to shore up that kind of public investment in innovation, in alternative systems to address some of the problems. So just let me tag on another question from that. Just what are the consequences then for having just a small number of firms dominating this sector and no longer having these investments in innovation? Yeah, so what we're seeing increasingly as the state has pulled away from supporting agricultural research, is that most of that agricultural research now is being done by private corporations. And the big concern there is that as you have a smaller and smaller number of very large firms dominating in the sector, their incentive to innovate actually weakens. It weakens because if there's not a lot of players in the marketplace that are doing innovative work, there's just not a lot of competition. And so why would you innovate if you don't have to? If you're already a monopoly and you're able to sell your product, there's not a lot of incentive to innovate in a way that might then decrease the sales of your old products. And so, what we're seeing is a shift in innovation from the private sector, away from these kinds of transformative innovations and much more towards what we call defensive innovations. They're innovating in ways that actually enable them to sell existing products. And many would say that the rise of agricultural biotechnology was actually that kind of a defensive innovation. It was modifying seeds to make them resistant to the application of existing herbicides. And so there was innovation, but it was actually spurring further sales in an existing product. And part of the reason for that was that it became very expensive for these companies. The regulatory hurdles became quite expensive for them to develop new herbicides. And so, they were like, 'oh, it's cheaper and faster to work with seeds. Why don't we do it this way and then we'll continue to sell the herbicides.' Which by the way, got them a lot more profit than selling the seeds. So that's why they bought up a lot of the seed companies and really consolidated in that period. And there's a longstanding concern among competition regulators, the regulators that try to prevent a huge concentration in the economy, about this question of innovation. And it's very relevant in the agricultural sector. There's this sense that if you allow too much concentration to happen, it can dampen that innovation and that takes away that dynamic, innovative spirit within the sector. It's definitely a big concern. Norbert - Jennifer, I really appreciate this. Earlier in my career I was a part of some research related to biotechnology and innovation that happens there. And one of the things that I learned about is this idea of building thickets. These sort of patent thickets where you create a series of patents that actually make it difficult for others to be able to innovate in that same way. There are these real challenges of this kind of defensive innovation. And that's just one of the challenges that you bring up in the book. And I am interested in understanding, as sort a last question, what are some of the recommendations? You mentioned public sector funding of agricultural research and many of my colleagues in my discipline have said we need more research for agriculture. Are there other areas of recommendation to address some of the concerns you raised in the book? Thanks, Norbert. Yes, definitely. And I definitely do call for greater public support for agricultural research. And that's something within the agricultural sector. And I think there we really need to focus efforts on alternative agricultural production methods. For example, agroecology, which tries to reduce the amount of external inputs, not to increase them, by using nature's own processes to achieve the same functions of diversity and pest control, etc. And what's troubling is that when the firms don't have that incentive to innovate, you know, they're definitely not going to innovate in ways that would reduce their profits. They're not going to do that. The public sector has to step in if we want to see that kind of research done. But we also need measures outside of that food and agriculture system that will benefit food and agriculture. One area is stronger antitrust policies. Policies that would prevent further mergers and acquisitions that would allow those firms to continue to get bigger and bigger. Those antitrust policies are used largely, we've got merger guidelines, for example, in North America. And in Europe, when two firms want to merge, they have to get regulatory approval to do so. And those merger guidelines really walk the regulators through what would be a merger that might dampen competition, that might weaken innovation, you know, that kind of thing. It's important that we make those rules stronger. They had become progressively weaker after the 1980s. There was this move in the regulatory space that was this kind of idea that maybe it's okay if firms get really, really big because they can benefit from economies of scale. Maybe they can bring down consumer prices and maybe we shouldn't worry so much about these other areas of control. And there's been a bit of a shift in view around this in recent years where we've seen the rise of concern about these very big companies, especially with what we see with the big tech companies taking control over all these aspects of our lives. And people are saying, wait a minute, maybe we don't want to have this just a few companies controlling so much of our lives. And so, you know, we need to think about other ways to enforce antitrust policies to make them stronger so that we foster more competition and not just focus on whether something's more expensive or not. And that's, I mean, it's a bit of a hard thing to explain to some people. Obviously, people want to see lower prices. But the idea that we have to get across is that when competition dies, when it's not there, that's when the monopoly can really raise prices. And so, we need to have that competitive marketplace in order to spur innovation and also to bring prices down. That's really important and that's a kind of agenda item that's involves food and agriculture, but it's outside of the food and agriculture sector. It encompasses more. And another area where I think we can do more is to reign in the kind of undue corporate influence on the policy process. And that's arising out of a concern that as we're seeing fewer and fewer dominant companies in the food sector, and in other sectors as well, they tend to gain more political power to influence the policy and governance process. And so, what we're seeing is heightened lobby activity. Sponsoring of scientific studies and yes, coming back to the question about universities. But as corporations get bigger, they can shape science in ways that can help them win regulatory approval for their products. We need broader policies on conflict of interest to prevent large companies from taking over the policy process. And I know that's a really salient topic in the US right now, given what's going on in the broader politics. And I think it is a broader politics issue that needs to be seriously addressed if we want to support a more transformative form of food and agriculture. These kinds of policies like stronger antitrust, better conflict of interest policies, and also support for public agricultural research are all really important steps. I don't think any one of them on their own is going to do the trick in terms of spurring this desperately needed transformation in our food systems. But together, I think, they can bring us closer to that goal. Bio Jennifer Clapp is a Tier I Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability and Professor in the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada. Dr. Clapp is currently a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub. From 2019-2023, she was a member of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) of the UN Committee on World Food Security, and served as Vice-Chair of that body from 2021-2023. Dr. Clapp has published widely on the global governance of problems that arise at the intersection of the global economy, food security and food systems, and the natural environment. Her most recent research projects have examined the political economy of financial actors in the global food system, the politics of trade and food security, and corporate concentration in the global food system. She has also written on policy and governance responses to the global food crisis, the political economy of food assistance, and global environmental policy and governance. Her most recent books include Food, 3rd Edition (Polity, 2020), Speculative Harvests: Financialization, Food, and Agriculture (with S. Ryan Isakson, Fernwood Press, 2018), Hunger in the Balance: The New Politics of International Food Aid (Cornell University Press, 2012), Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment, 2nd Edition (with Peter Dauvergne, MIT Press, 2011), and Corporate Power in Global Agrifood Governance (co-edited with Doris Fuchs, MIT Press, 2009). Her forthcoming book, published with MIT Press (2025), is titled Titans of Industrial Agriculture: How a Few Giant Corporations Came to Dominate the Farm Sector and Why It Matters.

The climate crisis is devastating the ability of African farmers to support themselves and their communities. Farmers struggle with a lack of running water, electricity, communications, and public transportation. Entire communities are often cut off from the larger world, exacerbating and extending the poverty crisis that grips large parts of the continent. To overcome these issues, our guest, Gwen Jones, co-founded Nzatu Food Group, a regenerative agriculture business designed to protect biodiversity and mitigate climate change. Nzatu Food Group has done some remarkable pioneering work. Gwen is connected to 15,000 Sub-Saharan farmers across 15 countries through beekeeping, sustainable agricultural and conservation   training, and by building an increasingly international market for farm products. Interview Summary So please begin by telling us why you and your sister founded this initiative and about its unique strategy for helping farmers. Well, firstly, our strategy is based on an engage-to-support premise with an approach that focuses on uplifting farmer livelihoods. As you know, farmers are critical actors in agroecological transformation and important stewards of biodiversity. 80% of the world's food production is done by smallholder farmers, yet only a mere 3% of climate finance goes to our food systems. So, this presents a key avenue to increase intervention in this space through public policy and unlock climate transitional finance. Helping farmers is so, so important, especially with these small farms. Tell me more about your own history and what led you to start your organization? Denise, my sister and I, who are the co-founders of Nzatu, we come from a rural community in Southern Zambia. And we grew up alongside smallholder farmers. We understand inherently what the challenges, but as well as the opportunities that smallholder farmers face. What started off very informally helping our relatives and our tribal communities became Nzatu, we started it off by showcasing to our relatives and our farmers on how they could increase their income with simple interventions by keeping bees. And through training and education, we were able to show farmers that through the income on bees, they would earn three US dollars per kg on honey. Which gave two harvests a year compared to 20 US cents on maze. Which was a rain fed and only produced one harvest a year. It made economic sense for them to also keep bees alongside their maize production. And in this way, it would help with economic shocks and help to give a diversified income. So, we were so excited to share this with our farmers. And it grew like wildfire as you can imagine. The farmers in our program were more prosperous. And, from the income that they got from the honey, they were able to get better inputs for other production. And that engagement helped to bring other interventions as well to the communities. So, how exciting that you were able to make such an important transformation. And I can see why farmers would be grateful for that sort of help. Tell us if you would, about the climate crisis and how it's affected African farmers? In some cases, there's too much water from flooding. In some cases, too little water. So, you know, that volatility- how do you plan with that? In one year, you would have flooding and, so your crops would be washed out in the following two or three years you have absolutely no rain. There is just no way to plan in such kind of situations. Farmers are the ones that are mostly affected by climate change, and all we can do is just be there as a support mechanism. How can we work around that? How can we bring in the in-between periods, bringing in higher yielding seed where they can at least recoup whatever they can do in that season? It's very, very difficult for the farmers.  Tell us about your vision of regenerative agriculture. What does that concept mean in your context, and how can you help farmers adapt to this changing climate? Yes. We started off in a very, very grassroots way. I was always fascinated to understand the ancient grains of Africa. Africa has 26 lost crops. These lost crops are including millet and sorghum and Teff and fornio. These are the indigenous grains of Africa. Indigenous to the diet, but indigenous to the environment. They're very drought resilient and also, they fix nitrogen into the soil. So, they help to bring more resilience and soil health, which is what is lacking in Africa across the continent. We have vast soil degradation, which is also contributing to climate change. By reintroducing what is already inherent in the food history of Africa, it's a very key intervention. Sometimes is the smallest innovation that can bring about the biggest change. Is bringing back the food that is indigenous to communities. There is a resistance though, because our communities have gotten used to maize. I myself are very used to having nshima, which is made from corn, which only offers 3% nutrition. And it's very hard to change that staple to go to, let's say, nshima using sorghum or millet because the taste, is a palate issue. But we have to bring in recipe days. How can we train farmers to use this in their everyday diets? It starts off with that connectivity. How can we help children to take boiled cowpeas to school? You know, making sure that they can use cow pea flour to make cookies and sausages and innovative ways to bring in the recipes on how they can use these crops. It's not enough to just say you've got to, you know, grow the intercrop with ancient grains, because of the nitrogen fixing aspect. You've also got to bring that cultural acceptance by connecting with communities and helping them find ways on how they can prepare their food. So that when you talk about innovation, it's cuisine innovation as well. Not just, soil health and using big words like carbon capture, etc. It's also about the everyday tactile innovation in a simple thing like having recipe field days in our communities. You spoke, especially about introducing, well reintroducing, if you would, indigenous grains. Why were they lost in the first place and what have you done?    The crops were lost through commercialization. Maize was introduced as an export cash crop to support the war efforts in Europe. And along that commercialization, the tools and the inputs that were needed to produce maize is what was commercialized. And communities also had to pay the Hut Tax in Maize. So, because of those at policy level and at export level, the change happened slowly over time because it was easier to grow the crops that were meeting the mandatory requirements. Sorghum and millet became a second or third crop to produce because it wasn't something that was a mandatory crop. And over time, maize replaced the nutritious grains of sorghum and millet. I'm just taking like one example of that. The commercialization aspect. Well, there are generations with little experience eating these products or growing them. Is that right? That's true. Like I said, me included. Even though, academically I know and scientifically I understand that sorghum and millet is of higher nutrition, it's having that paradigm shift changing the dietary approach to it. And that is one of our key interventions that we can make in our communities. But by having this face-to-face contact with our farmers, we are able to pass that information on. We're able to transfer that knowledge and bring about including sorghum and millet. So, as you know, Nzatu works mainly with coffee farmers. Coffee is one of our main crops that, that we are engaged in. And our coffee producers focus mainly on coffee. Our work is by encouraging farmers to grow the millets and sorghums so that the coffee farmers themselves will start consuming millet and sorghum. But as well as finding a market for them for those crops. And are the farmers receptive to the reintroduction of these grains? It is challenging because as you can imagine, how you harvest coffee and how you harvest millet and sorghum is completely different. Millet and sorghums and most of the ancient grains, the grain is very small. It's having the tools, the harvesting techniques and the weeding techniques. There's so much involved in it. And this is where climate transitional finance can really help. Tell us more about the process. How does your organization go about doing these things? We engage with farmers. Most of the farmers that we're involved in are already practicing mulching and other organic practices and regenerative agricultural practices. It is much more common than we think. Farmers are already conservation in nature because it's inherent in traditional African practices. What we are doing is we are just really enhancing the knowledge that they already have and bringing out the historical practices. For example, when it comes to wildlife conservation, Africans in the tribal communities are already totemic in nature. Meaning that families identify with different animal groups. There is already an indigenous wildlife conservation that already is practiced for hundreds of years in the village. If your family has a totemic nature of, let's say, kudu, that is an animal that is sacred to your lineage and you would never hunt that kudu, et cetera. So that those age-old practices have been there for centuries. And it's really inculcating and bringing back that cultural understanding when it comes to the cuisine, when it comes to the wildlife totemic nature of those communities. It is truly lost knowledge that we are really committed to bringing back into our communities. And as farmers begin to grow these products, is there a market for them? Yes. This is where I know I get so excited just about the day-to-day work that we are doing. But we are a business, at the heart of it. We really have to make a profit somewhere. And we take product to market. Our team, we have an amazing team across Africa and in Europe and here in the US as well as Asia. And consumers today have become more conscious. They're looking at products that have an environmental and social value. And we communicate this through our brand positioning. Nzatu's brand is about taking that story to the consumer so that we can avail the product on the retail shelves by giving them the story of what happens in the field. Nzatu is the voice of the farmer. We are there to tell the farmer's voice to the consumer so that we can engage with consumers on every retail shelf that we can. As a consumer, I would find it appealing to know more about the history of the grains that I see at the store or other products for that matter. And about the farmers who grow them. How are consumers responding? Yes, the thing is, you know, how do we communicate? Consumers are more interested in how we can help a single farmer. Yes, there is an interest to know about how we reduce carbon emissions, etc. But if you can also add the story to it, that by helping a single farmer, you are reducing carbon emissions. You are helping to bring in higher livelihoods. You are helping to bring in increased health and safety measures to the production methods of those products. You are helping to uplift communities. Children are going to school. You are helping to reduce wildlife poaching. All by that single dollar that you are spending on that product. That is what the consumer of today wants to do is how can I make a difference in the way I live and in the way I consume? And that is our goal with Nzatu, is connecting that story to the consumers today. What are some of the challenges that your organization faces? Yes. You know, the higher the dream, the bigger the challenges. There's so many, ranging from trying to find ways that we can provide better honey straining equipment to our farmers so that they can offer better quality honey. But that's at a very micro level. On a macro level, the challenges are how do we get to change policy so we can increase climate transitional finance for farmers? As I mentioned earlier, only 3% of climate finance goes to food systems. How can we increase that number? And, you know, Kelly, one of the biggest problems that farmers face is with all the EUDR regulations, etc., that are in place now, and scientific based initiative targets and all, how does a farmer in rural Zambia- how are they able to change their method of production to meet those stringent targets? That takes money. It takes investment in their practices to be able to change from chemical-based agriculture to organically driven agriculture and regenerative agriculture. How do they access the inputs, the seeds to be able to intercrop with leguminous crops. That takes investment. You know, and then if they're only getting 20 US cents per kg from maize with rain fed agriculture, how is a farmer supposed to be able to now even think on investing? There is no money. This is the biggest challenge we face the smallholder farmers are the stewards of biodiversity. They need to be financed. They need to be equipped to be able to accelerate the change because really, they hold the power in their hands. And for us, this is where it's the most exciting, is if we can support the farmers to do what they need to do out there then it's a win-win for everyone. It's a win-win for the farmers. It's a win-win for the consumers. It's a win-win for our partners. We are partnered with art Cafe in Italy, who's our roasting division and Urban Afrik, who are our logistic partners. So, we have the system in place that at every point we have partners that have the same philosophy as we do to support and address climate change. You mentioned investment in agriculture and in financing. Who are the players in this space? Must the funding come from international organizations or from the country Governments themselves? The main actors are already in place, like IFC (International Finance Corporation), World Bank, are already channeling that money towards that space. They're committed, they're active in that space. But I would also encourage family offices, climate smart funding, social impact funding. The groups that are involved already in agriculture, the ones that are already engaged and already have the due diligence process in place to actually track that. But also, Kelly, I think that Ag Tech, it would be a very important component with the technology that exists today, whether it's through blockchain or any type of digital tech finance that can enable this. Because it's also tracking, you know, and the data needed to actually support this. It's an entire ecosystem that we need. Using digital tools to help to map out soil health and how we can improve soil health right up to the consumer tracking the story. But at the genesis, how do we finance the innovation on the digital tools? How do we finance better seed and how do we get it to the farmers in term terms of storage? How do we harvest so we can reduce waste? It's an entire ecosystem that is required. There is no one answer, but where does it start? It starts at the top. It starts with the awareness. It starts with telling the story so that we all have a stake in it to change.  Bio Gwen Jones is the co-founder of Nzatu and Chief Partnerships Officer. The daughter of a Zambian mother and English father, Gwen grew up in Zambia, along the banks of the Kafue River. Alongside her sister and business partner, Denise Madiro, Gwen experienced firsthand the immense challenges sub-Saharan African farmers faced every day. Gwen moved to the United States more than 20 years ago and has spent her entire 30+ year career focused on global food security and community development initiatives throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Nzatu is Gwen's latest initiative. As the climate crisis worsens, rural farmers are at even greater risk. Together, Gwen and Denise decided to do something about–and that's where Nzatu comes in. Gwen and Denise have a vision that regenerative agriculture can be a nature-based solution, which can and will create value in Africa, for Africa. Her leadership helped foster partnerships with Artcafe, which is roasting coffee beans grown by Nzatu-supported farmers, and Urban Afrique, which is helping bring Nzatu's products to the U.S. market. 

The food and nutrition landscape in our schools is really important. School meals affect the health, wellbeing, energy, vitality, and ability to learn for millions and millions of children. And for those whose family struggled to buy food, the importance of school meals cannot be overstated. This makes decisions about what foods are served in schools and where they come from. Highly consequential and raises issues about national and state nutrition policies, the influence of big food companies in shaping this picture and lots more.  It's a good time to unravel all this, which we can do today. Thanks to two experts with us. Dr. Marlene Schwartz is Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences and Director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy health at the University of Connecticut. Mara Fleishman is CEO of the Chef Ann Foundation, where she has been a leader advancing school food change, advocating for scratch cook meals that promote children's health and for more sustainable food systems.   Interview Summary In discussions about school food, it seems there first came a nutrition part, which in more recent years has been joined with a concern about where foods come from. Better connections, say between schools and low whole food systems. Let's talk about both, Marlene, let's start with nutrition. You have been a pioneer in working with schools, an interest that goes back a number of years. What was this food environment like in schools before change began to occur? It was my impression it was sort of a free for all. So, yes, I would agree that it was a free for all. The actual school lunch, what we call the reimbursable school lunch, which is the meal that the federal government gives states and then states give the local food service directors funds to support, that has actually always had nutrition standards. But historically the problem was under nutrition. The standards were very focused on making sure students had enough to eat. There were no maximums. It was really all about making sure that there was at least the minimum number of calories and foods available. But the other foods that were sold in schools, which we call competitive foods, so these are foods that were vending machines and school stores and fundraisers and things like that, were hardly regulated at all. And that is really where we saw a complete free for all. We saw ice cream and chips and soda and sports drinks and things like that. And I remember going to one school here in Connecticut and counting 13 vending machines in the high school. It really was remarkable the amount of unhealthy food that was being sold in schools. You know, I was thinking of that same thing when I was living in Connecticut, I went to my son's high school, a different school than what you're talking about. And I forget the number of soft drink machines they had around the school, but it was in the teens. And when I was a boy, I don't remember any soft drink machines in my schools. Maybe they hadn't been invented yet. I'm so old. But it was really pretty remarkable how much access children had to these things. And as I understand, the importance of those machines in the schools to the companies was more than just what food was being sold. There was a real branding opportunity. Is that right? I think that's exactly right. And I remember over 20 years ago when we were talking to some of the soft drink companies about the vending machines, they were quick to point out that they didn't make all that much money selling soft drinks in schools. Which I felt was them basically admitting that they weren't there because of the income from the sales in schools. But rather it was a hundred percent branding. And that was also really evident by the fact that you had to have a contract. So, the school districts had to have contracts with Coke or Pepsi or Cadbury Schwepps to only sell that company's products. It was blatantly obvious that this was all about marketing and marketing to an audience that they had to go to school, and they were going to be exposed to those logos every time they walked past one of those machines. Yeah. I remember in those days it felt like a victory when the companies agreed to change what was in the machines, but it was what was on the machines that was more important. So, you know, once again, that was a sign of the industry having upper hand. Let me ask you a different question. So there have been some important systemic changes discussed in context to school meals, ones that really could affect the nutrition landscape nationwide. And I'm thinking in particular universal free school meals. Can you tell us what this means and why it's important and what do you think ought to be done? Sure. So universal free school meals, or as the advocates call it Healthy School Meals for All, is a policy that is providing meals at no cost to all students. So typically the way it works in most school districts is there's three categories of payment. There are students who pay quote, full price. There are students who pay a reduced price and there are students who receive the meal at no cost, and it has to do with the income of their household. But what has been shown, interestingly most significantly during the pandemic, there was a policy from the USDA that all students would receive meals at no cost because we were clearly in a national crisis. And in some ways, it was this silver lining of that time because what it showed, those of us who study school meals, is how wonderful it is to be able to provide meals at no cost for everyone there. There are a lot of benefits. Some of it is just the administrative burden of having to figure out each and every household and which category they're in is lifted. You don't have to track which student is which as they're picking up their lunch. But it also really removed the stigma. One of the most surprising things that we've seen in our data is that even students who would have gotten their meal at no cost already were more likely to take a meal when it was provided at no cost for everyone. Because it just became part of what you did. Everybody was eating the school meal. And I think that it always leads to higher rates of participation among all of those sorts of categories of kids. And I think it also really allows the people running the food service to focus on preparing the food and making it the best it can be and not having that burden of the paperwork. And will there come a day, in your belief where this will happen? I hope so. What we've seen is that a number of states, I think it's eight right now, actually passed state policy to keep universal free school meals after the federal guidance that had been out there was lifted after the pandemic was over. And so my hope is that they'll really demonstrate the benefits and that other states will join in. There's certainly a lot of advocacy in a lot of other states to try to do this. And some of the benefits that have also been shown are outcomes like attendance and academic achievement and just really showing that just like we use our public funds to fund the teachers and the building and the water and the library books. It's sort of seen as a basic tool that the school needs to make available to students so that they can succeed academically. And I think that shift in attitude as opposed to seeing the lunchroom as this sort of separate thing from the rest of the school building. I think that shift in attitude will be really helpful overall. That makes good sense. Mara, let's turn to you. I'm really eager to hear about the work of the Chef Ann Foundation. I've followed its work for a number of years, but I'm eager to hear what the most recent iteration of this. So, I'm hoping you can tell us, and also give us some sense of why you got interested in these issues.   Well, the Chef Ann Foundation is actually celebrating its 15th birthday this year. And we help school food programs move from serving more processed heat and serve food to serving more freshly prepared scratch made meals in schools. And we do that through looking at what are the barriers to school food programs actually serving this freshly prepared meal. And there are a number of barriers: training, skill sets, equipment, access to healthier food, local farmers. The reimbursement rate, you know, how much money they get actually for serving these meals. What about the power of the companies that are providing the prepared foods to schools? Yes, that's a big piece. So those are very loud voices that have a [00:09:00] lot of power behind them. Through the passing of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, there was an increase in nutrition standards change and what Marlene was saying is that while there was some basic before that, after Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, we had saturated fat standard, sodium, whole grain. But what happened was these big food companies just kind of R&D'd their food to meet these standards. So, we are in a better place today, right? Because we are serving more whole grains. We are serving less saturated fat, less sodium. But one of the big things that the passage of that Child Nutrition Reauthorization did not do was really reduce ultra processed food in school. And that I think is the next horizon for school food, is how to actually help them reduce that ultra processed food. Because there is, you know, a lot of research out there, I'm sure Marlene is familiar with this, that is linking more ultra processed food to diet related disease. So, we go in and really help these school food programs with more culinary training, we do assessments to tell them what kind of equipment they need to serve fresh food. A lot of it is financial training. So, when you're serving a chicken nugget. One chicken nugget that meets the standards. You bring it in frozen. All you have to do is reheat it and put it on the line. If you're making a chicken strip from scratch, you know you have to buy the chicken, you have to buy the breadcrumbs. You have to buy all the ingredients. You have to start looking at your program through a different lens. Your financial modeling is different. Your labor resources are different. Meeting meals per labor hour is different. We provide training on all these fronts to help them run that program. Well, it sounds enormously beneficial. How much do, in the modern day, how much do schools care about these things and how much do parents care about them? Well, I think something that's really exciting, and I think we have the best vantage point for it, is that schools, parents, communities, even government cares way more about it today than they did when the Chef Ann Foundation was launched. We were definitely considered more of a niche nonprofit organization that only worked with kind of districts that were very progressive. But today, we have, waiting lists for our grants. we work in every state in the country. And we now have a cooperative agreement with the USDA, which would never have really been possible 15 years ago. They just weren't looking for partnerships with organizations that were pushing the envelope to this level. So, I think now's our time. It's so nice to hear that because I remember back when the Chef Ann Foundation got started. And that niche role that it played was clear, but there was so much hope that it would expand and it's really nice that it has. And the fact that you're in every state and the USDA is working with you, those are all really good signs. Well, let me ask you another question. This one about equity. How does this work fit into an equity point of view? I mean, that's pretty much the heart of the matter, I think in many ways. I started this work because I worked for Whole Foods Market for 13 years and I was very interested in food systems work. I have three children and my oldest, who's now 23, when she started in kindergarten, I went to lunch with her. They were serving, this was before the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, they were serving a very highly processed, high sugar, low protein meal. And I was looking around at the cafeteria really looking at who is eating this meal and thinking to myself, what are we doing here? We are not providing the same springboard for every kindergartner to thrive and meet their true potential, right? There were kids coming to school with their very healthy packed lunches and little baby organic carrots and whole wheat bread and no-nitrate turkey sandwiches. And then there was a whole host of kids eating this very ultra processed high sugar, low fiber, no protein meal. And the equity issue that you're speaking of was right there and very blatant. And if we're not going to provide children that same springboard to thrive from, which, you know, is what K 12 is about, right? That's what we're trying to do for everyone then we have some big issues. And to Marlene's point, we disregard food in that equity issue. So, we don't make higher income kids pay for their bus rides or anything else. And we don't kind of create that divide. We don't devalue anything as significantly as we do food. And it's what makes you thrive. I heard once a very interesting statement from a physician who worked on brain development. And he said that if children are not fed correctly during critical stages of their development amounts to a life sentence. That there are just certain things that will never recover no matter what happens. Having a better school food environment helps erase some of that for sure. Not all of it, but at least some of it. And then each of the children are more on a level playing field in terms of their academic achievement because some aren't so much more burdened by a terrible food environment. I can see why this would, would really be so important. Marlene, let's talk about what changes have been made. Both you and Mara have alluded to this, but specifically what's happened over the years in terms of school meals and have there been studies on the impacts on children? Sure. Well, I completely agree with Mara that the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act was a really bright spot, certainly in, in my career, in terms of seeing changes to school meals. So, as I mentioned before, we used to have only minimum calories and things like that. And now we finally have maximum calories based on the age of the child as well as sodium, saturated fat, increasing whole grains, low fat dairy, things like that. The other thing with the smart snacks, so the competitive foods that started to have nutrition regulations. That was a perfect example though of where the companies use their research and development dollars to essentially make a Dorito that fit the standards and a cookie that fit the standards. And I think in some ways that has highlighted the fact that our society is starting to look much more skeptically at highly processed foods. Because I remember standing in my kids' high school a number of years ago after smart snacks went into a fat, and I was in front of the vending machine, and a parent came up to me who knew this was what I studied and said: 'What are you talking about? That school food is healthier. Look at that!' And sort of pointing to all the packaged chips and cookies and other snacks. And I tried, I was like, well, but those are reduced fat Doritos and those cookies are lower in sugar and probably have some whole grains and nobody cared. Parents basically can recognize junk food when they see it. I one hundred percent agree that processed food is the next dimension that we need to really be able to assess, measure it so that we can start to regulate it. And to have that be a new way in which we try to manage the quality of school meals. Before we get to the issue of what sort of research has been done to show the impact on kids, let me follow up on the Doritos example. Well, it sounds like what we were talking about earlier with a Coke machine being so important because of the logo and branding and stuff like that. Sounds like exactly the same things that work here. That the company wants to have Doritos in the school, not because they sell so much or make so much money. But that they brand, it's a chance to brand that particular product or that particular company. And then of course, kids want those when they get out of school and they talk to their parents about getting them. So, it seems like the fact that they get reformulated to be a tad healthier isn't much of a victory is it. No, and I feel like it's almost like the worst of all situations. So, we've done some research on this at the Rudd Center and have a graphic where we show like the school version and then the grocery store version. And it's completely clear that it's the same branding. Nobody would mistake or not think it was the same product. But the grocery store version is not as healthy as the school version. So you're simultaneously - if someone were to know, for example, that about smart snacks and the nutrition standards they could say, well, they sell it in schools maybe it's better. They might be more likely to buy it in the grocery store, but of course what they're buying in the grocery store is worse. And then if you ask folks from the food industry, which I've done, well, why don't you just reformulate all of it? Why don't you only sell the school version in the grocery store? They say, 'oh, well, we are just worried that people won't like it because it's not, you know, as palatable.' It's like a lose-lose proposition. I would like, personally, to see all of those foods removed from schools. And to answer your question about the research though, it's really promising. I mean, there have been a couple of studies that I always go to, to sort of document the positive impact of the regulations that came from the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act. One was a study showing that basically the meals that students eat in school for most American children are the healthiest meals that they eat all day. So that it's sort of the best source of nutrition. And then another study that was looking at BMI trajectories over time and found that particularly among lower income children there was a measurable impact on BMI in terms of reducing the risk of childhood obesity after the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act regulations were put into place. So, I feel like when you have those sort of large national data sets and you can look at impact across the country, it's pretty clear that even though we of course, want to see more change and keep going forward, even the changes we've made so far have had an important impact. Do you think the changes are sufficient to produce impacts on learning and academic achievement and things like that? We have a hard time having enough data to really get at that very specific outcome because so many things have impact on academic achievement. But there definitely have been some studies that have been able to show some impact. But it's a tricky thing to measure. Mara, let's talk a little bit about how the school can be part of a vital and healthy food system overall. Tell us about your work in that space. We look at health in its kind of larger capacity, right? So direct related nutrition results with kids eating certain foods. But in addition, the school lunch program is funded to the tune of $17 billion a year, right? So, if we think about spending those dollars in the food system and how we're going to change the food system we have to really think about how we empower these school food professionals to make the best choices they can to affect change. With approximately about a $4.30 reimbursable rate price of a lunch, it's not easy right now. Labor prices are going up and you have to pay for labor out of that. You have to pay for food cost out of that. But you can prioritize your choices. Some of the things that we work with districts on are what are their top 20 highest volume purchases in the school food program. And how can we look at that top 20 and make some adjustments to purchase things that can impact the environment in a more significant way. Often it is animal protein that's in their top 20. That is really an opportunity for districts to make better choices. Local choices. Higher quality choices. You know, choices that impact not only the health of the environment, but the health of their local economy. But it is challenging because your district has to be able to manage raw animal protein. A lot of the processed animal protein products coming to the districts are pre-cooked, and so they don't have to always know how to manage in a kitchen raw animal protein. And that's usually this barrier that we help districts get over. But once we do, there is this huge opportunity for them to purchase higher quality animal protein. Also fruits and vegetables, right? I always get asked this from parent groups who are looking to change school food. Why can't we just purchase everything organic in schools, right? So that's hard on $4.30, right? You can't. But you can make choices and you can look at the highest volume products or the products that are more affected by pesticides, right? So, if you have a salad bar you know you're serving lettuce every day. You can move to serving an organic lettuce, and that is a huge opportunity to move forward. I think things like that are how we look at the food system in terms of school food. But it's really important not just for us food systems people to be looking at it like this, but for us to be training and teaching the school food professionals about their job and the impact they can make, both on student nutrition and environmental impact. And that's a lot of what we do in our workforce development initiatives. How does seasonal things figure in? Because schools are in session during the months when it's colder in most parts of the country, and the agricultural system isn't going full bore like it might in the summer months. How do you deal with that?  It's really a great point. I know whenever I bring up any kind of exemplary food program in California, people say to me, 'Ugh, California. You can do a lot in California, but what can you do elsewhere?' Well, here where I live in Boulder, the Boulder Valley School district serves close to 15,000 lunches a day. They have 55 schools. It's kind of that perfect midsize district example. And they purchase 40% of their products locally. This is a Northern Climate District. This is Colorado. It takes time. It takes a real steadfast plan. But you, you know, you can purchase potatoes through December. There's a lot of indoor growing right now locally too. So that's also this great opportunity to purchase things like if you have a salad bar purchase, things like lettuce locally, all year long. There's, there's a lot of local wheat production that is happening these days in northern climates and then it's getting milled and processed into different products that you can buy locally. It's very much possible. Can you get to a hundred percent local procurement? Not right now, not at the current reimbursable rate, but there's a lot of room for improvement even in northern climates. When the schools are buying such foods that come from local sources, are they buying directly from the farmers or is there some agent in the middle? It depends. Mostly for local farmers, small local farmers, they're buying direct. And that's a challenge for small and even some midsize districts because of their capacity, their procurement capacity, their administrative capacity. But it is possible. Obviously, it's in some ways easier for big districts like, you know, LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District). We work with LAUSD. It's an amazing district that buys a lot locally. But they have the volume, they have the capacity, they have the administrative support. That's why a lot of our work focuses on small and midsize districts to actually provide them with that kind of structure and support to do it. And to really prioritize the buying processes through their local purveyors. There are some local distributors that have more local products than others. You know, gold Star is a distributor on the West coast that has more local products. But in reality, the prime vendors for these districts are mostly Sysco or US Foods. And they don't carry a ton of local farm product for these districts. So, they're really going to have to create those partnerships. I'm thinking of the farmers and what impact it might have on them. And I could imagine for some farmers at least, it would provide a reliable income source and a reliable customer for their products, which would be helpful financially. And I imagine, although I don't know that there are probably cases where the schools are inviting the farmers to come in and meet the kids, and that's probably good for everybody. Does that kind of thing happen? Yeah, I mean that is huge and as I kind of talked about ultra processed food being the next horizon to look at reducing in school food, I also think how we work with school food programs to connect them and actually have them be stronger customers of local farmers is also this next horizon. One of the new projects that we're working on is called Values Align Purchasing Collectives. So, we're currently doing assessments to determine how we can group small and mid-size districts together to form buying cohorts, basically, to purchase from local farmers. So how can we get them to look at serving some of the same menu items, purchasing together, working together to relieve some of the administrative stress on the districts, but also on the farmer side. So how do we create hubs to do and look at creating a process that can better support? And I think that's the future. Oh boy. That sounds like a very exciting development. Marlene, just you have something you wanted add? Yeah, I'm just so exciting to hear all of that. I was going to mention that we have a new project in Connecticut looking at farm-to-school practices across the state, and really trying to work with districts on both the procurement part of it as well as incorporating more into the classroom. So having that connection with local farmers, having that being part of the sort of educational curriculum. And then really what I've always thought was the goal was to have the cafeteria more of a learning lab. Not having it as this, I guess I said before, separate part of the school, but rather incorporating nutrition education, incorporating this is where that apple came from and teaching students where the food is from and particularly if it's from a local producer. I think there's a lot of excitement around there. I think the USDA is funding a lot of states to do more work in this area, and so it's a pretty exciting time. You know, connecting up what the two of you have just said, Marlene, I remember in the time I was living in Connecticut. Connecticut has a lot of small to midsize towns that are feeding kids and the collaborative that Mara was talking about sounds like it might be a really interesting solution in that kind of a context. I completely agree. I know some of the New England states, and maybe this happens in other parts of the country too, but it does feel like each school food authority is tiny. I mean, we have towns with one high school and to try to have any kind of buying power when you're so small, I think, is a real challenge. So, I know there are some collaboratives in Connecticut, but absolutely supporting, bringing people together to try to negotiate the best prices and things like that, and make those relationships with the local farmers. It feels like a really great strategy to pursue. I'd like to ask you both, what is it going to take or what does it take to make these things happen? You're talking about some very good things when they do happen, but what does it take to make them happen? And Mara, let's start with you. What are the factors you think are really important? We approach our work from a systems perspective. What is the system and what is the biggest barriers in the system that we can kind of selectively tackle, and kind of dig into from a programmatic engineering perspective. For us, and Marlene, I love that you brought up the lunchroom as a classroom, because I think that is really important. I think that's the kind of the ultimate goal and we're so grateful for programs across the country that are working on that kind of thing. What we want to stay focused on at the Chef Ann Foundation is school food professionals. We want to actually educate them. We want to figure out how to provide more professional development, learning, education so that they can start looking at their jobs differently. And the country can start looking at what they're doing differently; and start really looking at the value that they're providing during a school day. So, what it takes, back to your question, is it really takes breaking down the problem to understand how to put some pieces together to test out programs that can look at breaking down that barrier. And for us right now, we're doing a lot with workforce because what we believe is that in 10 years from now, if we have a workforce in school food that has a different perspective of their job, has different skill sets, is a kind of a different workforce than is right now, than a lot of these things we want to tackle as food systems people will be a lot easier. That makes good sense. And Marlene, you've been involved for many years in local and state and national policies. In your mind, what sort of things lead to change? So, that's a good question. I would love to be able to say, oh, it's the research, clearly. That people do studies and they document, this is what we need to do. I think that's necessary, but not sufficient. I think the real answer is parents and people. I had a similar experience going to my daughter's when she was in first grade going and having lunch at her school and looking around and thinking, oh my goodness, what are we doing? I think that it's the fact that even though this is my profession, this is something I study, It's deeply personal. And I think there's a lot of passion behind the importance of making sure our children are healthy. And if I think about the policy makers along the way who have really been the ones that have made the biggest difference, it was off often because they cared about this deeply, personally. And so, I think continuing to tap into that and reminding people how important this is, is how you get the political will to pass the policies that make the real changes. Well, you know, you both made that really important point about how important parents can be. But really impressive that this started as a personal thing, and you were caring for the welfare of your children and that helped inspire your professional work and look where it's gone. It's really very impressive. I'd like to end with a following question. Are you hopeful for the future? Mara, let's start with you. I am very hopeful for the future. I think when you look at what's important to our society, school food is often the answer. I feel like when you look at achievement, school food is often the answer. When you look at diet related illness, school food is often the answer. When you look at building local economies, school food is often the answer. And I am really hopeful because I think there's a lot of incredible work being done right now, and we are moving past piloting and we're moving into research. And we're moving into institutionalizing the work. And I think you can see that through policies, through USDA cooperative agreements with organizations and work that they're doing and through the guidelines. And through the excitement and integration you're seeing in communities with superintendents, school food directors, parents, and advocates. And Marlene, are you hopeful? I am hopeful. I mean, if I think back to, you know, kind of the early days of working on this issue, I feel like we were met with a lot of skepticism. People felt like, oh, the industry's so powerful, you'll never be able to do anything. I feel like there have been a lot of changes. And I think another shift that I've sort of seen over the course of my career is early on, because of the rates of childhood obesity increasing, a lot of these initiatives that was the hook, that was sort of the anchor. And there were positive things about that because it was such a dramatic change that had occurred that you could point to. But sort of the downside is it wasn't just about that. It's about all children. It doesn't matter what your body weight is, it's about diet quality and having food security and getting adequate nutrition. I feel like we've broadened a lot in the field in terms of how we think about the reason why we're doing that. And that has made it much more inclusive, and we've been able to talk about, as Mara said, how it's affecting lots and lots of things outside of individual children. Bios Marlene Schwartz Marlene Schwartz, Ph.D. is Director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Health and Professor of Human Development and Family Sciences at UConn. Dr. Schwartz studies how nutrition and wellness policies implemented in schools, food banks, and local communities can improve food security, diet quality, and health outcomes. Dr. Schwartz earned her Ph.D. in Psychology from Yale University in 1996. Prior to joining the Rudd Center, she served as Co-Director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders from 1996 to 2006. She has received research grants from a variety of funders including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the National Institutes of Health to study federal food programs, school wellness policies, the effect of food marketing on children, and strategies to address food insecurity and diet quality. She is also the recipient of the 2014 Sarah Samuels Award from the Food and Nutrition Section of the American Public Health Association; the 2020 Faculty Service Award from the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences; and the 2021 Community-Engaged Health Research Excellence Award from the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention and Policy at UConn. Mara Fleishman Mara Fleishman's career in food systems advocacy started in her early 20's when she looked to the power of food after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Mara has over 20 years of experience in leading systems change initiatives in the for-profit and non-profit sectors including over a decade at Whole Foods Market where she served as Global Director of Partnerships. In Mara's current role, CEO of the Chef Ann Foundation, she has spent the last 10 years fighting for healthier food for our nation's kids. Mara's niche is system-based change and although she takes on many roles as a leader, her favorite is programmatic engineering; breaking down problems to their foundation and building programmatic solutions through dynamic and integrated approaches. This type of programmatic engineering can be seen through the work of the Chef Ann Foundation, an organization recognized as the national leader in driving fresh, healthy scratch cook food in schools. Mara also serves on regional and national boards, has spoken at conferences and academic institutions across the country, and has been recognized in publications as a champion and national advocate for change.  

Everyone knows that it's a good idea to be physically active, but behind that basic knowledge lies a fascinating field of research on the role that physical activity plays in health and in weight control, along with answers to questions such as how much exercise I should get, is there a best time of day to do it, is one type of exercise better than others, etc. Few people can rival Dr. John Jakicic in expertise in this arena. John is a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine in the Division of Physical Activity and Weight Management at the University of Kansas Medical Center. His work has led the field for many years. Interview Summary John, I'm not an expert myself on physical activity, but I've been a fan of yours and others in your field for many years. And it just seems to me that it's a vibrant, active, exciting field where almost every day some new finding comes along that confirms the benefits of physical activity or discusses different ways to do it. Can you give us an overview of why being physically active is such a good thing? I think that if we could take the benefits of physical activity from a health perspective and bottle them up into one pill, we would probably have the most powerful pill that was ever invented. And I think that the reason for that, Kelly, is physical activity pretty much touches every system of the body. Every anatomical physiological system of the body in some way is touched by physical activity. And as long as you're not kind of overdoing it, abusing it, the body is adapting to allow you to do that activity. There's a lot of things that we do where we try to counteract certain things with medications and surgeries. But the one way that we can make the physiology of the body adapt and become healthier, the one real way to do that is through physical activity. And I think it touches so many systems that way, that's why I think we keep hearing about all the pure benefits that we can get from this activity. Okay. It sounds like it would be easier to have a discussion on or try to find somewhere physical activity is not beneficial. And it's interesting that the body makes room for physical activity by adjusting to whatever the demands of it are. I'm assuming there's some evolutionary reason for this. That people evolved having to be physically active just to get by in day-to-day life. But is that true? Have we inherited something in that regard? I think we have. And we went from hunter gatherers where you had to take your body and go out and find the food you needed to eat, to we don't have to hunt and gather very much anymore, at least in the US and other developed countries. The most hunting and gathering we do is go to the fast-food restaurant or the grocery store. The body has adapted to that. And I think that's one of the reasons that the body is so resilient. Now you think about it, Kelly, somebody who's had a pretty major coronary event. What's the one thing that gets recommended for them? Become more physically active, start exercising. And the body starts to bring itself back. Not maybe to the way it was before that, but it helps to regenerate the body in ways that other kind of things just don't do it. I think that there's definitely this physiology underpinning that we really need to keep thinking about. Speaking of coronary events, and you probably know this history way better than I do, so correct me if I'm wrong. But I remember hearing about the important historical role that a cardiologist named Paul Dudley White played with Dwight Eisenhower when he was president. And as I understand the story, Eisenhower had a heart attack, and the prevailing wisdom of the day was let you rest for a really long time after a heart attack. Like the heart was worn out and needed to recover and mend itself. But he reversed that, put that on its ear, didn't he? Yes, he did, and I think that kind of laid the groundwork for where we are with cardiac rehabilitation and cardiac treatment along the way. And that was probably the groundbreaking thing that happened where don't be afraid to start moving. And that has now evolved to diabetes, cancer treatment. You start to name all the conditions where it seems like activity is good. Even if you've had these conditions, as you go through your treatment plan. We've focused mainly so far on the physical benefits of physical activity. What about the psychological ones? I think that there's probably so many of those too, Kelly, and this is maybe where you know more than I about some of these types of things. But there's such great data that came out, maybe 20 years ago, where we were seeing studies coming out looking at depressive symptomatology, for example. And some of the stunning findings they were that people, even with known depression, could benefit and actually reduce their depressive symptomatology with at that time aerobic forms of physical activity. I think it's evolved to all types of different forms of physical activity. So, we have these depressive symptoms that can be dealt with, or maybe even prevented. We've seen it with mood and enjoyment, you start to just start going down the list. And I think the most evolving field that we're seeing right now is just in terms of the entire brain. You know, brain functioning, cognition. And we're realizing that the brain itself is an organ and physical activity in some way is actually impacting that as well. So, it's not just the physical, it's the emotional, it's the psychological. It's this overall wellbeing that we like to talk about. You mentioned the work on the brain. Is this effect that you're talking about showing up in studies of risk for dementia and Alzheimer's and things like that? It absolutely is. And I think we're still trying to completely understand the mechanisms by which this is occurring. Is it because activity is having some effect on inflammatory markers? Is it having something to do with blood circulation in the brain? Is it affecting other biomarkers that we hadn't thought about before? But yes, absolutely. It's affecting cognition. It's affecting dementia. It's affecting Alzheimer's. And we're finding that this is a really important thing for older adults. And I think the field is exploding at this point in this space. Let's get back to the physical benefits of exercise and talk about how they occur. One might think that physical activity exerts its influenced by affecting something like a risk factor, which in turn is what's affecting health. So, you're being physically active, it helps regulate your blood pressure and it's the regulation of blood pressure that's producing the overall health benefit. So, it's exercise does X, fill in the blank, and then that creates Y benefit. But is there a direct line between the exercise and the physical health? It doesn't go through risk factors like that. How does that work? Yeah, I think that it somewhat depends upon what the outcome is that you're looking for and what you're trying to move. And it gets a little, I'll say wonky. Because at some point there are intermediaries along the way that are probably impacted. Just for example, we've done studies in the field of obesity with physical activity that found that not only is the activity affecting the risk factors, the blood pressures, the insulin, the glucose. But it's affecting like the cardiac tissue itself. It's affecting the factors that are affecting that cardiac tissue. It's affecting the blood vessels themselves. Now, they're clearly intermediaries, but they're probably not the traditional risk factors we're thinking about. They're probably more signaling mechanisms, mitochondrial factors, these types of things that are more physiologically based as opposed to what we would consider our traditional risk factor base. I think the thing that we've known now for a long time, you go back to some of the Harvard fatigue laboratory studies where they were actually trying to get performance out of individuals. How do you get people to perform at a higher performance? Basically, the equivalent of being an athlete nowadays. And what you find is that, yeah, that's how you get people to perform at a high level. But that's also how you get people healthy in everyday life. We really learned how if you stress the body a little bit, the body adapts and makes it stronger as you go forward. It's good to know that, and it doesn't hurt to get wonky sometimes. That's a very interesting description that you gave. You mentioned weight control. Let's turn our attention to that for a minute. You were the lead author on a consensus statement from the American College of Sports Medicine. A very highly regarded organization, on the role of activity in body weight. Let's talk causation. Most people appreciate the key role of diet in the genesis of weight problems, but less so the role of physical activity. How important is it? I think it's critically important, but I also want to be very cautious about saying that it's more important than diet or energy intake. I don't like to take that stand because I think there's inputs coming from all angles here that are regulating body weight. And I think that we can get ourselves in a little bit of trouble if we say, what's only this, or it's only that, that it's one thing. It's a little bit of everything. And I think that what we're finding a bit in our research and others as well is that there's a variable response depending on the person. We know that if a person becomes active over six months without intentionally trying to change anything on their diet, they're probably going to lose a couple of kilograms. Two, three kilograms, maybe a little more depending on how much they do. But there are going to be some people that lose a lot more. Some people are going to lose a lot less. The question is, why is that? And in some of our work, Kelly, we have found, and others have found this as well, is that for some people, when they become physically active, the body has this adaptation where it says, hey, wait a minute, this is great. It can kind of turn off or help to better regulate the hunger satiety signals. But for other individuals, when they start becoming more active, all of a sudden they start to become more hungry. And, in that individual, if we ignore the intake side, if we ignore the dietary component, that person could start being active, but their body weight may never move because there's this counter regulatory mechanism for that person. So, it's critically important to help with regulation of body weight, but how much and how often may vary. And I think the other key factor, Kelly, is I think you've heard me say this before, but I'll say it again. And that is activity can affect some of the health parameters and the outcomes we're interested in, that weight may not affect, or diet may not affect. If we're really thinking about a holistic outcome for patients, we've got to have activity as part of that discussion. Plus, when you get diet and activity working together, I imagine you get this virtuous psychological and biological cycle. That if you're being physically active, you feel better about yourself. And you don't want to undermine your diet, so you stick to your diet better. That helps you be more physically active. Just a lot of things working in sync. There's a lot of things when they start to come together. Your body can regulate itself pretty well. It's when we start to force other things into the system that kind of mess it up a bit. And I think the other challenge here is that I think over the years, many individuals don't know what hunger feels like. And so, we've lost that sense. But being active helps to help you to counter regulate that for many individuals. So, it's not just about the energy expenditure. It's not just about the effect it has on weight. It's about some of the other factors that are being affected that help to let the body get a little bit more on cruise control and let it do what it's supposed to do. We've talked a little bit there about how these two systems, the diet and physical activity, might interact psychologically. And let's get a little more wonky and talk about the biology of it. I remember some studies, and I have a vague recollection of these because they were done a long time ago. And I thought they were done by Jean Maier's lab and at Harvard in the sixties and seventies, where they took lab animals, which of course is a way to isolate the biology because you don't have human psychology to worry about. And they had animals that were on a particular diet and then they either allowed them or forced them to be physically active. I forget which. And my recollection is that the animals started choosing a different mix of nutrients because they were physically active. And that mix of nutrients became a healthier profile for the animals. I'm not sure I'm remembering that right. But how are these two things linked biologically, do you think? I think that they really link a lot biologically. And I think that we completely 100 percent don't fully understand it all. But I think, sometimes when we think about body weight regulation, the first thing we think about is cutting the calories, and then throwing the physical activity on top of that. And I think that sometimes maybe what we need to do is feed the body and put the activity on top of it so that we have enough energy coming through the system when we talk about it. And Maier's lab looked at this in terms of energy flux. So, if you feed the body enough and then have enough energy burn on the other side of it, that helps to regulate body weight a lot better, it appears, than someone who's trying to always restrict their calories and add all this activity. At some point, the body's going like, feed me. I need to eat at some point. These two things are not independent. And I think, Kelly, you know how it's been treated for decades. You have diet and you have activity and never show these things cross paths. And the reality is that we need that cross pollinization. We need these things talking to one another because that's how the body's properly regulating these things. Yeah, that strikes me as a particularly important and exciting area of research with the way these two systems come together. And you just confirmed that. I know over the years people have written a lot about how physical activity might be especially important in people maintaining weight loss. Can you tell us more about that? Yeah. And we contribute a lot to that. We talked a lot about this, and we found, at least in secondary analyses or observational data, how important the activity is. It seems to be a very important predictor. And the question becomes, well, why? Why is that? Why is it so important? I think part of it is, you know, that as people lose weight. And you've been involved in many of these studies too. You lose weight and you're cutting these calories back. You can only maintain this kinda low calorie intake for so long. And at some point in time, either you intentionally or unintentionally start to eat more calories. And these higher levels of activity, I think, help to give us some ability to kind of counter that intake. The activity becomes important that way. But also, and it takes us some time to get to that point in time. One, it's a calorie burn. But also, if you start thinking about substrate utilization and other things, what energies are we burning, what we do know is that individuals who become more at least cardiovascularly fit, also have an improvement in their ability to utilize fat as an energy source. So, they're going to become a bit more efficient at using fat and not always having to kind of struggle, you know, to do that. And, the other factors that really help to regulate weight, and there's a lot of them, don't get me wrong, we can't talk about them all today. But you start to think about how insulin and glucose regulation might be impacting hunger satiety, but also body weight regulation, and activity we know increases insulin sensitivity. You don't need to be dumping as much insulin into the system. I think there's all these factors that come into play and it hits that crescendo, I'll guess. When after you've done it for a period of time and these adaptations have happened after about 3 to 6 months, you'll start to get many of these adaptations occurring. People are going to get excited when we're talking about substrate utilization. But let's go into this a little bit more. And actually, it was the next thing I was going to ask you anyway. Whether people, when they're burning calories, I mean, they're losing weight, are they burning fat or protein or, what's the body doing is a really interesting issue. And I know that's especially important in the context of the new weight loss drugs. So, let's talk about that. We've done several podcasts on the new generation of the GLP drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy and Mounjaro and Zepbound. So why is physical activity especially important when people are using those drugs in particular? Yeah, so much of what we know about activity within the context of those medications is a bit hypothetical. A bit hypothesis driven. A bit this seems like the best practice because there have really been virtually zero studies, we keep looking at this, that have been published that have been appropriately well designed, appropriately powered kinds of studies. The one study that has been out there had people lose a lot of weight on basically a low energy diet and then added activity and the medication after they've already lost a lot of weight. It's really not the way these medications are really being used. And so, in our consensus paper from the American College of Sports Medicine, we talked about what we don't know as much as what we do know. And I think that activity becomes critically important in the context of these medications because beyond what it does for body weight, true body weight, the medications are taking care of helping people to lose weight. But as we hear about these weight loss medications, there is some concern about the loss of potentially lean mass. We don't know if it's muscle or not, but there's a potential that some of that is muscle. I just heard some data over the weekend about some of the newer medications that are being looked at in phase two and three trials, where there's some concern about bone loss at this point as well. So, you start to think about that and you say what could you do to maybe not completely counter it, but to blunt the loss. And we know that activity affects all those things in very positive ways. The challenge you run into though, Kelly, is activity affects those things in very positive ways when there's adequate nutrients coming in. But if all the nutrients are coming in are being used for energy, there's very little to have as a building block. So, we have to be careful about saying that exercise is going to prevent loss of muscle, prevent loss of lean, prevent loss of bone. It may help to counter regulate that, but I think that what's more important is whatever muscle and lean tissue and bone tissue you have left let's make it as healthy as it possibly could be. Because as you and I both know, individuals without obesity actually overall have less muscle mass than individuals with obesity. The difference is in their quality of their muscle. And so, let's make the muscle that is retained high quality as opposed to focusing so much on the volume It sounds like the combination of really being vigilant to protein intake and physical activity is a pretty good way to help counteract some of the negative effects of the drugs on the potential loss of muscle mass. I think that there's a chance that it could help. But if worst case scenario, we don't know if it's completely countering that, but it might blunt it. But the bottom line though is that even if it's not blunting it, even if it's not stopping it you're going to make the muscle stronger. You're going to make the muscle more functional, make the muscle more efficient with the muscle you have left with activity. And an example of that Kelly is, probably 30 years or so ago now, we published some papers on the very low-calorie diets, the five to 800 calorie a day diets. And we added resistance training, cardio training, or the combination to those diets. And, with a 20, 30-kilogram weight loss over three to six months, we saw losses of lean mass even with the exercise training. But the people who weight trained got stronger. The people who did cardio training got more fit. The people that did both had both effects. You still get the effect of the activity without focusing so much on the mass, but focusing on what I'll call the quality. I had this image in my mind while you were talking, if muscles had a face, they'd be smiling at you if you're physically active, because you're helping make them stronger and more vital. And, it just so many good things happen, don't they? That's it. I think that's exactly what I think the message should be because we're not trying to train athletes here. We're trying to train everyday humans and their everyday walk of life. So, how can we focus on making them the healthiest and most fit and most functional that they can be? And I think that's a lot different than trying to say, we're going to send you to the gym five days a week and really hammer you to try to preserve this. Most people can't do it and won't do it. What can we get from this? And I think this quality issue is really where we should be focusing our effort. Let's get a little bit into the nuts and bolts, toward the end of this conversation about what type of exercise people might think about doing. We're bombarded by information: low versus medium versus high intensity. For how long should you do it a day? How many steps should you get? Strength training versus aerobic exercise? You just mentioned that. And of course, how to get it and stay motivated. So how do you respond to the question? What do I do? Yeah, a very difficult question. And I think part of that comes from just the media is not understanding so they look for a good story. But part of it also comes from within the exercise community. Similar to what you see in the nutrition community, what's the optimal diet for someone, right? And so, you have people who are advocating for one type of activity versus another activity. And as I go out and I talk about this, I think this is critically important, Kelly. There's not one perfect exercise that will give you all the perfect health benefits. If you want to strengthen the muscle, you need to overload it with resistance. If you want to make the cardiovascular system strong, you need to stress it with some type of cardio activities. If you want the muscles to become pliable and the tendons and ligaments to become pliable to prevent injury and so on, you've got to do stretching, Yoga, tai chi type of activities, right? And you can go on and on and on. And in fact, if you want the brain to function, if you want the cognitive effects, you need to do things that make the body think a little bit and tie the brain to the movement that you're doing. Right? So, it has to be like a mindful type of movement, maybe a yoga or something like that. There's not one perfect activity, but I think that a little bit of all those activities is probably better than any one of them by themselves. That's the way I think about it. Now that's hard for people. Also, I think that for people that are starting out who probably have had bad experiences with exercise, bringing back to physical education class possibly, right? Get up and move more. If you can get up and move more, that's the gateway. Right? Get up and just start moving around more. If you can't get up and move more, there are things you can do. And if you're wheelchair bound or have mobility limitations, there are things that can be done in a seated position and so on. It's about getting started. The, the hardest part is taking that first step. Right? The hardest part is putting on those walking shoes and getting out the door. Once you're out there, people usually enjoy it. And I'll just give you an example. Kelly of when we did our bouts and you're familiar with our study where we did the 10-minute bout study where we asked people just to do 10 minutes. We found very quickly that individuals who started doing small 10-minute bouts and we're doing well, were turning those bouts into 12-minute bouts, 14-minute bouts, 15-minute bouts. So, it's about getting that first step. Don't think about this being this whole complex thing. Let's get started and build on it to a lifestyle of activity. And if people are in search of a trustworthy place to look for information on physical activity, where would you suggest they go? First, if they're looking for a website type of thing, I would point them to the American College of Sports Medicine. There's a program out there called exercises. Medicine has great resources, but also if they're looking for good advice, and it's, a lot of people can give good advice, but the American College of Sports Medicine has the premier certification in this space. Individuals who are getting American College Sports Medicine Certification, whether it be a personal trainer or clinical exercise physiologist, are going to be, in my view, the people who have the kind of the right perspective to try to help individuals with variety of different disease states. That's very helpful to know. Let me peer ahead into the future a little bit and ask you, where do you see your field going? What will the future bring, you think? There's a big study going on called the molecular transducers of physical activity. It's they. I call it the motor pack study. We were involved in that for a while, and that's to try to create a molecular map of how activity actually affects the body. Kind of like where we started today. We're learning a lot about this. And I think that what we're going to find in, and not just in that study, but across the board is this idea that again, there's not one perfect activity. But that the body responds to activity, depending on what it is that you're asking it to do. And I think that the holy grail, Kelly, is no longer what activity is should I do? I think the holy grail goes back to maybe where your roots were and my roots were, and that is how can we help individuals to initiate, engage, and sustain? I think it's about the intervention and translation of these findings. And that's the holy grail for our field because we know activity is good for us. It's about how do we get individuals to understand, engage, sustain, and overcome the barriers that they face. I think that's where the field has to go. Bio John M. Jakicic, PhD is a Professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center in the Department of Internal Medicine and the Division of Physical Activity and Weight Management. He has an interdisciplinary research program that examines lifestyle approaches to the prevention and treatment of chronic health conditions, with a particular focus on the role of increased physical activity and reduced sedentary behavior on these outcomes.  Central to this research has been a focus on interventions for weight loss and weight loss maintenance, and this has more recent application to medical treatments for obesity that include metabolic and bariatric surgery and contemporary anti-obesity medications. He has served on numerous national committees focused on obesity, physical activity, and other chronic health conditions, which included his appointment by the US Department of Health and Human Services to the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines Scientific Advisory Committee. He authored the 2024 American College of Sport Medicine's Consensus paper and the 2001 position paper focused on physical activity and obesity and co-authored the 2009 position paper. He has also contributed to other consensus papers and clinical guidelines for the prevention and treatment of obesity. Dr. Jakicic has over 300 peer-reviewed publications and book chapters. Based on statistics provided by Google Scholar (effective August 11, 2024): 1) his research has been cited 50,192 times, 2) his H-Index is 95, and 3) his i10 Index is 258. Dr. Jakicic earned his doctorate in exercise physiology in 1995 from the University of Pittsburgh, and he is certified as a Clinical Exercise Physiologist by the American College of Sports Medicine.

Today we're exploring civil society's efforts to shape the food system and land use in the United Kingdom. Our guest today is Sue Pritchard, Chief Executive of the Food, Farming, and Countryside Commission (FFCC). The deeply grassroots work of the commission brings people together to find practical solutions to climate, nature, and health challenges. The goal is to shape fairer and more sustainable food systems and a just transition for rural communities and the countryside. Interview Summary Well, Sue, I am really interested to start off learning a little bit more about you. Can you tell us why are you interested in food and farming and the countryside?    So, I'm talking to you from Wales, from my farm in Wales. I live and work on a small, organic, conservation orientated farm that produces native breed cattle and sheep. It's so authentic. I have a duck in my office with me at the moment. So, if any of your listeners hear any odd sounds, I promise you that's her, not me.  I come from a family in Wales, which either went down the mines or farmed and had small holdings. My father went down the mines, but we always, as a family longed to get back to our deeply felt roots. And it was about 27 years ago that my parents and I, my family, were able to buy our farm here in Wales, which is, I suppose, the culmination of a dream. And although we were not naive about farming, when you're deeply embedded in the everyday life of the farmer and operating in the farming system (the food and farming system) you learn some different things pretty quickly. And so, for a fair few years, I was working out how to make the farm work economically. But also, how the farm could make a really good contribution to tackling the climate crisis and the nature crisis. How we could sequester more carbon on the farm. How we could build more natural infrastructure on the farm to help nature thrive here again. You will recall, the UK had its own political, should we call it a little, a minor apocalypse back in 2016, when the UK voted to exit the European Union. And, the implications of that vote were pretty, pretty, extraordinary for farming and for food systems and the environment. As a result, civil society, business organizations got together and were able to get some philanthropic funding to set up a commission (Food, Farming, and Countryside Commission) to shape a different future for food and farming and the countryside outside of the European Union. And when that job was advertised, it was my dream job, bringing together, as it did, the future of farming, the future of food systems, and being able to impact and influence policy at a really, really critical time. I want to make sure I understand a little bit more about what's happening. Because of Brexit, that means the UK is no longer part of the common agricultural policy and is now needing to reconstruct its agricultural policy structure. It sounds like the commission was brought in to do some of this work. I would like to understand what in particular challenges are facing the food and agriculture scene in the UK post Brexit.  I think that the first thing that we were able to do in the work of the commission was to start talking about food as a system. That was relatively unusual in the UK. One of our leading thinkers, Professor Tim Lang, used to say that the UK's food policy was basically leave it to Tesco, which is one of our big supermarkets. It was essentially left to private markets to determine the kind of food that we had on our plates. It was clear that that strategy was not working anymore. And given the really quite startling system changing implications of that particular vote, we were able to take a different perspective on food systems and start thinking about food as a system. We talked about, as it says on the tin, food and farming and the countryside, but we also talked about food and farming's relationship with climate, with nature, with health and wellbeing, and with equity and justice. In bringing that more, if you like, systemic view into people's consciousnesses, we were able to demonstrate really how central food policy is to UK's economy, health and wellbeing of UK citizens. Perhaps in a way that had not been done with quite the same heft as before. Lots of people have been trying but hadn't quite landed center stage in policy terms. And we were able to show through our work and then our reports, the relationship between food and farming and diet-related ill health. Farming systems and the climate crisis. Farming systems and biodiversity loss and the nature crisis. And also, starting to reveal the inequities, the inequalities embedded in the food system when we start looking not just within our own borders in the UK, but beyond our borders to how the UK trades with the rest of the world. Because countryside is one of the major themes, it's in the title of Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, and I've spent a little time in England and the countryside. And I'm from a rural area and the United States, and I'm interested to understand how you all are thinking about the needs or the challenges, or even the opportunities that the countryside faces in the UK. One of the things that I realized when I started this job back in 2017 was that for many people in London, the countryside is just the gap on the map between the cities. They had very little understanding of the contribution of the rural economy, the importance of the rural economy, particularly the countryside's importance, criticality, even for tackling the climate crisis, tackling the nature crisis. It's there where a lot of the problems occur, but also where a lot of the solutions can be found too. And so, talking about the countryside, not as a kind of poor relation to the rest of the economy, but actually central to a version of the future that was able to be more resilient, more adaptive to whatever kind of scenarios might unfold. That felt like a pretty important thing for us to be doing. And when we were conducting our work in those early days, we did all the usual things that a commission might do. We did a literature review, we held workshops, we held all sorts of kind of formal research processes. But we also set out around the country, around the UK on a bicycle. My researchers set out around the UK on a bicycle. Because we wanted to do something pretty iconic to show the richness, the diversity, the variety, the political salience and the economic salience of the countryside to policy discussions in Westminster. I think one of our successes has been to bring those voices into policy decisions. And to give them much more gravity, I think, in policy considerations that often feel very distant in London. How have they shaped the way you all have done the work at the FFCC? Are they altering or informing the work in different ways? Yes. Absolutely. We work with citizens in a number of different ways. So that first moment, the kind of bicycle tour around the UK was if you like, a symbolic moment of connecting with people in their communities. Going out to where people are, letting them tell us in their terms, what mattered to them, what they cared about, what they were concerned about. But in a really kind of barefoot ethnographic way, I think, being able to hear directly from folk. But we also built long term relationships in three, if you like, sentinel parts of the country: in Devon, in Cambridgeshire, and in Cumbria. Different parts of the UK reflecting different kinds of priorities and different pressures in the countryside. Devon is a grassland community, it's very touristy. Cambridgeshire is one of the bread baskets of the country, but with huge pressures on housing and infrastructure. And Cumbria is the uplands, the high mountainous uplands that people understand as a holiday hotspot. But working in those places in depth over for five years now, we have been able to both test out policy ideas in, in real places, in real time. Our land use framework project is a case in point. In thinking about how we make better decisions about land, we worked with people for whom those decisions are incredibly material. It's about what happens in their communities, what happens around them. We were able to develop policy contributions based on testing different options, different possibilities with people in places. And of course, we were able then to bring forward their ideas, their thoughts, and their really practical activities to the view of government, to the view of policy makers and to businesses. It was a kind of reciprocal relationship, testing out ideas in communities, but also bringing community ideas into government, into policy makers. You know, demonstrating how people are already doing things, already doing really interesting and radical and progressive things, whether or not government is supporting them or not. More recently, we've embarked on a very, very substantial project. It's called the Food Conversation and the Food Conversation is a project that was designed to really test out the answer to the question, so what do people really want from food? I wonder if you have the same experience in the United States, Norbert, but certainly in the UK, we hear over and over and over again, particularly from lobbyists, but often from government, that people don't really care about food. People just want cheap food. They just want convenient food. Nobody wants to be told what to eat. Nobody wants a nanny state. And those kind of toxic narratives, those devices were being used over and over again to limit government's appetite for policy intervention. And after this happened, again about two years ago, after the government commissioned its own national food strategy and then declined to respond in any meaningful way to it, I rather spat the dummy in in leadership terms and decided we were really going to have to test out this narrative, this way of framing food policy change. So, we set out 18 months ago, on the biggest civil society dialogue that the UK has ever seen. We conducted 12 citizens assemblies around the UK asking people directly, so what do we really want from food? In academic terms, it's kind of like a meta review, because what we've done is show citizens the kind of research that's been done over the last 10 or more years. The research has been done by experts in the UK and internationally that show the impacts of the food system on climate, on nature, on our health and wellbeing. And we've asked them what they think about the recommendations that those research reports have made. All of those recommendations that have been kind of discounted by governments because 'no one wants the nanny state.' You have to imagine my air quotes there. And of course, in conducting that conversation, we found really quite quickly that toxic narrative is not true at all. When you reveal to citizens the complexities and the interdependence of the food system with their health, with the state of their high streets, you know, what, what's being sold to them and how. When you explain how that impacts on farmers and growers, primary producers. When you explain how it impacts on communities all around the world, often very vulnerable communities around the world. When you explain how it impacts on the climate and nature, people are pretty, pretty shocked and pretty horrified. And most interestingly, when you show people how the food system has become more commodified, more consolidated in fewer and fewer hands. More financialized by a small number of global agribusinesses who are continuing to make eye watering profits, while, for example, in the UK, our own health service is buckling under the strain of diet related ill health, obesity, heart disease and so on they are furious. They say, why don't we know and why doesn't anybody else do anything about this? And so that piece of work, well, this phase of it is coming to a conclusion. We've got, oh, 500,000 words worth of material generated by citizens contributions. And that culminates in a summit, the Citizens Food Summit in London on the 19th of November when we'll be sharing citizens perspectives. And indeed, business perspectives too, civil society organization perspectives. Because lots of businesses are lining up alongside citizens saying this needs to be different. We need to change this. And we're sharing those insights with policymakers. And the intention is to strengthen their arm in taking a proper systems view of food policy in the UK and starting to act as if food policy really matters. Because it does.  This is impressive work. This idea of listening to citizens and sharing with their government officials their views of the food system. In some ways. It's so basic you would thought this would be going on already. And yet we all know that this doesn't happen frequently. It's an exciting enterprise that you all have engaged. I would be interested to see what happens after the November gathering. Very, very happy to share that with you. The way that we've designed it... you'll be familiar with citizens assemblies. They're usually national interventions. They bring people together from across the country. They happen over a period of weeks. They report and then, and then they finish. We've designed ours somewhat differently. We designed ours in places, so 12 around the country. Brought together citizens in those places, as well as the anchor institutions. Organizations that can actually get on and do stuff without waiting for government or big business to act. And so, we've been both listening to citizens, but we've also been doing a little bit of movement facilitation, if you like. We're helping to build food movements, along with our colleagues who are also doing this work in places around the country. And so already we're seeing citizens taking the opportunity to carry on talking to each other, to set up initiatives in their own community. To connect with the initiatives that already exist that they might not have known about. To talk to local policymakers and local leaders about how they can do things differently. So, it was really important to us to kind of learn from the successes and perhaps some of the failures of previous assemblies and dialogues to say, what needs to happen so that change can happen as a result of this, so that citizens efforts, citizens contributions, very generous contributions of their time and their insight actually make something happen. You know what, I realize that this sounds very similar to the work of food policy councils here in the US. It's a similar sort of structure. But I'm interested, it's something you said earlier on, and I want to draw attention to this issue. I have my own experience that these efforts, lots of different folks come to the table with varying concerns and sometimes conflicting concerns. If you think about the economic gradient where there are people from higher income households and maybe lower income who are experiencing the food system differently. While they share a lot of concerns, there are some big differences. And I'm interested to hear how you all are dealing with that diversity of thought and experience. Yeah. So, the way we selected our participants was through the sortition process. We sent out 120,000 invitations around the UK. We got a very high level of response rate to that. But from that number, we selected populations that really reflected their communities. And in some communities, we waited for the seldom heard voices. We wanted to make sure that we really pulled in those people who are less likely to be asked or invited or included in these sorts of initiatives. We built that, if you like, reflection of community in each of the assemblies around the country. We invested in quite a bit of context setting at the start. Helping people get to know each other, connect with each other, understand each other a bit, their own experiences and perspectives on the food system. And then getting people on the same page in terms of, you know, the context of food. What we found, and in fact the professional organizations, specialist organizations that have worked with us on this project have been really startled by it. The consistency of perspective across political backgrounds, educational backgrounds, socioeconomic backgrounds, protected characteristics, race, class, gender. The consistency of response to food systems issues is the highest that our professional advisors have ever seen. And, and that's, that's been really, really fascinating to me. I think it is because, and this goes back to the reason why we wanted to do this work in the first place, very often we end up talking about big, abstracted issues. Even climate and nature can feel big and abstracted. And the political economy of food, very abstracted. When you come back to it, we all have a stake in food. We all have skin in that game. If you frame the conversation in the right way, everybody can participate. And like many things in life, actually, we all want the same things. We want a safe, secure, healthy life. We want to be able to live in a safe, secure, healthy environment for ourselves and for our families, our children, our loved ones. And of course, food is the very thing that connects us. You know, food is at the heart of our celebrations. You know, how we choose to be together when we gather in communities. And we do that so often over food. It's one of the very, very, very few things that connects us and we have a shared experience. So, whether or not you're poor or rich, you will celebrate with food. Whether you're poor or rich, you will want to nourish your children in the best way you possibly can. There are so many things that connect us. Interestingly, and this was a kind of side benefit of this work, in a country which, I think, like yours, can feel incredibly polarized and at risk to populist politics that seeks to divide us over and over again. The conversations around food and food policy and how we might want food to be different in our communities, really united people. And it really showed people as being more thoughtful, more respectful, more insightful, more considered than very often we are led to believe right across the political divides. There's something very kind of visceral and you know heart centered about food that does help people connect. Getting quickly then into the technical stuff. How do we make decisions about policies? We said to people here are all the policy ideas. There are hundreds. There are hundreds of policy ideas. We can group them together in categories, health, nature, farming, and so on. And we invited people to categorize them using a really simple taxonomy. Should government's business just do it? This is obvious, just do this thing. Should they test it? It needs a bit more research. We need to test this out a little bit more, in more detail. Or should we debate it? Is this actually quite complicated, indeed contested? And we need a better process to making some choices around this. People were able to look through those policy choices with some real thought and insight. And there's remarkable consistency between people about things that we just ought to get on and do. Things like formulating children's foods in schools. That there ought to be some really clear guidelines about the quality of food that's available for children in preschool and school. That doesn't exist at the moment. People don't understand why on earth that doesn't happen. For some big issues, like should we introduce universal basic income for farmers to make sure they have a level of income that doesn't make them vulnerable to, you know, price gouging by companies? People said, oh, that's quite complicated. We'd have to work out what that would look like, what impacts that would have on the rest of society. But it's an idea worth exploring further. So they explored everything from really, really basic stuff through to big economic issues that could be really quite transformative in a country like ours. Bio Sue Pritchard is the Chief Executive of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission in the United Kingdom. Sue leads the organization in its mission to bring people together to act on the climate, nature and health crises, through fairer and more sustainable food systems, and a just transition for rural communities and the countryside. Sue's background is in combined research and practice in leadership and organization development for systems change, working with leaders across public, private and not for profit organizations, especially on complex partnership projects. She is a Trustee of UK's CoFarm Foundation and is an independent Governor at Royal Agricultural University. She lives on an organic farm in Wales where she and her family raise livestock and farm for conservation.

Today, we're going to explore Daily Table, an innovative non profit grocery chain dedicated to providing fresh, convenient, and nutritious food affordable to everyone, even those on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. In today's economic climate, where rising food prices are impacting households across the country, the concept of a non profit grocery store seems to fill a real need. Our guest today is Daily Table CEO, Sasha Purpura, a software engineer who spent 15 years in the tech industry and product management and development roles. Interview Summary Sasha, it is such a pleasure to connect with you. I'm intrigued to hear more about where Daily Table is today because I too was a Daily Table shopper. So, let's begin just hearing about what Daily Table is and what's the driving mission of the organization. Absolutely, Norbert. Simply what's driving the organization is the belief that everybody deserves access to healthy food. Daily Table is such a simple solution, but so incredibly innovative. It's a grocery store where everybody can afford healthy food. To me, seems like that should be there already. Unfortunately, it isn't. Historically, the way we have addressed hunger in this country is food pantries. And food pantries play a critical role and they're very necessary. However, there's spaces designed for people with low income. To say you're low income, you can't afford food, come here. And we know that 40 percent of the people that qualify for food pantries won't go to a food pantry because of that stigma. And because they want agency. They want the dignity of providing for their families and choosing what they want to eat. So Daily Table creates that shopping experience. People who don't use food pantries, they shop for themselves. And the sad reality is they have not been able to choose healthy food every day. They can't. It is not affordable. If you are lower on the income scale, you cannot afford to put fruits and vegetables on your table every day. Daily Table makes it possible for every person to afford to put fruits and vegetables on their table every day. And we are a normal grocery store. Anybody can come in there. We welcome everyone. It is not set up for people with a low income. It is a shopping experience. It is bright and colorful. It is dignified, enjoyable. Let's go look at all this beautiful produce. Daily Table dedicates a third of its footprint in each store to produce. Think about any grocery store you go into. That is not the case. We are focused on healthy, beautiful, fresh food. So, it's produce. It's proteins. And then finally, we have a commissary kitchen in our Dorchester store. It serves all of our stores, and we make healthy meals. A lot of people working two jobs cannot cook for themselves. Don't have the resources. And unfortunately, in many cases, turn to fast food, which isn't even that affordable these days. We make a chicken meal with a big chicken leg and 2 sides starting at $2.99. We have a large garden salad for $2.99. We have smoothies. We have soups that aren't extremely high in sodium. So, we provide healthy, tasty, prepared meals alongside fresh produce. If you can cook it, it's the ingredients are there. If you can't cook it, we cook it for you. And so Daily Table, our mission and what we do every day, is ensure that healthy food is truly affordable to everybody. This is really a useful way of hearing about what Daily Table is. As someone who used to live in Boston, I would visit the Dorchester store. And I remember all they asked is to tell us what zip code you're from and we would go shopping. We don't even ask that anymore. Oh, you don't even ask that anymore! That is awesome. And, you know, what's great it was easy to take my very young daughter at that time into the store and feel good about what we were getting. And my wife was like, can you believe these prices? In a good way! In a very good way. And so, it was always a positive experience. And it was great to know that there were people in that local community that were in the store. That were part of the staff. And it was a great place to visit. So, I'm glad to be able to connect with you on this. But I got to ask this question, how did a software engineer all of a sudden end up in a nonprofit grocery store? What happened? What drew you to this work? Well, it wasn't all of a sudden, but it was definitely a path. I met my husband when we were working at Nokia. I was in product management at the time. And in 2005, he quit to start an organic farm. A dream he'd always had. Went to it full time, that's how he makes his living. And he'd always had a big garden and just been a food person and I learned through him. I'd work with him on the weekends and getting the farm started and go to farmer's markets with him. And I, I discovered food in a way I'd never really understood it. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the way that food creates community. I mean, it is the center of community. It's how we show love. It's how we come together over holidays. But to work with my husband creating this really beautiful produce, healthy, and to share that and just, just at a farmer's market, see how people come together that don't know each other. And 'how do you use collard greens? Or what is this vegetable?' It was just life. It was just life and I wanted that. So, I quit in 2009. I worked with him on the farm for a couple of years while I went back to school just to expand my network and nonprofit and other things. And in 2012, I began as an executive director of another hunger relief organization. And what was amazing, what is amazing to me, whether it's at a food pantry or Daily Table or a farmer's market, it is the same experience. It is people coming together around food and sharing. And it is beautiful and it, it creates healthy communities. It's not just nourishing us physically, but that's critical. By the way, healthy food is the cheapest form of healthcare. If we would just invest in that. But it also nourishes a community. It's mental health. It's sitting around the table with your family. It's cooking. It's not being hungry. And so, to go from the one extreme of a local organic farm in a farmer's market that isn't cheap. You know, my husband isn't making money off of it. He's not getting rich, but the food, it takes a lot to grow food. So, to go from that experience and bringing together people who can afford farmer's market prices and seeing that same experience in a food pantry or at Daily Table, it is, it's about food. It's not about money and it should be accessible to all. It is really amazing. I loved the two years on the farm and bringing access to local food to people. And to now do that to folks who otherwise simply couldn't get access to healthy food. It's, it's just an incredible honor to be a part of that. Thank you for sharing that. And thank you for sharing part of your story. I'm interested to go back to Daily Table and understand how is it different than other nonprofit organizations, especially in the food justice space? Help us to appreciate that you gave us a bit of an idea when you were talking about comparing it to food pantries. But I'd like to hear sort of more of your thoughts on that. Well, my thoughts are not so much are how are we different, but how do we fit into the emergency food system? One of the beautiful things... I'm in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Daily Table is at Cambridge and Boston and Salem. And I've worked now for 12 years in this field in Northeastern United States, Massachusetts. And what I've discovered is there is a network of food justice, hunger relief organizations. And we are an incredibly large community of people that care about the same thing and working together. So, we need a lot of different solutions. SNAP, as you mentioned, the supplemental nutrition access program, that is hunger relief, right? That lets people have access to purchasing food. Then there's Daily Table where you can use your SNAP benefits to buy produce. To buy very healthy food at very low prices. Then there's a food pantry for people that perhaps don't even have access to SNAP. They can go to a food pantry and access food, or people can shop at Daily Table and supplement what they're buying a Daily Table at a food pantry. We work with an organization called the Boston Area Gleaners that uses volunteers to rescue food off of farms. And has their own farm now and grows some produce that we sell at Daily Table. We work within a network of different types of food justice organizations that are serving people in different ways and meeting them where they are. We work with Fresh Truck, which is a mobile market that goes into communities with a truck with fresh produce on it, right? So, all of these things are necessary. I would say Daily Table is absolutely critical to serving all of those people who are not comfortable getting free food. The last organization I worked for was called Food for Free, and it was wonderful, and it served hundreds of thousands of people. But there are hundreds of thousands of people that are not going to take food for free and Daily Table assists folks in that way. Yeah. I am really appreciative of the way you've talked about this. And sometimes I get a sense that there is competition in this space. And what you're talking about is, no, we're actually all part of a large network and that we're serving different needs and that we are stronger together. Finding ways of collaborating and giving people options and in the community. I find this really encouraging. Thank you. I'm so excited to hear more about this and to think about what that means as we go beyond the Boston area. Beyond the Northeast. And talk about replication, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. I've got to ask. This can't be easy, I mean, to offer these products at the low prices that you do and the fact that they're all nutritionally oriented. And I'm interested to learn what are the challenges of providing and doing the work that you all do at Daily Table. There are many, but they are luckily balanced by the joys of doing the work. One of the ongoing challenges is fundraising, right? We are a nonprofit. We work with local partners, and they give us deals in many cases. Little Leaf Lettuce, this incredible hydroponic lettuce grown out of Devons Massachusetts, ensures that we can have the absolute lowest cost little leaf at our stores every day. The same stuff you could buy at Whole Foods for twice the price. So, that's some of it, but we buy a lot of our food from a distributor, just like anybody else. And as we all know, there has been tremendous food inflation since the pandemic. And that has made our costs go through the roof. And we have not been able and not wanted to pass those costs onto our customers, so we are a nonprofit and we have to raise money. And that's that's part of why you feel like there may be competition, right? All of these nonprofits rely on the community. We rely on foundations. So, it is always a challenge for us to ensure we are continually investing in letting people know we're a nonprofit. That can be hard. We're a grocery store. We make two thirds of our revenue through store sales. That's incredible. Every time you shop there, you're giving to our organization. But we need to raise a third of our revenue through philanthropy. So that is an ongoing challenge. And more specifically, we have had this amazing program called Double Up Food Bucks. Which means people shopping with SNAP can get half off of produce. And it is incredible to see, as we launched that program, how much SNAP shoppers increase their produce spending. It just showed if food is affordable, people will buy it. If healthy food is affordable. Unfortunately, at the end of September, we lost funding for that program. And we had to pause it. We were able to keep it going in Cambridge, thanks to funding from the city of Cambridge. It has been devastating to our clients who have come to rely on not only low-cost vegetables, but being able to get twice as much as the dollar would normally get. Luckily, we did a GoFundMe, and we had tremendous response from people. And now the city of Boston is willing to step up and help us fund that. I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that that program relaunches in the next week or two. But that is another program that's going to require ongoing funding. And it's a challenge for every nonprofit, I think. I feel confident that if we get the word out about Daily Table, it's an exciting organization to support. And what's wonderful is you can support it by going there and getting great prices on healthy food. I am encouraged by how you all are thinking about these challenges and how you're finding innovative ways of expanding the work that you're doing. And I got to say, when I was in Boston, I lived in Somerville. I was there at the grand opening of your second location. I didn't realize that you all have expanded. Yes. Dorchester is 2015 and then Roxbury, which you just referenced and Nubian Square opened in 2018. Then in 2021, January, I remember I was there. It was in Cambridge, and I knew I knew the founding was happening, and I was at the ribbon cutting. We all had our masks on and we were standing 6 feet apart, but Central Square Cambridge opened. And then last year in September, we opened Salem, Massachusetts, which was up on the North Shore. Our first non urban store. I mean, you clearly have figured out how to make this work. You're overcoming some of these challenges. But some challenges still exist because of the need to continue to fundraise. You know, I'm interested to know, where do you see Daily Table, the network of organizations, going into the future? And I've just got to ask, how are you thinking about expanding? Sure. Some people don't know, Daily Table was founded by Doug Rauch. And Doug Rauch was the former president of Trader Joe's North America. And when Doug was at Trader Joe's, it was a small chain on the West Coast. And Joe, the CEO, asked Doug to head out to the East Coast and see if he could get a foothold for Trader Joe's here. And that's what he did. And now, as many people know, Trader Joe's is all over the country. And that is our dream of Daily Table. I mean, it is... it is needed in so many cities in Massachusetts. In every single state in this country, and in so many cities in every single one of those states. We have received outreach from throughout Massachusetts from California from Denver from Texas from Maine. And so, we absolutely believe that a Daily Table should exist everywhere across this country, deeply in Massachusetts and in other states as well. And our hope is in, you know, the not-too-distant future, to open a store outside of Massachusetts to show people this is not a Boston based thing. This is what can be a national solution. And then to over time start to expand throughout Massachusetts and throughout the country. Now, that requires funding as we know. But I think with the outpouring we've seen from different states and cities saying, we want this, we believe that it is possible to find that funding. And to really expand our network across the United States over the coming years and decades. BIO Sasha started her career as a Software Engineer and spent 15 years in the tech industry in Product Management and Management roles. In 2005, she helped her husband launch an organic farm and through that experience discovered a true passion for food and its ability to nourish not only one's body and soul, but communities as a whole. Driven by this new passion, she left tech in 2009 and, after acquiring her MBA in Organizational Sustainability, went on to lead Food For Free. Over her 10 years as the head of the organization, she transformed it from a small, grass-roots program primarily serving Cambridge to a regional leader in food access. She has long admired Daily Table and was honored by the opportunity to join the organization as CEO in early 2024.

On our podcast, we have often talked about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. In many of those conversations, we've talked about the benefits and eligibility, and ways to improve the work that SNAP does to help low-income families meet their food needs. In today's podcast, we're going to turn our attention to a particular challenge, and it's the SNAP skimming fraud. To help us understand this and the larger context of SNAP, we have the great pleasure of talking with Salaam Bhatti, who is the director of SNAP at the Food Research and Action Center, or FRAC. Interview Summary So, let's provide a little bit of level setting for our listeners. Can you tell us what role SNAP plays in the lives of individuals who are facing low income or food insecurity? Yeah, Norbert, the problem with being in the richest, most powerful nation in world history is that we are facing a food and hunger crisis. We have the means, we have the resources to solve for it, but we haven't. For the record, the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture, did a study last year. They do this study every year where they report food security in the country. In 2023, 86.5 percent of U. S. households were food secure. The remaining 13.5 percent, which is 18 million households, were food insecure. And this was an increase from 2022. So, 86.5 percent of food security is barely a B+. To be in the most powerful wealthiest nation in the world and we're barely getting a B+ in this space is unacceptable. And so, we saw some really interesting policies happen during the pandemic. We saw emergency allotments come in for the SNAP program, where all households received the maximum benefit amount for their households. And that, unfortunately, sunset. When that emergency allotment was in place, food insecurity-surprise, surprise-decreased. But not just that, we also saw Medicaid healthcare spending costs decrease as well. Because who would have thought that when people had food security, they didn't need to go to the emergency room because their blood sugar was low. So, we're experiencing a lot of challenges where we've seen the government show its hand that it can end poverty. It can end hunger. It just chooses not to. We know that SNAP is an entitlement program. It's available to anyone who meets the eligibility requirements. But we know that everyone who's eligible doesn't participate in the SNAP program. Can you help us think about how more people can be enrolled who are eligible. And maybe we even need to think more broadly about what is eligibility? What are your thoughts about this? In a given month these days, about 42 million people participate in SNAP. That's a lot of people. I would say that 42 million people are participating in it every day, but unfortunately, SNAP benefits do not last the whole month. By the third week of the month, people's SNAP benefits have been exhausted. Now, taking a step back, in case the listeners don't know how SNAP benefits work, it's a, as you said, a government program. And it comes in the form of an electronic benefits transfer card, an EBT card. It looks like a credit card, looks like a debit card. But really, it's more like a hotel card key, because it doesn't have the security measures, which we can talk about later in the show. It doesn't have the security measures that a credit and a debit card have. It is essentially a glorified hotel key. It's got the magnetic stripe on the back, circa 20 years ago. Maybe 15. I'm dating myself. I don't know how long ago it was we were swiping the cards. But all you gotta do is you swipe the card and you type in your PIN. And then you can use it at the EBT retailer. That is in a nutshell how 40 million people are utilizing SNAP benefits every single month. The program itself is also vital to retailers as well. We've seen that every dollar of SNAP benefits generates about $1.54 in economic activity during an economic downturn. So that means that when somebody is using their SNAP benefits at the grocery store, it's helping that grocery store keep the lights on. You know, employ the cashiers. And we need to employ cashiers, enough of this self-checkout stuff. It helps to pay the truck driver who's transporting the produce to the store. And it ultimately even helps pay the farmer for growing the crop. So, it's a great investment from the federal government into not just our households to help them put food on the table, but really into the whole local economy. And it is immediately used directly by the people and helps so many people. Now so, to your question about how do we enroll more people? Well, luckily we are at a time where the USDA reports that in the fiscal year 2022, 88 percent of eligible individuals were participating in SNAP. And that is the highest participation rate we've seen since they started tracking this in the past 50 years. That's great. But again, it's just a B+ so we can do better. There is room to improve. In the study, it showed that older adults, those who are over 60, they're participating at lower rates with only 55 percent of eligible members in that age category participating. We also have so many military families and veterans who are eligible, but don't participate. This SNAP gap is something that our partners are working throughout the states, throughout the entire country. We're working in partnership with a lot of federal agencies and partners as well. So, how do you ultimately close the SNAP gap? We're seeing a lot of targeted outreach. Seeing a lot of education efforts, but, you know, with 88 percent of eligible people participating, what's going on-on the local level? And unfortunately, Norbert, we've seen that state agencies which administer the SNAP program are unfortunately understaffed and they're underfunded. I used to be a state advocate at the Virginia Poverty Law Center. And when I was, hustling in the halls and lobbying for a million households with low income, I became friends with our social services agency because we had similar goals. We wanted to help households with low income. And we came to learn that the agency that we are relying on to administer the program was never getting their budget met by the legislative assembly. So, what we did was we got into partnership with them to advocate for their budget so that they could retain their staff, and so that the staff could do the job. That is something that we have to do across the states. Support these social service agencies in getting the funding so that they can have the staffing so that they can administer the programs in a timely way. Unfortunately, I don't know if you've seen this but earlier this year, the USDA Secretary Vilsack sent out a letter to like 44 state agencies, including D. C. and Guam. Being very concerned about their timeliness issues because they're supposed to complete the application reviews and determine eligibility within 30 days. And that's for a normal SNAP application. You have seven days for expedited applications. And 44 of these agencies were not meeting the mark. That's bad for, in terms of deadlines, but even worse for the families experiencing the food insecurity. So that is a very layered answer. It's the seven-layer dip answer of how we increase participation. Well, we need more staff to, to help that out. I hear that, and I'm really grateful for how you hit it at this point, and I want to draw a little more attention to it. While you talk about 88 percent participation, it looks different on a state-by-state level. Some states have a higher level of participation, other states don't. Do you think it's really the ability of those state agencies to provide that support, or do you think there are other factors that may be influencing the differential participation rates across states? Yeah, so we saw a big retirement, the great resignation, that happened during the pandemic. There were so many state agency employees, you know, who were, who were doing the job because they were passionate about it. They were also at retirement age. So, we saw quite a resignation happen. Because it was incredibly difficult. It was traumatizing to be involved in this space. And so, they resigned, or they retired, or they moved on to somewhere else. The new workers came in and they learned the programs with the flexibilities that were provided during the pandemic. Now, they have to relearn the program because all those flexibilities are gone. So, we're seeing a lot of administrative burden taking place within these agencies. I have a colleague, Carolyn Barnes, who's worked on this idea of administrative burden and the challenge of what's sometimes referred to as street level bureaucrats. The people who are on the ground who do the administration of these programs and the challenges that they face and the ways they engage folks. I appreciate hearing more about this. And I'm going to ask a potentially controversial question then. What if we took that responsibility out of the hands of state agencies and privatized that? What would that look like? Oh, and people have tried that. Governments have tried that, and it's always resulted in net losses. Not only has it cost the states more, but it has also led to the participants not receiving their benefits, or receiving less than, or receiving an error of more than. So many errors have resulted, which has made the program and administration worse. Which is an interesting question because a lot of people don't know that there are skilled employees at the helm within the agencies that are working on these eligibility determinations. They're known as merit-based staff. And every now and then you'll see a Farm Bill, that's the piece of legislation that houses the SNAP program, it'll come in and they'll try to privatize parts of the program. In the guise of, 'Oh, we're just wanting to help the agencies out and get the benefits to the people.' But listen, the several states that have privatized their benefit programs have learned the hard way and they've done away with those privatization efforts. Okay. I want to turn our attention to something that you hinted at, and we talked about at the top of the program. This idea of skimming or the SNAP skimming fraud. And this is not something that participants are doing. It's something that's happening negatively to participants. So, could you tell us a little bit more about this skimming issue? You know, skimming is a very serious problem that has affected all types of consumers. It's a device that gets put on the point-of-sale system, like that thing that you insert your card into or swipe at the checkout. And it's indistinguishable from the actual point of sale system. You could have a trained eye and still not be able to tell that this point-of-sale system has been compromised. So, what happens is when somebody uses a compromise point of sale system, their information, their card number, their pin is all taken. And within the same day, within an hour, you'll see the benefits are extracted. Usually in an entirely different state, and just the account balance is completely wiped out. The SNAP participant does not find out. If they don't check their account balance, they won't find out until the next time they're at the grocery store and they've done their, you know, 30 minutes of 45 minutes of shopping, with their kids in tow, and they've put everything on the conveyor belt and they're checking out and they swipe their card. And it says your payment is declined. And that is an awful harrowing situation that people are subjected to in the richest nation on the planet. They can't even use their government benefits to put food on the table. And then the process that currently exists to replace those stolen benefits is a lot of administrative burdens there as well. Where you have to you go home without the food, you fill out a piece of paper to say what happened, and then it takes weeks for you to get your benefits replaced. And God forbid that this happens to you more than twice in one year because the current resolution from Congress only allows two benefit replacements every year. But I mean, Norbert the question might be, who's stealing all this stuff? And why aren't the states doing something about it? Or why isn't the SNAP participant doing more to protect themselves? What we have to understand is that there are federal authorities, the FBI, are looking into this. They are investigating this because tens of millions of government dollars have been stolen. Over 120,000 households have been affected. This is big. This is bigger than the SNAP participant. This is bigger than the state. This is bigger than the retailers. And so, there's a lot for the federal government to do not just in replacing the benefits. Because that's you know, you we have a hole in the boat and we can't throw money at the hole. We need to fix the hole. So, what are we looking at here? We're looking at the opportunity to Secure our cards, secure the EBT card, by moving to chip. So, that is the next big thing You know what I appreciate out of this conversation is the experience of individuals who are using their SNAP benefits and they go to the store and the pain of discovering that their SNAP benefits have been expended. Not by them, but through some other means. I know the experience of having identity theft and, losing a credit card and not being able to do it. But I'm not in a situation where that means I'm not able to put food on my table. So, thank you for bringing our attention to the individual tragedy of that experience. And I think that's something important. But what you're also hinting at is that this is not some small-time incident. This is something much bigger. And of course, the federal government has a deep interest in trying to address this issue. And there needs to be some fix. And how this fix occurs also needs to be cognizant of the individual experience of low income individuals who are just struggling to make sure that they're able to solve this food problem. Yeah, you were talking about identity theft and when identity theft happens in the private sector things are resolved pretty quickly. If your credit card is hacked, nowadays you can just go online and say dispute charge and everything's taken care of within 24 hours. But can you imagine like not getting food benefits, like your debit card, your bank account being emptied, and you don't get everything back for weeks. It's mind numbing. It's really awful to think about. You've mentioned some technology fixes. And seems like they're pretty well known, the chip technology. Are there other fixes or in terms of technology or security systems that could help prevent this skimming challenge? One of the other challenges we're facing with the skimming is that the replacement benefits are temporary, it's going to expire on December 20th of this year (2024). And this is an extension that happened after the original replacement benefits, which was just under two years. These short-term fixes, or these short-term replacement benefit strategies are not what we need. We really need a permanent replacement benefit because no matter how secure the card gets, criminals are just going to be creative, and they will attack every single type of card as they continue to do with chip cards. Because we're talking about skimming, there's also something called shimming. S H I M M I N G. And that's when the point-of-sale system isn't compromised from the top, but from within, where you insert the card. That's shimming. So, that's something that exists as well. Chip cards will go a long way to decreasing the benefit theft when chip cards rolled out in the private sector it reduced theft by like around 90 percent. We're hopeful and optimistic that similar patterns will emerge there. But that's of course not 100 percent. It's not AA+++ It's a reason for why permanent replacement benefits need to continue. When it comes to chip card benefits, your listeners might be like, wait, wait, wait, this is 2024. We still have cards that haven't gone chip? It's because there's so many layers in the financial sector of what's going on the back end of these cards. So thankfully there was this massive process known as the x9 process where the entire industry came together. All the card manufacturers, grocers, convenience stores, retailers, banks, us humble nonprofits, and we came in to talk about what needs to be done. And so, they finally released the standards just over a month ago. And now we have two states in the running California and Oklahoma to roll out chip cards in the new year. All eyes are on Cali and Oklahoma to see how it goes before, I guess other states are going to hop on. The chip card is going to be the next big thing in the SNAP benefits world. Thank you for sharing this. I want to ask you one additional question about this technology issue. And it's related to a project I'm working on. It's the idea of online grocery shopping and the expansion of the SNAP benefits for online grocery shopping. And I'm wondering if there's any relationship between what you're seeing in skimming and the ability to use online grocery shopping. Or are these completely disconnected? I haven't seen anything regarding theft online, it's all been physical. We are seeing some promising things coming out of online shopping, especially for people who are living in areas without food access. Once we can bridge that gap of getting fresh food, like the produce and meats and chicken and fish, to people who are far away from grocery stores, then we've found the magic solution. But it's a promising trend on the online delivery space. Oh, that's awesome. I want to ask you just more generally about SNAP and where FRAC is right now. Where are you all thinking about in this space? And then what are ways that you can get just regular everyday people to help in the policy work of eliminating food insecurity? For more than 50 years, FRAC has been working to improve health, nutrition, and the well-being of people who have been struggling with poverty related hunger in the United States. Now, we have made tremendous strides in the fight against hunger. We've played a critical role in expanding SNAP. We've secured increased benefits for households with low incomes through landmark legislation, litigation. But unfortunately our work is far from over and we are really trying to work ourselves out of jobs. We cannot do it alone. We really need all hands on deck, especially as we are seeing in this upcoming Farm Bill effort some cuts that are being suggested or offered to SNAP benefit. We really need all hands on deck to protect this program. To build a nation free from hunger we encourage your listeners to go to frac.org, frac.org. Sign up for our action network and urge your members of Congress to prioritize ending hunger in America. Now, I know that oftentimes we're not sure what we should be saying to our Congress members. Our action network tells you all the things and it helps you really quickly and easily customize templates. Send in your own messages to your members of Congress. And also learn about hunger in your state and the solutions that exist as well. So, what will it achieve for you at the end of the day? Your efforts will advance bold and equitable policy and program solutions. And provide technical assistance and training to thousands of anti hunger advocates across the country, because we're collecting your stories. And your stories help impact Congressmembers. It helps us win their hearts. Bio Salaam Bhatti joined FRAC in November 2023 as the SNAP Director. In this role, he works to strengthen SNAP access and benefit adequacy. Salaam works closely with the Interim President to develop, lead, and track annual work plans; set and meet unit goals; collaborate with other unit Directors to assist in achieving FRAC's strategic plan goals; and expand the unit's innovation and work. Salaam joined FRAC after working at the Virginia Poverty Law Center (VPLC). While at VPLC, he successfully lobbied to fully repeal the drug felon ban for SNAP and TANF, twice achieved record increases to TANF cash benefits, subsidized reduced-priced school meals, repealed the TANF family cap, ended lunch shaming policies in schools, and received a unanimous vote to expand SNAP for over 20,000 families.  Salaam also helped develop a mobile-friendly, SNAP screening tool which is used by tens of thousands of people & multiple non-profits and has been rolled out to be available for all states and D.C. He received the Young Alumni Achievement Award from Albright College for his work in alleviating poverty and promoting Muslim-Jewish relations. Salaam also received the inaugural Stuart A. Freudberg Award for Regional Partnership for his work with Maryland and DC Hunger Solutions to address food insecurity across the metropolitan Washington area from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. Salaam has a J.D. from Touro Law School, is barred in New York and Virginia, and received his Bachelors in Political Science and International Relations from Albright College (with a year abroad in the University of Aberdeen). 

For many years in talks that I gave, I showed a slide with an ingredient list from a food most people know. Just to see if the audience could guess what the food was. based on what it was made of. It was very hard for people to guess. A few people might come close, but very few people would guess. And it was pretty hard because the food contained 56 ingredients. This is in one food. And the ingredient list had chemical names, flavorings, stabilizers, and heaven knows what else. But 56 things in one, just one food in the food supply. Pretty amazing to think what kind of things we're bombarded with in foods we eat in our everyday lives. So, one key question is do we know what all this stuff does to us, either individually or in combination? So, how does ingredient 42 interact with ingredient 17? Even if we happen to know what they do individually, which we may not. And, who's looking out for the health of the population, and who has regulatory control over these things? Today we're joined by the author of a new article on this topic published in the American Journal of Public Health. Jennifer Pomeranz is an attorney and is Associate Professor of Public Health Policy and Management in the School of Global Public Health at New York University. The food, by the way, was a chocolate fudge Pop Tart. Interview Summary So, who has regulatory oversight with these things that are added to foods? The FDA has the authority over all of those packaged foods. So, Pop Tarts, all of that type of packaged foods and the ingredients in there. Can you explain the nature of their authority and the concept of GRAS and what that stands for? Yes. So, there are two main ingredients in our food, but there is also color additives and other things that we didn't get to in our study. But the two main ingredients are called 'food additives' and then 'generally recognized as safe' or GRAS substances. And these are the two ingredients that are in all the processed foods. They're both complex substances, but they're regulated differently. GRAS is assumed to be safe. And food with GRAS substances is presumed to be safe as long as there's a generally agreement among scientists that it's safe, or if it's been in use in food since 1958. Food additives, on the other hand, are presumed to be unsafe. And so, foods that have food additives must have the food additive be approved for the condition of use. So actually, the FDA issues regulations on the food additives. Is it true that the FDA authority covers lots of these chemical type things that get put in foods that we discussed? But also, things that occur naturally in some things like caffeine? Yes. And so, caffeine is considered GRAS or generally recognized as safe. The FDA has a tolerance level for cola-type beverages for caffeine. It actually doesn't enforce that as you see, because we have energy drinks that far exceed that type of level. So, there's different types of GRAS substances. But they can be very complex substances that are actually not so different than food additives. Who decides at the end of the day whether something's safe or not? You imagine this battalion of scientific experts that the FDA has on hand, or consults with, to decide whether something's safe or not. But how does it work? Unfortunately, that's not exactly the case. When it comes to food additives, the industry must petition the FDA and provide evidence showing that it's safe. And the FDA promulgates a regulation saying that it agrees it's safe and it can be used for the things that it set forth in the regulation. For GRAS, there are two mechanisms. One is the industry can notify the FDA that it thinks something's safe. And then it actually goes through a similar transparent process where the FDA will evaluate the evidence submitted. Or, shockingly, the industry can actually decide that it's safe for themselves. And they don't have to notify the FDA. And they can add it to their food without the FDA or the public actually knowing. Now they might disclose this on a website or something, but it's actually not even required to be based on peer reviewed literature, which is actually one of the concerning aspects about this. Concerning is polite language for what one might call shocking. So, in the case of some of these things that go into the food, the industry itself decides whether these things are safe. And in some cases, they have to at least tell the FDA that something they declare as safe is going into the food. But in some cases, they don't even have to do this. Right. So, they only have to if they've determined that it's a food additive. But actually, the industry itself is deciding that it's a food additive versus GRAS. Once it made the decision, it's GRAS, it doesn't even have to notify the FDA that it considers it safe. If they do, they are supposed to rely on their own research saying that it's safe. But actually, there's some alarming parts about that as well. The other outside research that's not my own found that the panels of experts that they employ, 100 percent of the people on those panels have financial conflicts of interest. So, that's already worrisome. They're receiving money from the food industry in some way. Yes. To say that the ingredient is safe. Another scary part is that if they do notify the FDA and they're not happy with how the FDA is reacting to their GRAS notification, they can actually request a cease and desist. The FDA will issue a cease and desist letter, and then they can actually go to market with that ingredient. Pretty amazing. Like loopholes that not only a truck can go through, but a train and everything else. That's really pretty remarkable. So one could say that the risk built into this system is hypothetical, and it works pretty well. But is that true? I mean, are there cases where things have gotten through that probably shouldn't have? Or is it just that we don't know? I think there's a lot of unknowns. The Environmental Working Group does that research and they have identified things that they find to be concerning. A lot of it is that we actually don't know what we don't know, right? So even the FDA doesn't know what it doesn't know. And that is, is part of the concern, that you can't just identify this by looking at the nutrition facts label where they list ingredients. Sometimes they just use terms like spices, flavorings, colorings, chemical preservatives. But that could be masking an ingredient that has never been examined and for which It's unclear that it's actually safe. I know there have been some policy efforts in places such as California to prohibit use of some of these things that have otherwise been considered safe by the FDA, or perhaps just by industry. Is that true that's happening more and more? Yes, actually there has been. Because of the gap in the FDA's oversight, we are seeing states, and it's actually a pretty shocking situation, that California banned four ingredients that the FDA did not. And it's saying that those ingredients are not safe to be in food in California. And given what a huge market California is, the thinking is that the industry will have to change their ingredients across the nation. And frankly, they've already taken those ingredients out of the same foods in Europe, where those ingredients are not allowed. So how much do you trust this self-policing by the industry? To be honest, I'm quite concerned about it. The FDA has the authority to review substances post market, so after they're already in the ingredients. But we see that it can take years or even decades. In the case of, remember, partially hydrogenated oils, which were artificially produced trans-fat. It took decades for them to get that removed from the food supply, despite significant research showing that it had caused health harm. So, even when there is evidence of harm, it takes quite a long time for the FDA to remove it. And in the case of another ingredient recently where California banned it, then the FDA decided to ban it. So, it does worry me that even their post market authority is not being utilized to the extent that it should. Let's think about what a good set of defaults might be and how this might actually play out in practice. If you'd assume these things that go into foods are not safe by default, then the question is what would it take to make sure they're safe before they're allowed in the food supply? And it would take toxicology studies, studies with lab animals perhaps, studies with humans. I don't know exactly how these things are tested, but one can imagine it's not an easy or a quick process. Nor probably an inexpensive one. But somebody would have to do it, and if government can't do it, you can't rely on industry to do it. I wonder if the default might be fewer things in the food supply and whether that might not be a pretty good thing? I love that you said that because that's the conclusion I came to as well. Why do we need all these new ingredients? We already have ultra processed foods, which are by definition contain all these ingredients that we don't really know what they are. And why do we even need new ingredients? I think they could even put a moratorium on new ingredients and say, let's take a, take an analysis of what we've got in the food supply at this point. And to be honest, it would take Congress to act to change FDA's authority to give them more authority to do what you just suggested. And of course, resources, which would be personnel like you described. So maybe that chocolate Pop Tart that has 56 ingredients could get by with 41 or 32 or 17. And you know, maybe we'd be just fine having it with fewer ingredients. One interesting thing that I've heard about, but I'm not an expert in because my background isn't law, is I know it's possible for outside parties to bring lawsuits against government for failing to execute its duties. Has there been any talk about possible lawsuits taking on the FDA for failing to protect the public's health with regard to these things? Well, actually, there was a lawsuit already. These consumer protection organizations sued the FDA, arguing that they weren't protecting the public. And that they were actually ceding authority to the industry, which, they by definition are. But according to the law, because Congress didn't require them to review these ingredients pre market, the court found that the FDA did not violate the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. And so, they were operating according to the law. But also, to your point, I could see other lawsuits would be possible about them not actually exercising their post market authority to protect the public. Those could be from private lawsuits or a state attorney's general. There are different ideas there. So, what do you suggest going forward? You know what? Don't eat the Pop Tart. I think you got to avoid the many truly ultra processed foods and go for the lower processing levels. It's kind of that original advice. If you can't understand the ingredient list, maybe pick something different. And there are options within the same categories, right? There are potato chips that have three ingredients and there's potato crisps that have something like 12. So there are different options in that way. Bio Professor Jennifer Pomeranz is a public health lawyer who researches policy and legal options to address the food environment, obesity, products that cause public harm, and social injustice that lead to health disparities. Prior to joining the NYU faculty, Professor Pomeranz was an Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health at Temple University and in the Center for Obesity Research and Education at Temple. She was previously the Director of Legal Initiatives at the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. She has also authored numerous peer-reviewed and law review journal articles and a book, Food Law for Public Health, published by Oxford University Press in 2016. Professor Pomeranz leads the Public Health Policy Research Lab and regularly teaches Public Health Law and Food Policy for Public Health.

I don't know about you and your household, but in my home, we have a long history of opening the refrigerator and discovering pasta sauce or mayonnaise that we don't remember when it was put in the refrigerator, when we last opened it, and we're confused. We open the container; we smell it; we check out the date label. And if we're confused, we have a mantra: when in doubt, throw it out. But aren't those date labels supposed to help us make good decisions about whether or not a food product is safe? Currently, there is no federal regulation on what those labels should say. Best Buy, Use Buy, Sell Buy, or what have you. However, there is legislation in the Congress called the Food Date Labeling Act to help us address this issue. And today's guest, Regina Harmon, will help us explore this particular issue. She is the executive director of the Food Recovery Network, the largest student led movement fighting food waste and hunger in the United States. Interview Summary First, some of our listeners may not be familiar with the Food Recovery Network. Could you tell us more about the organization and what it hopes to accomplish? Absolutely. Thank you so much. Food Recovery Network was started in 2011 by college students at the University of Maryland who saw a couple of things happening. They saw a lot of food waste on their college campus, and they also saw a lot of people who were experiencing hunger in their communities. And so, they thought, hey, instead of throwing this perfectly good food away, what we could do is package this food up and give it to those in our neighborhood that we know need some help. And that's how Food Recovery Network was started. They started at the University of Maryland, one dining hall, one carload of food. They started calling other friends that went to different colleges and universities across the United States. And over the last decade and some change, we've grown into, as you said, the largest movement of students who are fighting food waste and hunger. We have about 200 college campuses that have food recovery network chapters. We've recovered over 16 million pounds of food through the power of young people. And today we also help other sectors that would like to also do the right thing with their surplus food. We help farms, we help corporate events, large scale events, we help conferences. You name it, wherever there's surplus food, Food Recovery Network can help make sure that food doesn't go into landfill and helps feed those in need. I would love to hear a little bit about who you are able to serve through the Recovered Food. Are you working with food banks? Are you working with the pantries directly? Tell me a little more about that connection. It's a beautiful connection. We have about 400 nonprofits all over the United States. That directly receive the surplus food that we donate. We go to the sites where the food is. So again, in college dining halls, large scale events, you name it, and that food is packaged up safely. And then it's brought to what we call hunger fighting nonprofits. These are nonprofits on the front lines in all of our communities that are in some way feeding our neighbors in need. These are homeless shelters, soup kitchens, food banks. These are domestic violence shelters. These are afterschool programs, churches, anywhere that can also handle the food safely and then distribute it to our neighbors directly. So through that, we've been able to meet so many incredible people, and a lot of times volunteers themselves who work at these incredible locations that again, are just helping those who need support to make their ends meet. Great. This is really important work. Thank you so much for the work that you all are doing. So, how does the Food Recovery Network activate to end food waste and make a positive impact on the environment? There's a lot of things that are happening here. You know, millions of tons of food is wasted every single year. And I know we'll get into the Food Date Limiting Act in just a moment, but every part of our food system, there's food waste. On farm fields, during transportation, at supermarkets, in our own homes. And so, a lot of times, most of the time, the majority of the time, all of the food that is wasted is actually thrown into landfills. You know, we see those images of whole entire tractor trailer trucks of food being dumped into landfill. And that is the problem. The majority of food, much of which is still perfectly good to eat, perfectly good to consume, is being driven into landfill, where it then is covered up, it begins to rot, and this is where the environmental harm starts. The food rots, and it creates additional CO2 into our environment and other greenhouse gases that is really difficult for our environment to reabsorb because it's happening at such an increased rate. And that is directly causing what we now know as global warming. Food all across the United States, all across the globe, is the third largest emitter of CO2 gases. And so that is the environmental issue that Food Recovery Network is addressing. It's directly harming our atmosphere. But then when we take that step back and we think about all the water it took to grow these plants, all the fuel it took to transport the food, all the fertilizer it took to put into the soil. All of those precious resources are also wasted, and we need to reclaim those resources year after year after year for food that ultimately we are going to throw away, have it cause harm by rotting and going into our atmosphere in the form of CO2 gas. So, it is a really disturbing cycle. Our mission is to recover surplus food to feed everyone who is hungry so that precious food isn't going into landfill unnecessarily and causing all of that environmental harm. Yes, this is what I find really critical about the work that you all are doing because of the greenhouse gas emissions from decomposing food and landfills is really problematic, but I'm so grateful for the way you talked about how there are losses, if you will, all along the supply chain from on the farm to the final consumer. I remember even talking to a farmer in Virginia who said, it really breaks his heart to see food wasted. He put a lot of effort, his blood, sweat and tears into that production to see it wasted was just disappointing. And that's going beyond the environmental costs to just thinking about the value of someone's labor. I really appreciate what you all are trying to accomplish. But it sounds like you all are involved in the day-to-day work of preventing it from going into the landfill and trying to get into the hands of people. How is it that you all are involved in policy? I'd love to hear how you all are thinking about date labeling and the law that is in the Congress to try to address this challenge. Thank you so much, Norbert, for that question, because, yes, we are here to feed people through recovering food and donating it and helping our neighbors and being in community with our neighbors. That absolutely must happen. There's 47 million people who are food insecure all across the United States. We all know somebody who is food insecure. We might not know it. But we do. 47 million people. So that act of not wasting our precious food and bringing it back further into community is vital. And then at the same time, Food Recovery Network, we are involved in advocacy to begin to correct a system that allows for this food waste and food loss. At the policy level is where we can really begin to recapture all of this precious food that our incredible farmers across the United States are growing for all of us. So, we got involved with the Food Date Labeling Act several years ago, and it has, you know, come up in our Congress a few different times. And we see this as a beautiful way to help reduce confusion around why food is being wasted in the first place. And in particular at the consumer level - our homes. You know, 80 percent of households at some point, they're going to be confused because of a date label. Again, your story emphasized that so wonderfully because it's something that we've all experienced. About 80 percent of homes are having those same kinds of conversations. The majority of people do believe that date labels are already standardized, and lo and behold, they are not. And so, what we're trying to do, we're lending our voice to support the Food Date Labeling Act, so that we can begin to standardize these date labels. And then prevent millions of tons of food from going to waste in the future every single year unnecessarily. This is the way that I can imagine doing the work that you all are doing, not just on the physical movement of food, but also thinking about the policies that can help support the work that you're doing. It takes sort of that broad spectrum of approaches to really affect this challenge. But I've got to ask, and I hear your passion. I hear your great concern. Can you help us understand why the urgency now? Why, why try to find a permanent solution to food waste today? What's the impetus? You're absolutely right, Norbert. The time is now. We are getting many messages. I will speak from the perspective of our students. So, this is Gen Z, Gen X, Millennials, you know, young people that are on the front lines of this movement to say, we can no longer waste precious food. We were all born [00:10:00] into millions of people being food insecure. That's wrong. And we know that we can do something about that. We have the simple solution of at least redirecting our precious food to help those in need. So that urgency is now. People are hungry right now. And we have our chapters all across the United States that are doing a food recovery right now. At some point in the day, there's somebody who is doing the right thing to help say, I can help feed my neighbors in need. There's nothing more urgent than that. We know all the hardships that come with being food insecure. And then when we think about our planet. That urgency is now. I tell people all the time if we can all get on board together in this wonderful community to say, we don't need to waste food any longer. We have the solutions to no longer throw away precious food, and we can begin to, as you said earlier, I love this. To keep that value of the food every single step in the process from seedling to going into our mouths. If we can keep the value of that food, we can really reduce food going into landfill unnecessarily. And then when we can begin to think about that as how we view food, you know, what other problems can we solve together to make our communities thrive for one another? But in particular with the environment, the time is now. Our food waste is causing environmental harm. We can mitigate that environmental harm by stopping this dizzying, disturbing cycle of wasting food. We're wasting our potable water. We're wasting our fertilizer. We're wasting fuel, gasoline through transportation. And then this food is rotting and it is causing environmental harm, which is going into a larger, broader system of our storms are worse. Our storms are longer. They're starting earlier. They're ending later. They're in places that they weren't before. This is all part of. the environment that we can help to stem the tide of what we are experiencing as a species. So that's another reason why the immediacy is now. Let's not make this worse for the young folks in our lives. Let's not make this worse for the people who have yet to be born. We can do something now. This podcast is co sponsored by the Recipes Food Waste Research Network project led by American University and funded by the National Science Foundation. Bio Regina Harmon has been the Executive Director of Food Recovery Network since 2015 and has been a pivotal voice in raising awareness and harnessing action to reduce food waste, end hunger, and positively impact the environment. She has been invited to share her insights with media outlets such as CNN and Al Jazeera and was recognized as one of the most influential leaders in the food industry by SELF magazine and Food Tank. Apart from her position at Food Recovery Network, Regina is also a board member of Food Tank and Earth Island Institute, serves on ReFED's Advisory Council, and is a member of the Philadelphia artists' collaborative Pink Noise Projects. Regina emphasizes the need to address the racial disparities in the food system that disproportionately affect the health and economic outcomes of Black, Latinx/Latine, and Native American communities, highlighting the importance of working together to bring about change. Regina holds an MA in Literary and Cultural Studies from Carnegie Mellon University and a BA in English Literature from the University of Maine at Augusta.

About two years ago, we released a podcast with Dr. Thomas Wadden of the University of Pennsylvania describing work on a new generation of medications to treat diabetes and obesity. They were really taking the field by storm. Since then, much more is known since many additional studies have been published and so many people have been using the drugs. So many, in fact, the market value of the Danish company, Novo Nordisk, one of the two major companies selling the drugs, has gone up. It is now greater than the entire budget of the country of Denmark. This single company is responsible for about half of Denmark's economic expansion this year. So, a lot of people are now taking the drugs and this is a great time for an update on the drugs. And we're fortunate to have two of the world's leading experts join us: Dr. Wadden, Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the inaugural Albert J. Stunkard Professor of Psychiatry at Penn. Joining us as well as Dr. Robert Kushner, a physician and professor of medicine at Northwestern University and a pioneer in testing treatments for obesity. Interview Summary Tom, you and I were colleagues at Penn decades ago. And I got frustrated the treatments for obesity didn't work very well. People tended to regain the weight. And I turned my attention to prevention and policy. But you hung in there and I admired you for that patience and persistence. And Bob, the same for you. You worked on this tenacious problem for many years. But for both of you, your patience has been rewarded with what seems to me to be a seismic shift in the way obesity and diabetes can be treated. Tom, I'll begin with you. Is this as big of a deal as it seems to me? Well, I think it is as big of a deal as it seems to you. These medications have had a huge impact on improving the treatment of type 2 diabetes, but particularly the management of obesity. With older medications, patients lost about 7 percent of their starting weight. If you weighed 200 pounds, you'd lose about 15 pounds. That was also true of our best diet and exercise programs. You would lose about 7 percent on those programs with rigorous effort. But with the new medications, patients are now losing about 15 to 20 percent of their starting body weight at approximately one year. And that's a 30-to-40-pound loss for a person who started at 200 pounds. And with these larger weight losses, we get larger improvements in health in terms of complications of obesity. So, to quote a good friend of mine, Bob Kushner, these medications have been a real game changer. Thanks for putting that in perspective. I mean, we're talking about not just little incremental changes in what treatments can produce, which is what we've seen for years. But just orders of magnitude of change, which is really nice to see. So, Bob what are these medications that we're talking about? What are the names of the drugs and how do they work? Well, Kelly, this transformation of obesity really came about by finding the target that is really highly effective for obesity. It's called the gut brain axis. And when it comes to the gut it's starting off with a naturally occurring gut hormone called GLP 1. I think everyone in the country's heard of GLP 1. It's released after we eat, and it helps the pancreas produce insulin, slows the stomach release of food, and reduces appetite. And that's where the obesity story comes in. So pharmaceutical companies have taken this hormone and synthesized it, something similar to GLP 1. It mimics the action of GLP 1. So, you could actually take it and give it back and have it injected so it augments or highlights this hormonal effect. Now, that same process of mimicking a hormone is used for another gut hormone called GIP that also reduces appetite. These two hormones are the backbone of the currently available medication. There's two on the market. One is called Semaglutide. That's a GLP 1 analog. Trade name is Wegovy. Now, it's also marketed for diabetes. Tom talked about how it is used for diabetes and increases insulin. That trade name is Ozempic. That's also familiar with everyone around the country. The other one that combined GLP 1 and GIP, these two gut hormones, so it's a dual agonist, the trade name for obesity is called Zep Bound, and the same compound for diabetes is called Mounjaro. These are terms that are becoming familiar, I think, to everyone in the country. Tom mentioned some about the, how much weight people lose on these drugs, but what sort of medical changes occur? Just to reiterate what Tom said, I'll say it in another way. For Semaglutide one third of individuals are losing 20 percent of their body weight in these trials. For Tirzepatide, it even outpaces that. And I got a third of individuals losing a quarter of their body weight. These are unheard of weight losses. And with these weight losses and these independent effects from weight, what we're seeing in the trials and in the clinic is that blood pressure goes down, blood sugar goes down, blood fats like triglyceride go down, inflammation in the body goes down, because we marked that with CRP, as well as improvement in quality of life, which we'll probably get to. But really interesting stuff is coming out over the past year or two or so, that it is improving the function of people living with congestive heart failure, a particular form called a preserved ejection fraction. We're seeing improvements in sleep apnea. Think of all the people who are on these CPAP machines every night. We're seeing significant improvements in the symptoms of sleep apnea and the apneic events. And lastly, a SELECT trial came out, that's what it was called, came out last year. Which for the very first time, Kelly, found improvements in cardiovascular disease, like having a heart attack, stroke, or dying of cardiovascular disease in people living with obesity and already have cardiovascular disease. That's called secondary prevention. That, Tom, is the game changer. Bob, I'd like to go back to Tom in a minute but let me ask you one clarifying question about what you just said. That's a remarkable array of biological medical benefits from these drugs. Just incredible. And the question is, are they all attributable to the weight loss or is there something else going on? Like if somebody lost equal amounts of weight by some other means, would these same changes be occurring? Those studies are still going on. It's very good. We're thinking it's a dual effect. It's the profound amount of weight loss, as Tom said. Fifteen to 21 to even 25 percent of average body weight. That is driving a lot of the benefits. But there also appear to be additional effects or weight independent effects that are working outside of that weight. We're seeing improvements in kidney function, improvement in heart disease, blood clotting, inflammation. And those are likely due to the gut hormone effect independent of the weight itself. That still needs to be sorted out. That's called a mitigation analysis where we try to separate out the effects of these drugs. And that work is still underway. Tom, one of the most vexing problems, over the decades that people have been working on treatments for obesity, has been long term results. And I'm curious about how long have people been followed on these drugs now? What are the results? And what was the picture before then? How do what we see now compared to what you saw before? The study that Bob just mentioned, the SELECT trial followed people for four years on Semaglutide. And patients achieve their maximal weight loss at about one year and they lost 10 percent of their weight. And when they were followed up at four years still on treatment, they still maintained a 10 percent weight loss. That 10 percent is smaller than in most of the trials, where it was a 15 percent loss. But Dr. Tim Garvey showed that his patients in a smaller trial lost about 15 percent at one year and while still on medication kept off the full 15 percent. I think part of the reason the weight loss in SELECT were smaller is because the study enrolled a lot of men. Men are losing less weight on this medication than women. But to your question about how these results compare to the results of earlier treatment, well with behavioral treatment, diet, and exercise back in the 70s beyond, people lost this 7 or 8 percent of weight. And then most people on average regain their weight over one to three years. And the same was true of medication. People often stopped these earlier medications after 6 to 12 months, in part because they're frustrated the losses weren't larger. Some people were also worried about the side effects. But the long and short is once you stop taking the medication, people would tend to regain their weight. And some of this weight regain may be attributable to people returning to their prior eating and activity habits. But one of the things we've learned over the past 20 years is that part of the weight regain seems to be attributable to changes in the body's metabolism. And you know that when you lose weight, you're resting metabolic rate, which is the number of calories your body burns at rest to maintain basic bodily functions. Your resting metabolic rate decreases by 10 to 15 percent. But also, your energy expenditure, the calories you burn during exercise decreases. And that may decrease by as much as 20 to 30 percent. So, people are left having to really watch their calories very carefully because of their lower calorie requirements in order to keep off their lost body weight. I think one thing these new drugs may do is to attenuate the drop both in resting metabolic rate and energy expenditure during physical activity. But the long and short of it is that if you stay on these new medications long term, you'll keep off your body weight. And you'll probably keep it off primarily because of improvements in your appetite, so you have less hunger. And as a result, you're eating less food. I'd like to come back to that in a minute. But let me ask a question. If a person loses weight, and then their body starts putting biological pressure on them to regain, how come? You know, it's disadvantageous for their survival and their health to have the excess weight. Why would the body do that? Well, our bodies evolved in an environment of food scarcity, and our physiology evolved to protect us against starvation. First, by allowing us to store body fat, a source of energy when food is not available. And second, the body's capacity to lower its metabolism, or the rate at which calories are burned to maintain these basic functions like body temperature and heart rate. That provided protection against food scarcity. But Kelly, you have described better than anybody else that these ancient genes that regulate energy expenditure and metabolism are now a terrible mismatch for an environment in which food is plentiful, high in calories, and available 24 by 7. The body evolved to protect us from starvation, but not from eating past our calorie needs. And so, it's this mismatch between our evolution and our appetite and our body regulation in the current, what you have called toxic food environment, when you can eat just all the time. I guess you could think about humans evolving over thousands of years and biology adapting to circumstances where food was uncertain and unpredictable. But this modern environment has happened really pretty rapidly and maybe evolution just hasn't had a chance to catch up. We're still existing with those ancient genes that are disadvantageous in this kind of environment. Bob back to the drugs. What are the side effects of the drugs? Kelly, they're primarily gastrointestinal. These are symptoms like nausea, diarrhea, constipation, heartburn, and vomiting. Not great, but they're generally considered mild to moderate, and temporary. And they primarily occur early during the first four to five months when the medications are slowly dose escalated. And we've learned, most importantly, how to mitigate or reduce those side effects to help people stay on the drug. Examples would be your prescriber would slow the dose escalation. So. if you're having some nausea at a particular dose, we wait another month or two. The other, very importantly, is we have found that diet significantly impacts these side effects. When we counsel patients on these medications, along with that comes recommendations for dietary changes, such as reducing fatty food and greasy food. Reducing the amount of food you're consuming. Planning your meals in advance. Keeping well hydrated. And very importantly, do not go out for a celebration or go out to meals on the day that you inject or at least the first two days. Because you're not going to tolerate the drug very well. We use that therapeutically. So, if you want to get control on the weekends, you may want to take your injection on a Friday. However, if weekends are your time out with friends and you want to socialize, don't take it on a Friday. Same thing comes with a personal trainer, by the way. If you're going to have a personal trainer on a Monday where he's going to overwork you, don't take the injection the day before. You'll likely be nauseated, you're not eating, you're not hydrating. So actually, there's a lot that goes into not only when to take the dose and how to take the dose, but how to take it to the best ability to tolerate it. Two questions based on what you said. One is you talked about these are possible side effects, but how common are they? I mean, how many people suffer from these? Well, the trials show about 25 to 45 percent or so of individuals actually say they have these symptoms. And again, we ask them mild, moderate, severe. Most of them are mild to moderate. Some of them linger. However, they really do peak during the dose escalation. So, working with your prescriber during that period of time closely, keeping contact with them on how to reduce those side effects and how you're doing out of medication is extremely important. And the second thing I wanted to ask related to that is I've heard that there's a rare but serious potential side effect around the issue of stomach paralysis. Can you tell us something about that? I mentioned earlier, Kelly, that these medications slow gastric emptying. That's pretty much in everybody. In some individuals who may be predisposed to this, they develop something called ileus, and that's the medical term for gastric paralysis. And that can happen in individuals, let's say who have a scleroderma, who have longstanding diabetes or other gastrointestinal problems where the stomach really stopped peristalsis. In other words, it's moving. That's typically presented by vomiting and really unable to move the food along. We really haven't seen much of that. We looked at the safety data in a SELECT trial that Tom mentioned, which was 17,000 individuals, about 8,000 or so in each group. We really did not see a significant increase in the ileus or what you're talking about in that patient population. Okay, thanks. Tom had alluded to this before, Bob, but I wanted to ask you. How do you think about these medicines? If somebody takes them, and then they stop using the medicines and they gain the weight back. Is that a sign that the medicine works or doesn't work? And is this the kind of a chronic use drug like you might take for blood pressure or cholesterol? That's a great way of setting up for that. And I like to frame it thinking of it as a chronic progressive disease, just like diabetes or hypertension. We know that when you have those conditions, asthma could be another one or inflammatory bowel disease, where you really take a medication long term to keep the disease or condition under control. And we are currently thinking of obesity as a chronic disease with dysfunctional appetite and fat that is deposited in other organs, causing medical problems and so on. If you think of it as a chronic disease, you would naturally start thinking of it, like others, that medication is used long term. However, obesity appeared to be different. And working with patients, they still have this sense 'that's my fault, I know I can do it, I don't want to be on medication for the rest of my life for this.' So, we have our work cut out for us. One thing I can say from the trials, and Tom knows this because he was involved in them. If we suddenly stop the medication, that's how these trials were definitely done, either blindly or not blindly, you suddenly stop the medication, most, if not all of the participants in these trials start to regain weight. However, in a clinical practice, that is not how we work. We don't stop medication suddenly with patients. We go slowly. We down dose the medication. We may change to another medication. We may use intermittent therapy. So that is work that's currently under development. We don't know exactly how to counsel patients regarding long term use of the medications. I think we need to double down on lifestyle modification and counseling that I'm sure Tom is going to get into. This is really work ahead of us, how to maintain medication, who needs to be on it long term, and how do we actually manage patients. Tom, you're the leading expert in the world on lifestyle change in the context of obesity management. I mean, thinking about what people do with their diet, their physical activity, what kind of thinking they have related to the weight loss. And you talked about that just a moment ago. Why can't one just count on the drugs to do their magic and not have to worry about these things? Well, first, I think you can count on the drugs to do a large part of the magic. And you may be surprised to hear me say that. But with our former behavioral treatments of diet and exercise, we spent a lot of time trying to help people identify how many calories they were consuming. And they did that by recording their food intake either in paper and pencil or with an app. And the whole focus of treatment was trying to help people achieve a 500 calorie a day deficit. That took a lot of work. These medications, just by virtue of turning down your appetite and turning down your responsiveness to the food environment, take away the need for a lot of that work, which is a real blessing. But the question that comes up is, okay, people are eating less food. But what are they eating? Do these medications help you eat a healthier diet with more fruits and vegetables, with lean protein? Do you migrate from a high fat, high sugar diet to a Mediterranean diet, or to a DASH like diet? And the answer is, we don't know. But obviously you would like people to migrate to a diet that's going to be healthier for you from a cardiovascular standpoint, from a cancer risk reduction standpoint. One of the principal things that people need to do on these medications is to make sure they get plenty of protein. And so, guidance is that you should have about 1 gram of dietary protein for every kilogram of body weight. If you're somebody who weighs 100 kilograms, you should get 100 grams of protein. And what you're doing is giving people a lot of dietary protein to prevent the loss of bodily protein during rapid weight loss. You did a [00:20:00] lot of research with me back in the 80s on very low-calorie diets, and that was the underpinning of treatment. Give people a lot of dietary protein, prevent the loss of bodily protein. The other side of the equation is just physical activity, and it's a very good question about whether these medications and the weight loss they induce will help people be more physically active. I think that they will. Nonetheless for most people, you need to plan an activity schedule where you adopt new activities, whether it's walking more or going to the gym. And one thing that could be particularly helpful is strength training, because strength training could mitigate some of the loss of muscle mass, which is likely to occur with these medications. So, there's still plenty to learn about what is the optimal lifestyle program, but I think people, if they want to be at optimal health will increase their physical activity and eat a diet of fruits and vegetables, leaner protein, and less ultra processed foods. Well, isn't it true that eating a healthy diet and being physically active have benefits beyond their impact on your ability to lose the weight? You're getting kind of this wonderful double benefit, aren't you? I believe that is true. I think you're going to find that there are independent benefits of being physical activity upon your cardiovascular health. There are independent benefits of the food that you're eating in terms of reducing the risk of heart attack and of cancer, which has become such a hot topic. So, yes how you exercise and what you eat makes a difference, even if you're losing weight. Well, plus there's probably the triple one, if you will, from the psychological benefit of doing those things, that you do those things, you feel virtuous, that helps you adhere better as you go forward, and these things all come together in a nice picture when they're working. Tom, let's talk more about the psychology of these things. You being a psychologist, you've spent a lot of time doing research on this topic. And of course, you've got a lot of clinical experience with people. So as people are losing weight and using these drugs, what do they experience? And I'm thinking particularly about a study you published recently, and Bob was a coauthor on that study that addressed mental health outcomes. What do people experience and what did you find in that study? I think the first things people experience is improvements in their physical function. That you do find as you've lost weight that you've got less pain in your knees, you've got more energy, it's easier to get up the stairs, it's easier to play with the children or the grandchildren. That goes a long way toward making people feel better in terms of their self-efficacy, their agency in the life. Big, big improvement there. And then, unquestionably, people when they're losing a lot of weight tend to feel better about their appearance in some cases. They're happy that they can buy what they consider to be more fashionable clothes. They get compliments from friends. So, all of those things are positive. I'm not sure that weight loss is going to change your personality per se, or change your temperament, but it is going to give you these physical benefits and some psychological benefits with it. We were happy to find in the study you mentioned that was conducted with Bob that when people are taking these medications, they don't appear to be at an increased risk of developing symptoms of depression or symptoms of suicidal ideation. There were some initial reports of concern about that, but the analysis of the randomized trials that we conducted on Semaglutide show that there is no greater likelihood of developing depression or sadness or suicidal ideation on the medication versus the placebo. And then the FDA and the European Medicines Agency have done a full review of all post marketing reports. So, reports coming from doctors and the experience with their patients. And in looking at those data the FDA and the European Medicines Agency have said, we don't find a causal link between these medications and suicidal ideation. With that said, it's still important that if you're somebody who's taking these medications and you start them, and all of a sudden you do feel depressed, or all of a sudden you do have thoughts like, maybe I'd be better off if I weren't alive any longer, you need to talk to your primary care doctor immediately. Because it is always possible somebody's having an idiosyncratic reaction to these medications. It's just as possible the person would have that reaction without being on a medication. You know, that, that can happen. People with overweight and obesity are at higher risk of depression and anxiety disorders. So, it's always going to be hard to tease apart what are the effects of a new medication versus what are just the effects of weight, excess weight, on your mood and wellbeing. You know, you made me think of something as you were just speaking. Some people may experience negative effects during weight loss, but overall, the effects are highly positive and people are feeling good about themselves. They're able to do more things. They fit in better clothes. They're getting good feedback from their environment and people they know. And then, of course, there's all the medical benefit that makes people feel better, both psychologically and physically. Yet there's still such a strong tendency for people to regain weight after they've lost. And it just reinforces the fact that, the point that you made earlier, that there are biological processes at work that govern weight and tendency to regain. And there really is no shame in taking the drug. I mean, if you have high blood pressure, there's no shame in taking the drug. Or high cholesterol or anything else, because there's a biological process going on that puts you at risk. The same thing occurs here, so I hope the de-shaming, obesity in the first place, and diabetes, of course, and then the use of these medications in particular might help more people get the benefits that is available for them. I recommend that people think about their weight as a biologically regulated event. Very much like your body temperature is a biologically regulated event, as is your blood pressure and your heart rate. And I will ask people to realize that there are genetic contributors to your body weight. just as there are to your height. If somebody says, I just feel so bad about being overweight I'll just talk with them about their family history of weight and see that it runs in the family. Then I'll talk to them about their height. Do you feel bad about being six feet tall, to a male? No, that's fine. Well, that that's not based upon your willpower. That's based upon your genes, which you received. And so, your weight, it's similarly based. And if we can use medications to help control weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, let's do that. It's just we live in a time where we're fortunate to have the ability to add medications to help people control health complications including weight. Bob, there are several of the drugs available. How does one think about picking between them? Well, you know, in an ideal medical encounter, the prescriber is going to take into consideration all the factors of prescribing a medication, like any other medication, diabetes, hypertension, you name the condition. Those are things like contraindication to use. What other medical problems does the patient have that may benefit the patient. Patient preferences, of course and side effects, safety, allergies, and then we have cost. And I'll tell you, Kelly, because of our current environment, it's this last factor, cost, that's the most dominant factor when it comes to prescribing medication. I'll have a patient walk in my room, I'll look at the electronic medical record, body mass index, medical problems. I already know in my head what is going to be the most effective medication. That's what we're talking about today. Unfortunately, I then look at the patient insurance, which is also on the electronic medical record, and I see something like Medicaid or Medicare. I already know that it's not going to be covered. It is really quite unfortunate but ideally all these factors go into consideration. Patients often come in and say, I've heard about Ozempic am I a candidate for it, when can I get it? And unfortunately, it's not that simple, of course. And those are types of decisions the prescriber goes through in order to come to a decision, called shared decision making with the patient. Bob, when I asked you the initial question about these drugs, you were mentioning the trade name drugs like Mounjaro and Ozempic and those are made by basically two big pharmaceutical companies, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. But there are compounded versions of these that have hit the scene. Can you explain what that means and what are your thoughts about the use of those medications? So compounding is actually pretty commonly done. It's been approved by the FDA for quite some time. I think most people are familiar with the idea of compounding pharmacies when you have a child that must take a tablet in a liquid form. The pharmacy may compound it to adapt to the child. Or you have an allergy to an ingredient so the pharmacy will compound that same active ingredient so you can take it safely. It's been approved for long periods of time. Anytime a drug is deemed in shortage by the FDA, but in high need by the public, compounding of that trade drug is allowed. And that's exactly what happened with both Semaglutide and Tirzepatide. And of course, that led to this compounding frenzy across the country with telehealth partnering up with different compounding pharmacies. It's basically making this active ingredient. They get a recipe elsewhere, they don't get it from the company, they get this recipe and then they make the drug or compound it themselves, and then they can sell it at a lower cost. I think it's been helpful for people to get the drug at a lower cost. However, buyer beware, because not all compounded pharmacies are the same. The FDA does not closely regulate these compounded pharmacies regarding quality assurance, best practice, and so forth. You have to know where that drug is coming from. Kelly, it's worth noting that just last week, ZepBound and Mounjaro came off the shortage list. You no longer can compound that and I just read in the New York Times today or yesterday that the industry that supports compounding pharmacies is suing the FDA to allow them to continue to compound it. I'm not sure where that's going to go. I mean, Eli Lilly has made this drug. However, Wegovy still is in shortage and that one is still allowed to be compounded. Let's talk a little bit more about costs because this is such a big determinant of whether people use the drugs or not. Bob, you mentioned the high cost, but Tom, how much do the drugs cost and is there any way of predicting what Bob just mentioned with the FDA? If the compounded versions can't be used because there's no longer a shortage, will that decrease pressure on the companies to keep the main drug less expensive. I mean, how do you think that'll all work out? But I guess my main question is how much these things cost and what's covered by insurance? Well first how much do the drugs cost? They cost too much. Semaglutide, known in retail as Wegovy, is $1,300 a month if you do not have insurance that covers it. I believe that Tirzepatide, known as ZepBound, is about $1,000 a month if you don't have insurance that covers that. Both these drugs sometimes have coupons that bring the price down. But still, if you're going to be looking at out of pocket costs of $600 or $700 or $800 a month. Very few people can afford that. The people who most need these medications are people often who are coming from lower incomes. So, in terms of just the future of having these medications be affordable to people, I would hope we're going to see that insurance companies are going to cover them more frequently. I'm really waiting to see if Medicare is going to set the example and say, yes, we will cover these medications for anybody with a BMI of 40 or a BMI of 35 with comorbidities. At this point, Medicare says, we will only pay for this drug if you have a history of heart attack and stroke, because we know the drug is going to improve your life expectancy. But if you don't have that history, you don't qualify. I hope we'll see that. Medicaid actually does cover these medications in some states. It's a state-by-state variation. Short of that, I think we're going to have to have studies showing that people are on these medications for a long time, I mean, three to five years probably will be the window, that they do have a reduction in the expenses for other health expenditures. And as a result, insurers will see, yes, it makes sense to treat excess weight because I can save on the cost of type 2 diabetes or sleep apnea and the like. Some early studies I think that you brought to my attention say the drugs are not cost neutral in the short-term basis of one to two years. I think you're going to have to look longer term. Then I think that there should be competition in the marketplace. As more drugs come online, the drug prices should come down because more will be available. There'll be greater production. Semaglutide, the first drug was $1,300. Zepbound, the second drug Tirzepatide, $1,000. Maybe the third drug will be $800. Maybe the fourth will be $500. And they'll put pressure on each other. But I don't know that to be a fact. That's just my hope. Neither of you as an economist or, nor do you work with the companies that we're talking about. But you mentioned that the high cost puts them out of reach for almost everybody. Why does it make sense for the companies to charge so much then? I mean, wouldn't it make sense to cut the price in half or by two thirds? And then so many more people would use them that the company would up ahead in the long run. Explain that to me. That's what you would think, for sure. And I think that what's happened right now is that is a shortage of these drugs. They cannot produce enough of them. Part of that is the manufacturing of the injector pens that are used to dispense the drug to yourself. I know that Novo Nordisk is building more factories to address this. I assume that Lilly will do the same thing. I hope that over time we will have a larger supply that will allow more people to get on the medication and I hope that the price would come down. Of course, in the U. S. we pay the highest drug prices in the world. Fortunately, given some of the legislation passed, Medicare will be able to negotiate the prices of some of these drugs now. And I think they will negotiate on these drugs, and that would bring prices down across the board. Boy, you know, the companies have to make some pretty interesting decisions, don't they? Because you've alluded to the fact that there are new drugs coming down the road. I'm assuming some of those might be developed and made by companies other than the two that we're talking about. So, so investing in a whole new plant to make more of these things when you've got these competitor drugs coming down the road are some interesting business issues. And that's not really the topic of what we're going to talk about, but it leads to my final question that I wanted to ask both of you. What do you think the future will bring? And what do you see in terms of the pipeline? What will people be doing a year from now or 2 or 5? And, you know, it's hard to have a crystal ball with this, but you two have been, you know, really pioneers and experts on this for many years. You better than anybody probably can answer this question. Bob, let me start with you. What do you think the future will bring? Well, Kelly, I previously mentioned that we finally have this new therapeutic target called the gut brain axis that we didn't know about. And that has really ushered in a whole new range of potential medications. And we're really only at the beginning of this transformation. So not only do we have this GLP 1 and GIP, we have other gut hormones that are also effective not only for weight loss, but other beneficial effects in the body, which will become household names, probably called amylin and glucagon that joins GLP 1. And we not only have these monotherapies like GLP 1 alone, we are now getting triagonists. So, we've got GIP, GLP 1, and glucagon together, which is even amplifying the effect even further. We are also developing oral forms of GLP 1 that in the future you could presumably take a tablet once a day, which will also help bring the cost down significantly and make it more available for individuals. We also have a new generation of medications being developed which is muscle sparing. Tom talked about the importance of being strong and physical function. And with the loss of lean body mass, which occurs with any time you lose weight, you can also lose muscle mass. There's drugs that are also going in that direction. But lastly, let me mention, Kelly, I spend a lot of my time in education. I think the exciting breakthroughs will not be meaningful to the patient unless the professional, the provider and the patient are able to have a nonjudgmental informative discussion during the encounter without stigma, without bias. Talk about the continuum of care available for you, someone living with obesity, and get the medications to the patient. Without that, medications over really sit on the shelf. And we have a lot of more work to do in that area. You know, among the many reasons I admire the both of you is that you've, you've paid a lot of attention to that issue that you just mentioned. You know, what it's like to live with obesity and what people are experiencing and how the stigma and the discrimination can just have devastating consequences. The fact that you're sensitive to those issues and that you're pushing to de-stigmatize these conditions among the general public, but also health care professionals, is really going to be a valuable advance. Thank you for that sensitivity. Tom, what do you think? If you appear into the crystal ball? What does it look like? I would have to agree with Bob that we're going to have so many different medications that we will be able to combine together that we're going to see that it's more than possible to achieve weight losses of 25 to 30 percent of initial body weight. Which is just astonishing to think that pharmaceuticals will be able to achieve what you achieve now with bariatric surgery. I think that it's just, just an extraordinary development. Just so pleased to be able to participate in the development of these drugs at this stage of career. I still see a concern, though, about the stigmatization of weight loss medications. I think we're going to need an enormous dose of medical education to help doctors realize that obesity is a disease. It's a different disease than some of the illnesses that you treat because, yes, it is so influenced by the environment. And if we could change the environment, as you've argued so eloquently, we could control a lot of the cases of overweight and obesity. But we've been unable to control the environment. Now we're taking a course that we have medications to control it. And so, let's use those medications just as we use medications to treat diabetes. We could control diabetes if the food environment was better. A lot of medical education to get doctors on board to say, yes, this is a disease that deserves to be treated with medication they will share that with their patients. They will reassure their patients that the drugs are safe. And that they're going to be safe long term for you to take. And then I hope that society as a whole will pick up that message that, yes, obesity and overweight are diseases that deserve to be treated the same way we treat other chronic illnesses. That's a tall order, but I think we're moving in that direction. BIOS Robert Kushner is Professor of Medicine and Medical Education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, and Director of the Center for Lifestyle Medicine in Chicago, IL, USA. After finishing a residency in Internal Medicine at Northwestern University, he went on to complete a post-graduate fellowship in Clinical Nutrition and earned a Master's degree in Clinical Nutrition and Nutritional Biology from the University of Chicago. Dr. Kushner is past-President of The Obesity Society (TOS), the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN), the American Board of Physician Nutrition Specialists (ABPNS), past-Chair of the American Board of Obesity Medicine (ABOM), and Co-Editor of Current Obesity Reports. He was awarded the ‘2016 Clinician-of-the-Year Award' by The Obesity Society and John X. Thomas Best Teachers of Feinberg Award at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in 2017. Dr. Kushner has authored over 250 original articles, reviews, books and book chapters covering medical nutrition, medical nutrition education, and obesity, and is an internationally recognized expert on the care of patients who are overweight or obese. He is author/editor of multiple books including Dr. Kushner's Personality Type Diet (St. Martin's Griffin Press, 2003; iuniverse, 2008), Fitness Unleashed (Three Rivers Press, 2006), Counseling Overweight Adults: The Lifestyle Patterns Approach and Tool Kit (Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, 2009) and editor of the American Medical Association's (AMA) Assessment and Management of Adult Obesity: A Primer for Physicians (2003). Current books include Practical Manual of Clinical Obesity (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), Treatment of the Obese Patient, 2nd Edition (Springer, 2014), Nutrition and Bariatric Surgery (CRC Press, 2015), Lifestyle Medicine: A Manual for Clinical Practice (Springer, 2016), and Obesity Medicine, Medical Clinics of North America (Elsevier, 2018). He is author of the upcoming book, Six Factors to Fit: Weight Loss that Works for You! (Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, December, 2019). Thomas A. Wadden is a clinical psychologist and educator who is known for his research on the treatment of obesity by methods that include lifestyle modification, pharmacotherapy, and bariatric surgery. He is the Albert J. Stunkard Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and former director of the university's Center for Weight and Eating Disorders. He also is visiting professor of psychology at Haverford College. Wadden has published more than 550 peer-reviewed scientific papers and abstracts, as well as 7 edited books. Over the course of his career, he has served on expert panels for the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. House of Representatives. His research has been recognized by awards from several organizations including the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy and The Obesity Society. Wadden is a fellow of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Obesity Society, and Society of Behavioral Medicine. In 2015, the Obesity Society created the Thomas A. Wadden Award for Distinguished Mentorship, recognizing his education of scientists and practitioners in the field of obesity.

For much of history, the word 'epidemic' applied to infectious diseases. Large numbers of cases of disease caused by organisms such as bacteria and viruses that spread through water, air, or other means, sometimes transmitted from person to person, or back and forth between people and animals. Then came epidemics of chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease - diseases occurring in very large numbers and created not by infectious agents, but by drivers in our day to day lives, such as a bad food environment. A new paper was just published in the PLOS global health literature that I found fascinating. It focuses on another use of the concept of epidemics: market driven epidemics. Let's find out what these are and find out a little bit more about their implications for our health and wellbeing. Our guests today are two of the authors of that paper. Dr. Jonathan Quick is a physician and expert on global health and epidemics. He is an adjunct professor at Duke University's Global Health Institute. Eszter Rimanyi joins us as well. She works on chronic disease and addiction epidemiology at Duke university. Interview Summary Access the PLOS article “Dynamics of combatting market-driven epidemics: Insights from U.S. reduction of cigarette, sugar, and prescription opioid consumption.” So, Jono, let's start with you. Tell us what you mean by market driven epidemics. The pattern is familiar to people. There is a product that that humans like and the business community says we can make a lot of money on this unmet need. And so they do that and they start selling a lot of it. And then people start noticing that this thing that the humans like is killing some of them. And so, the scientists do the public health. And then the business community says these scientists are going to kill the golden goose. They buy up other scientists and try to defend themselves. And then it goes on and on before we really bend the epidemic curves. This pattern of consumer products that have harmful effects, those products are major contributors to the root causes of at least a million deaths a year in the US, and over 20 million deaths worldwide. So, to try to look at this from an epidemic point of view, we first established a case definition. Our definition of market driven epidemic is a significant increase in death, disability and other harmful effects on humans and human health and wellbeing. It's arising from a consumer product whose use has been accelerated by aggressive marketing. Whose harmful effects have been denied or otherwise minimized by producers. And for which effective mitigation is possible but actively opposed by producers. So, we looked at the natural history of this, and we found five phases through which these epidemics pass. There's market development, either inventing a new product, developing a product like prescription opioids, or transforming an existing product like tobacco. Phase two is evidence of harm. First, there's suspicion, astute clinicians, whistleblowers, and then eventually proof of harm. Phase three is corporate resistance. Companies deny harm, seek to discredit accusers, commission counter science, manufacture doubt, mount legal challenges. All the while deaths and social upheaval and economic costs are mounting. And finally, our next phase four is mitigation. We get some regulatory efforts going, and there's a tipping point for the consumption and resulting deaths. And then finally, phase five of this is market adaptation. In a response to decreasing or threatened consumption, companies and consumers typically seek alternatives. Adaptations can be positive or negative. Some are healthier, some are equally or more harmful. Thanks very much for that description. It really helps explain what the concept is all about. You chose three areas of focus. You could have chosen others, but you chose cigarettes, sugar, and prescription opioid use. Why those in particular? We wanted to identify differences in these market driven epidemics in a few product categories. We wanted to look at distinctly different consumer experiences so we could see what worked and what didn't in terms of bending the epidemic curve. We picked nicotine delivery, food, and prescription medicine. And to choose within those categories we established five inclusion criteria. So, number one, the product had to have proven adverse health effects. Number two, there needed to be well documented histories of product development, marketing, mitigation efforts, and so forth. Number three, the product needed to meet the overall case definition. That is, companies knew they were doing harm, continued to do harm, and fought that harm. Number four, there needed to be long term data available for product consumption and associated impact. And number five, most important, we chose products for which mitigation efforts had already resulted in significant sustained reduction in product consumption. Based on these three criteria, cigarettes, sugar, and prescription opioids came out as the ones that we studied. Thanks. I really appreciate that description. And when we get to the punchline in a minute, it's going to be interesting to see whether the behavior of the industry in this natural history that you talked about is similar, given that the substances are so different. We'll get to that in a minute. So Eszter, I'd like to turn to you. What kind of information did you pull together to write this paper? I think I looked at over a thousand different documents. But there were two clear types that I interrogated to pull together all of our background data. The first category was publicly available data, so that could have been a clinical study, epidemiological study, advertisement by the company, CDC or other government reports, mortality data, etc. But then there was also a distinct different type of data that we really looked at and that was really useful for putting together these pictures of the natural history, which was internal documents. In some cases, these could have been leaked by an internal employee, which was the case with the so called 'brown documents' with tobacco. But it also came from sometimes court hearings or as a result of lawsuits that the companies had to release internal data. It was really interesting to compile together the different sides, of the outside look from CDC reports, and then the insider scoop from Purdue Pharma. So, it's a very well rounded, interesting way to find all this data. I admire your effort. It's a big job to do a normal scientific review where you might have 50 papers and you were looking at things that were much harder to obtain and a vast number of things that are really quite different in character. Boy, congratulations for just reading all those things. Tell us what you found. Gosh, so even though there's so many distinct differences between a lot of these epidemics, what we actually found was that there was a lot of narrative similarities. And because of that, we could really create this holistic, but also really well-fitting idea of market driven epidemics. A lot of the corporate strategies were either mirrored, imitated, or in some cases quite literally lifted over because of overlapping ownership between the companies. One of the things that we really wanted to hammer into our article was that producers not only created their product, but they also manufactured doubt. Which means that they created, on purpose, public hesitancy around their product even when they internally knew that it was harmful to health. They wanted the public to be on the fence about what the health impact of their product was. There was a lot of different ways that they achieved that goal. Sometimes it was through showing propaganda films in high schools. Which I still can't believe that happened and then that was legal. But also in different ways, like co-opting science, paying scientists to publish articles in their favor. I know a really famous example of this that has now been public is that two Harvard researchers in cardiovascular disease published saying that sugar was not harmful to health. So, there's a lot of different ways that they achieved it, but the goals overall were very similar by all the companies. You know, you mentioned overlapping ownership. And so, you might have been referring specifically to the ownership of the food companies by the tobacco companies. Correct. Because it happened a while ago, that's not something that was well known. But there's a fascinating history there about how the tobacco industry used its technology to maximize addiction and used that to develop food products and to change the DNA of the food companies in ways that still exist today, even though that ownership ended many years ago. I'm really glad you pointed that out. Yeah, exactly. I think there's this shared idea that there's a turning point for companies. Where they know internally that their product is causing harm. And what really tips them over into becoming market driven epidemics is not actually coming out and saying that there's an issue with their product or not improving it. But you know really digging that information into the dirt and saying no we're going to protect our product and keep giving this out to the public despite the harms. You know, maybe we can come back to this, but the fact that you're finding similarities between these areas suggests that there are contingencies that act on corporate executives that are similar no matter what they're selling. And that's helpful to know because in the future, you can predict what these companies will be doing because there are many more similarities than differences. Jono let me ask you this. You've talked about this appalling period of time between when there are known health consequences of use of some of these things and the time when meaningful action occurs to curb their consumption and to rein in the behavior of the companies. How long is this gap, and what explains it? Kelly, this is one of the most fascinating things about this study. And it really highlights the importance of taking an epidemiologic approach. This is a behavioral epidemic, not a viral one. But it has so many characteristics. One of the key points is that is how important time is. And we see that in any epidemic curve when things start going exponential. If we take cigarettes, okay, the harms of cigarettes had long been suspected. But the first credible scientific publication was by a US physician, Isaac Adler, in a 400-page 1912 book where he first associated cigarettes with cancers. Fast forward over 40 years to British scientists Doll and Hill, and they did the epidemiology which definitively and convincingly links cigarette cancer with smoking deaths. So that gap was incredible and so that's one of the first examples. Once those articles were published, others followed the initial one. It took about a decade until the 1964 Surgeon General's report on smoking and health. And that was quickly followed by a series of federal actions. So, 1964, '63, '64 was the tipping point. Five decades after the initial suspicion. For sugar, the journey from suspicion to compelling evidence was more complex. There was a big debate between researchers, clinicians, scientific journalists, that began in the '50s. A diabetologist from Britain John Yudkin, argued in the 1957 Lancet piece, it's sugar that's equal or larger than fats. An American physiologist, Enzo Keyes, says au contraire. He said it on the cover of Time Magazine. From 1950 to 2000, there was this debate back and forth. Finally, sugar consumption in the US peaked in '99 when a sugar wary group of researchers, journalists, and advocacy groups began becoming really vocal. And that was the tipping point. The actual compelling science, it came a few years after the preponderance of folks engaged said, no, it's sugar. You got to do something. And finally, with prescription opioids: 1997, rural doctors Art Van Zee and another fellow, alerted Purdue Pharma, the producer of OxyContin, about rising overdoses. A year later, there was a publication that said the sustained release version of OxyContin, which was a hydrocodone that was sustained release, that they first tried it with morphine, and they had evidence from there that the sustained release drugs were a problem. And again, it was over a decade later that mounting prescription opioid deaths in the US convinced CDC to declare an epidemic of [00:14:00] opioid prescribing. This gap, if you look at it, to summarize, for cigarettes, the journey from credible suspicion of harm to consumption tipping point, five decades. Sugar, four decades. Prescription opioids, fourteen years. But the key thing is that the power of collective action, because today, only one in eight Americans smoke, and it was nearly 50 percent at the peak. The US consumption of sugar, which increased by 30 pounds between the year 1950 and the year 2000, when all this debate was going on. We picked up an extra 30 pounds of sugar consumption per person per year, but within two decades, that was cut back. We gave back 15 pounds of that. And now prescription opioids have gone back to a medically defendable level, having risen to 8 to 10 times that in the peak of the prescription opioid epidemic. Hearing you talk about that, it's nice that there's sometimes light at the end of the tunnel. But boy, it's a long tunnel. And that you can count the, the number of deaths during that tunnel period of time in the millions. It's just unspeakable how much damage, preventable damage gets caused. Now, and I'd like to, when I come back to wind up this podcast, I'd like to ask each of you, what do you think might be done to help narrow that or shrink that time gap and to prevent these long delays and to help address these corporate determinants of health. But before I get there, Eszter, you know, I'd like to follow up on the conversation we had earlier. You know where it's clear that sugar and tobacco and opioids are all quite different substances, but the companies, the natural history of these things looks quite similar. And you mentioned in particular the industry attempt to plant doubt. To create doubt in the minds of people about the stories they were hearing of the dangers of these things, whether they were true or not. And were there other things that the industry was doing during that time that you noticed might have similarities across these areas? Oh my gosh, so many. I have to go through all the examples in my head and make sure that I have a very crisp message out of all of them One of the ones that is interestingly being employed today in a very different epidemic with firearms and guns, is this idea of whose choice is the consumer product in its use. And today there's a lot of ideas that were initially created by tobacco, and then used by food, that are currently being used by gun lobbyists talking about individual freedoms. So with some of the previous market driven epidemics, like tobacco and prescription opioids, it's a way easier argument to make that the individual at some level does not choose to use the product. Maybe in the beginning, the first couple uses were their individual choice, but then there's on purpose, a really strong withdrawal response in the body and socially. The individual kind of had to continue using the product. But some of those ideas are being used today with firearms. The idea that somebody has the liberty to use this product or to purchase this product, which undoubtedly causes harm. You know, it's probably not really good for public health if this argument exists. And, in the cases with firearms, which I think is a little bit ironic and sad, a lot of the people that buy guns for their own self-defense actually experience those guns turned around and used on them, usually by the perpetrators of aggression. These ideas of individual freedoms usually backfire to the people that are consuming the products. It's interesting to me that a lot of these ideas were initially created for very different products, but are being used in the current day. So interesting to hear you say that because here we have yet another area where there are similarities with the firearms. And the companion argument to that idea that it's your personal liberty to use these things is the argument that there's overreach by government, big brother, things like that. When government wants to, you know. Yeah. It's so interesting. So one point on that. The market economy was never meant to be a free for all. Because the reality is that the market economy has brought billions of people out of poverty and saved more lives than most health interventions. But the problem is, as I said, it wasn't meant to be a free for all. And it depends on having good consumer information and when companies are distorting it, they're basically taking away the informed choice, which is critical. The other part of it is, when they are purposely engineering their products for maximal addictiveness, which is done with clicks and social media, and was done purposefully with the nicotine content in cigarettes, then you don't have a real informed choice. The freedom of choice. You've had your brain pleasure center hijacked by, by purposely addictive products. Right, and you didn't mention food, but there's another example of substances that are created to hijack the reward pathway in the brain. Absolutely. I'd like to ask each of you, what in the heck can we do about this? I mean, you've pointed out a massive problem. Where the number of lives that are sacrificed because of corporate behavior, just enormous numbers. What can we do about it? Jono, I will start with you. And, you know, you've written this very highly regarded book called The End of Epidemics. And you've talked about things like bending epidemic curves and accelerating shifts. But tell us more. What do you think can be done in the case of these market driven epidemics like we're talking about? Well, I think it's important to realize that both kinds of epidemics, viral and behavioral, are communicable. Both involve a lot of rumor, blame, uncertainty. And as we've talked about both cause deaths in the thousands or millions. And we haven't talked so much about the significant social disruption, and the cost. Trillions of dollars in economic losses and additional health burdens. So let me focus on four kinds of key actors because when it comes down to it, it's groups that that really start acting against these things. The first is the research community and its funders. You won't be surprised given the time it takes to get the evidence because what's clear is without clear evidence of product associated harm, we're not going to move the political agendas. We're not going to get public support for epidemic curves. So, we have really good researchers working in these areas. They need to guard against groupthink. That's what happened with our salt sugar 50 years of chaos discussion. And conflict of interest because companies do try to undermine the database. The second is the funders of research, foundations and all, and national health services need to have an early warning system and an annual research roadmap in this area. I think Eszter will probably talk about the importance of public health leaders, because she's looked a lot at that. Another community though is the different civil society groups that are active. Because there's Mothers Against Drunk Driving, there's the Sandy Hook group on gun shooting, and there are a variety of interest groups. But what we realize is that there are lots of different strategies for how you move decision makers and all. So, more information sharing from those groups, civil society groups and all across. And finally, companies. It's actually in their interest to be more forthcoming earlier on. With tobacco, with prescription opioids, and now with baby powder, with talc, what we're seeing is companies at risk of bankruptcy paying billions of dollars. And if their CEOs aren't looking at that, then their board needs to be. Can I ask you a quick question about that? When the chickens come home to roost, and those bad things befall a company, you know, really seriously damaging lawsuits, or the possibility that perhaps sometime the executives will go to jail for corporate malfeasance. You know, the behavior that caused all the millions of deaths occurred 15 CEOs before them. So, if you're a CEO and you know you have a certain shelf life as CEO, you want to maximize profit during that time. And by the time anything happens negatively to the company, you're on vacation, you're retired, or you're gone. So how do you deal with that? Here's the thing, it's having criminal and civil liability that can go back to the individuals involved. From a different sector, an example. The German executive who was head of Volkswagen over a decade ago when they cheated on their environmental issues. He's been criminally charged today, a decade later. And I think that sort of personal accountability, it'll be hard to get, but that's the kind of thing that will make CEOs and their boards, if their boards also become responsible for hiding information in a way that it resulted in deaths. I think that, unfortunately, that kind of hammer, although it's going to be hard to get, that's probably what's needed. Okay, that makes good sense to me, and I'm glad I asked you that question. And I appreciate the answer. Eszter, anything you'd like to add to what Jono said about what could be done. Yes. One of the amazing things about market driven epidemics was when we were creating the paper, we created a table of all the different types of actors that could have very successful mitigation. And that table actually ended up being cut from the paper because it was so long that the editor said that it might distract from the rest of the paper. But that's actually a very positive message because there are so many actors that can have positive change, I'm going to highlight a couple of them because I think there's a few things here that are fairly good core messages that we can take away. One of the ones is the need for a trusted public health authoritative voice. I think nowadays there's a lot of commotion over how much we trust the government. And how much we trust, for example, the head of the CDC and the types of data they're talking about in terms of public health. But in the past, when we had a very trusted public health voice, that was really crucial in getting consumers to change their behavior. For example, in the 1964 Surgeon General's report, seemingly overnight changed people's behavior. Before then, smoking was a common, everyday social event. And after that, people started viewing it as a deadly, bad habit that some people had. And that type of change was really hard to get in the modern day. When we were talking about public health crises that were viral. So, I think one of the things that we really need to get again in the modern day is this trust between the people and public health voices so that when we have such good forthcoming information those statements actually mean something. So much so that the consumers change their behavior. Another thing is with us individuals who maybe aren't part of public health, we actually play a pretty big role in how much other people consume these different products. I remember when I was researching cigarettes in particular and the intersection with social media. I think if somebody under 18 saw a peer smoking and posted that to Instagram, that doubled their likelihood of trying out smoking for the first time. You have to be really careful with how you show yourself in the presence of others, and online too with a new digital age. Because you might tip the scale in somebody trying out a product for the first time. Which then if it has a very strong withdrawal effect, you know that person might have to might feel that they have to continue using that product to avoid withdrawal. I think as an individual, you can be more mindful about if you have a certain product use that you don't want others to also pick up, to maybe not do it or not show it as much so that other people aren't interested in doing that. Okay, the last really positive message I have is that I think as my generation gets into higher positions of power, even within corporations, I think Gen Z and Gen Alpha and other young people have the sense of responsibility for others and for the planet. And I think if there was a young person in power in a corporation and saw that oh no this product that we've had is now there's evidence that's harmful. I think there would be more accountability and more of a want to do something that's good for the planet and for people. I'm hopeful that, maybe 50, 60 years ago, if people were more in favor of kind of brushing things under the rug, then maybe the young generation won't be as into those ideas. And we'll actually want to be accountable and do what's right. BIOS Jonathan D. Quick, MD, MPH (“Jono”) is adjunct Professor of Global Health at the Duke Global Health Institute, where he teaches global health policy, serves on foundation grant advisory boards, and mentors students. Dr. Quick's current research and writing focuses on market-driven epidemics, from tobacco to opioids to social media.  He is also Affiliated Faculty in Global Health Equity, Brigham and Women's Hospital/Global Health & Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Quick is the author of The End of Epidemics: The Looming Threat to Humanity and How to Stop It  (Australian, Italian, Korean, South Asia, U.K. and U.S. 2018/2020/2021 editions), creator of MDS-3: Managing Access to Medicines and Health Technologies and an author of  The Financial Times Guide to Executive Health, Preventive Stress Management in Organizations, as well as more than 100 other books, chapters, and articles in leading medical journals.  Eszter Rimanyi is a chronic disease epidemiologist working with Dr. Jonathan D. Quick at the Duke Global Health Institute. Her research interest centers around Market-Driven Epidemics, including tobacco, sugar, opioids, and breastmilk substitute/infant formula. She is currently working on applying the market-driven epidemics approach to new epidemics, such as social media and firearms. Rimanyi has authored scientific papers in journals such as PloS Global Public Health and MDPI.

In 2021, American University and 15 partner institutions across the U. S. launched the Multiscale RECIPES Research Network with the goal of transforming our wasted food system into a sustainable and resilient one. Food loss and waste is a complex problem spanning societal issues such as food insecurity and food recovery, sustainable farming, food packaging and transportation, food marketing, sales and consumer preferences, family dynamics, and corporate profits, among others. A fascinating part of the RECIPES Network vision is a purposeful focus on convergence, making the research process more effective and creative in designing solutions to big problems such as these. In a recent article in the journal Ecology and Society, team members evaluated how well the network's intentional convergence efforts have worked thus far. Interview Summary Norbert Wilson - It is my great pleasure to welcome my colleague, Amanda Wood, who is a research scientist at the World Food Policy Center. Amanda Wood - Thank you, Norbert. I'm looking forward to this discussion today. Our guests come from the University of Illinois Institute of Technology Food Systems Action Lab. Weslynne Ashton is a professor of environmental management and sustainability at Illinois Tech and co directs the Food Systems Action Lab. Azra Sungu is a design researcher and strategist at the Food Systems Action Lab, who just defended her doctoral dissertation. So, our biggest congratulations to Dr. Sungu. Thank you so much for being here today. So first, I want to start by saying the RECIPES Network has gone about their work a little bit differently than most traditional academic projects by taking a convergence approach. Weslynne, would you talk about what convergence is in research, and why is this approach useful for tackling complex societal challenges like food waste? Weslynne Ashton - Convergence is an approach that really tries to integrate the best of many different disciplines. The way that they see, approach, and tackle problems. And tries to integrate them in a really holistic way, right? Like, we often operate in silos and universities and this is a way of trying to get out of that. But more than working side by side on the same topics, it really tries to pull ways of working and ways of knowing across these different disciplines. For the topic of food waste, which as Norbert described is incredibly complex, right? There are so many different dimensions. They're scientific, natural science, social science, anthropological, political science. So, there are these technical aspects, economic aspects, social aspects, as well as cultural and spiritual aspects that we really don't talk about that often. And so, a convergence approach tries to say, how can we bring together the way all of these different disciplines approach understanding and developing solutions so that the solutions we develop can be more holistic. And more likely to take hold because they are considering these different perspectives. Amanda - A lot of individuals might not see food waste as this complex challenge. They throw their leftovers in the bin and that's food waste to them. But as you say, challenges of food waste and food loss extend all the way across the food system. So, we definitely need that more holistic approach. Thanks for that bigger picture. Norbert, over to you. Norbert - Azra, I'd like to turn it over to you and ask you a question about design. And I've got to say, this is the first project that I've ever worked on where I've worked with design scholars. And so, I'm excited for you to share with our audience what actually is design. And how do you see design fitting in the context of the work that we've been doing? Azra Sungu - Thank you. Yes, it's been very exciting for me to part of such a transdisciplinary group as well. And probably in over 12 years of design education that I got, that was the most frequent question. Like my family and everyone that's asking, like, what is it that you do actually? So, I think it's really important that we clarify that because design in this context is a little bit different than the design of products and services. In a way, we could say that it carries similar principles, but in recent years, design has been gaining visibility as a creative and collaborative problem-solving approach. So, some of the key mindsets, methods, and processes of design have been distilled into more accessible toolkits that allow more people from various backgrounds and expertise to get together and collaboratively explore problems of different kinds and approach them in more creative ways. So, we can say that, yeah, this adaptation of design found applications in different fields, such as entrepreneurship. We see that picking up in education or even apply to issues related to social justice. And I would say that what makes it different from other problem-solving approaches is that it centers a deep understanding of humans, their needs, their interactions, their behaviors in every step of the process. So, from framing the problem to testing out the solutions. And in design, we combine this human centered approach with a hands-on process where we iteratively explore a solution by making things and experimenting in a more open-ended way, rather than like planning everything and applying the solution at the end. So, in the context of convergence, I think of convergence as a collaborative search for ways for reshaping the systems that we live in. And if I pick back on what Weslynne just said, yeah, the design can help ground this search in the real lives of people so that the solutions we envision can be adopted and also actualized by people who are driving this change on the ground. So, it can support a more action oriented approach to knowledge production. But another role of design, which we speak more of in the paper, is designing the conditions for this form of collaborative research and knowledge production. Designing the spaces where people can build relations to build really confidence to think outside of the box. And I see it as giving people the tools and processes to tap into their collective creativity. And that you can't really get out of a toolkit. That's a deeper and relational process. Norbert - Thank you for sharing that. And I am really pleased that we've had the opportunity to not only work with you all, but folks at MIKA to think about design in this network. And can you give us an example of how you all were able to use design to help us work better together, to move us closer to convergence? Azra – Yes. I guess in the first two year of the RECIPES where we explored design's role in the context of convergence, it's applied more to the second part of design's role that I mentioned earlier. So, creating the conditions for convergence to happen. And I think we're in the process of shifting to applying design to the solutions and like this iterative process itself. I would say that there are five components that we identified in our investigation. And I always like to joke that like, we can't just throw people in a room and expect them to collaborate and come up with results. And let's remember RECIPES as a network started during the pandemic. We didn't even get a room to be together in until two years later. So, in this context, a key role of design was really convening people and connecting them to build that capacity and trust in each other to collaborate. And like trust one another to jump into a very open ended and ambiguous form of inquiry. Because this is what happens when we tackle such complex challenges as wasted food. And the other role is perhaps, yeah, in this exploration giving a shared vision to people to move towards. And enticing possibilities in this vision that may not be in our immediate horizon. So again, like how we think outside of the box and envision possibilities that may not seem evident. But that might be the root of more transformative change. And the third role is probably one that relates to storytelling and visualizing. So, as we gather a group of people with such mixed disciplinary expertise and mixed personal backgrounds, we don't necessarily talk the same language. Even if you're approaching the same problem. So even when we talk about wasted food, it might seem so evident, but we might focus on completely different sides of it. And yeah, we have like mathematicians, chemists, engineers, social scientists in the same room. And when we're collaborating with such mixed group of expertise, design can create the interfaces, the visual language for us to be able to speak of the same thing and communicate ideas. But also, like foster flow and dissemination of ideas between these different conversations by telling the stories and capturing the ideas and really distilling them in a more relatable and accessible way. Because God knows we have a lot of meetings, and somebody needs like shepherd those conversations. And the last ones are probably like making and prototyping. Which I think is very, very core to design practice, right? We just materialize things, whether it's in a visual format or whether it's like really getting hands on and making something that we got a taste of in our first network meeting that was in person. I think one process where this manifested really beautifully was the creation of guiding principles and community norms that was a very collaborative and co-creative process where Network members really shaped how they would like to work together and create together and set the conditions for that. So, in this process, designers collaborated with other researchers in the network to set these workshops to gather different perspectives and ideas of network members on what it means to be in a good collaborative research environment. And this was a very iterative process. We created multiple drafts, materialized this, and brought that back to the network and gathered input and feedback. So, it was I think along a process of over a year, it was taking shape. And at the end we had this artifact that was co-created with people from various areas of expertise and had everyone's input that helped lay the groundwork for a more authentic and genuine collaboration. Norbert - I want to pick up on one thing you said, Azra. Yes, there were a lot of meetings. So many meetings. But they were really important for us to figure out how to work. But one of the things I found really challenging being a part of the network and as I interacted with the design process is I wasn't comfortable with the storytelling. I wasn't comfortable with this sort of new way of being because it wasn't the way I was trained, right? But over time, I found it sort of expansive. And I love there was a conversation we had before we started our recording, this idea of being my whole self in the process. Of being my whole self in the project. And I, I really have enjoyed, and I will use the word 'enjoyed' working with this network because I'm fully myself in many of these settings. So, I want to thank you all for helping us do that and opening up new ways to work with other people beyond the network. Azra - Thank you. Yes. And a question I think that they ask very often when hiring designers is like, are you comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity? And I always like to say, no. Like nobody's really comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity. But I think it's really about building the confidence to jump into that together. And that happens by building trust. It's not just about producing knowledge and transferring that between one another, but how do we approach this in a more relational way? And I think that's the transformative shift that's happening with a more convergent approach to research. Great. Thank you. Amanda - Sounds like it was a transformative experience for many involved. Good to hear. Weslynne, let me shift back to you so we can dig into some of the results of the paper. In your view, how did the integration of design really enable the network's convergent approach? And is there anything that didn't quite work? Weslynne - Yes, so Azra's pointed out to several things that the design team did. I would add that we had a dedicated design team, right? That was really important because there was this group who that one would help to facilitate these meetings, right? And get people to come in, structure exercises to get people to talk to each other. Create whiteboards where people could, you know, say what they're thinking, whether that's in a larger group or in a smaller group. And then behind the scenes, they would distill and synthesize all these whiteboards from all the breakout groups into something that was actionable, right? And I think like, that's really one of the powers of design. It's not just talk, right? It's how do we take this talk, take people's ideas, and synthesize them into something that we can create actions around, right? So, the example that Azra gave of the guiding principles and community norms, you know, looked like several brainstorming sessions and breakout groups where people had a document, a kernel to react to. And weigh in on what are the values and the principles that they thought were important for us to have in this network to guide how we worked, not only with each other, but also with external partners. And to iterate, right, iterate on those prototypes and bring something back to the group that, that we can hold up and say, yeah, this is something that, you know, like we all agree to at least for now, right? In a year we might learn something else and want to come back to this and change it. But having that dedicated team was really important. I'd say another thing that convergence puts forward is the importance of integrating the next generation of scientists, of researchers, into practice. And so, I think one of the things that we did well in the structure of the network. So, we were structured in different thematic clusters. But there was a student cluster where all the students from all of the disciplines came together, including the design students. And it turned out that the design students gave some training to the other students in design methods in facilitation. And that actually I think is perhaps one of the most beautiful examples of convergence in the network. So that the students were able to understand each other's work in a much deeper way. And think about how they might use design in this work. So, what design did well, and reiterating on what Azra said, it's really creating these enabling conditions, right? For people to feel comfortable, to show up as their whole selves. To make it okay to take a risk and say something crazy, something out of the box. Because someone would be able to synthesize that into a hole later on. I think there were perhaps like a couple instances, like within some of these thematic clusters where we had initially thought, okay, we're going to put a designer in each of these clusters and use that as a way to integrate some design thinking into each of these groups. But there were some of the groups that were like really so highly technical and so highly focused that it was hard for the designer, who does not have that technical background, to get a toehold in that group. And so, where we kind of merged is that we had our co-design cluster as the primary place where people who we're designers or we're curious about design could come to learn. And then can take that back to the groups that they were working in. Rather than trying to plug design into every single one of the clusters. Amanda - I really appreciate these insights, especially underscoring the importance of having specific roles to help facilitate. I think, often as researchers when you're applying for grants, either the funder doesn't allow you to apply for a facilitator role, or you think, oh, we have too many important other researchers that we need to fund. And I think this project was a great example that, I think Azra said it before, collaboration doesn't just happen when you throw people in a room. And this project really highlighted the value of having those design experts in the group. Helping everyone along on that journey. I hope that these learnings can go out to both funders and other research groups. But I'd like to ask both of you a question now. In the paper, you write that the pairing of convergence and design is a natural fit, but not necessarily a seamless one. What kind of tensions or challenges did the Network face when using design to foster convergence? And Weslynne, let's start with you. Weslynne - One of the important tensions, I think, is on this role of a designer, right? So, often when designers show up in spaces, it's as a graphic designer. So, someone who's visualizing the process making illustrations. It's as a facilitator, right? So, someone who's structuring the conversation to be more productive, to help people be more collaborative. And the tension that we see is that that's not the only role of design, right? Design research in and of itself is an important research area that adds value to projects, right? And whether that is using a human centered design research approach, right? Where we're plugging in designers into a research project. For example, to learn about how employees are behaving, right? And if we wanted to change a particular food waste prevention strategy in grocery stores, we need to engage the employees to understand their perspectives, right? So, designers help to integrate that approach as a research method. And so, you know, this tension here is that we can have some designers working as facilitators of this network convergence, but we also need designers as researchers who are contributing to the research questions and research methods that we're trying to converge in the process. I'll say one more and then I'll pass to Azra to, to see what she would add. This is a National Science Foundation funded project, right? And there is an inherent tension that the type of research that NSF tends to fund is very STEM focused, right? So, it's science, technology, engineering, math. And there is social science, but certainly, you know, like, we have a dominance of science and technology as the predominant set of disciplines in this group. And so that means that the social scientists, the designers are kind of at the fringes. And one of our challenges was to really create a space where all of these different disciplines have the ability to come in on an equal footing. I'm sure Azra would like to add a couple more. Azra - Yeah, thank you. I could build up on what you just said about like how design's role is understood. Yeah, when I was first talking about design, I talked about how toolkits made it more accessible. Like processes of human centered design and design thinking to be learned and adopted by people who are non-designers, and really gain more visibility to design. It was a blessing, but also a barrier for people to understand broader expertise of design, right? Like what, what we learned in 12 years of school cannot necessarily be translated to toolkits. And there is in the design field itself, over the past decade, there has been different branches that are emerging that are specifically dealing with the complex issues that we try to tackle through convergence research. So, we have specific areas of expertise. Like, systemic design, who tries to use design processes to understand systemic dynamics and patterns. We have transition design who tries to understand how long-term transition processes can be fostered in more creative and inclusive ways. Or we have life centered design that some of the researchers from MIKA are leading that are going beyond human centered design approach, but like saying, how can we center the life itself? How can we consider the needs of non-human beings in our design processes? And I think it's going to be a lot longer process for like these different areas of expertise of design to gain more visibility. But it's also, yeah, a mutual understanding that gets fostered as we work together. And perhaps the second thing I could add, I've been talking a lot about unlearning and unmaking recently. And it's probably the stage that I met at the end of PhD journey, where I realized how much unlearning it took. And I think the same applies to convergence research, because here we are trying to cultivate a completely different way of working that goes beyond disciplinary boundaries, that goes beyond geographic boundaries that sometimes goes beyond like the hierarchies that we're used to in academia. And there are certain structures and mindsets that come from traditional scholarship that can get into way of such authentic collaboration and open-ended way of working, right? We work with a certain funding structure. We work with certain expectations of progress and success from academia. And that might conflict sometimes with like a very open-ended exploration and experimentation that might also include failure and not getting anywhere at the end. So, yeah, I think there are some structures and mindsets that we need to reevaluate. We want to cultivate a broader culture of convergence. Amanda - Thank you. I have to admit as a researcher, I was probably one who did not appreciate all of the nuances of design. So, this has been a very enlightening conversation. But also, just the emphasis that this is going to take time. It's not necessarily that you get in your first convergent project and wow, you've now done the perfect model of convergence. You're learning as you go. As you said, sometimes failure is involved. And so, it's just the journey that you're on. Thank you so much for those reflections. Norbert - Weslynne, I want to come back to you and just think about something that was already said. This idea of we can't just simplify design as a series of tools that you could just kind of pick up and put into something else. And appreciating the complexity, the richness of what design as a discipline is, I'm interested to know how do we best use design, recognizing that it's a huge area? How do we use it authentically to address issues like convergence in the research team? And I want to even push that a little bit further. I mean, because some of our listeners are not researchers. They're not part of research teams, but they're designing policy. They're designing or they're a part of policy efforts. I'd be interested to think about what design can offer to any sort of group of people coming together to solve complicated challenges. Weslynne - I'm going to bring this into my teaching because I think like as a lecturer in a design school, one of the things that, that I emphasize in thinking about systems, thinking about how designers show up, is that there are many different types of expertise, right? So, there's our professional, educational expertise. There's the expertise of lived experiences. And it's often the case that we are biased in terms of one being more important than the other. And I tried to train my students to think about, like, what are their own biases and assumptions coming into situations. So that they can more authentically create space for different viewpoints and different ways of being. So, if we're trying to map systems and map all of the forces that are important for not only understanding a problem, and not just kind of the symptom of the problem that we see, but the real patterns and structures that are the root cause of those problems. That we have to kind of create a space where people can feel more comfortable to really explore more of those, those root causes. I think in applying design and a convergent research context, and a policy solution development process, that designers can help to create the conditions, create a space, for people from different perspectives to come into that space and be comfortable bringing their knowledge, their ways of being, their ways of knowing into that context. And that's a skill, right? That is a facilitation skill to help people show up in, in that way. I think that there are also these tensions that we came across in this Network, in the course of doing this research, where, you know, we found that it's really important to create a space for reflexivity. So that it's not just about creating these outputs and it's not just about these tasks. But creating a space where people have the time to reflect on what's happening, well, what has happened, and how they can then integrate that back into their practice, right? There can be these cycles of convergence, but there's also a need for divergence, right? And giving people the space to express what they're interested in, do the types of work that they're most interested in. And then come back together to say, okay, how can we bring these things together? I see design as really helping to play an important role in reframing questions. In helping groups dig deeper and reach more robust understanding of the challenges that they face. And then help to make the solutions more actionable, right? And that's not just as a research output. It's not just as a research paper. But really having solutions that work for a diversity of people. Norbert - I'm grateful for the way you've explained what design is. Both you and Azra have explained what design is and what it can do for us as members of society. And I just think about the current political and social moments that we're in and how design has a role to play in helping us, as you talked about, reframing problems, and finding solutions that benefit a broad swath of society. I didn't realize I was going to become an evangelist for designers. And I'm grateful for the work that you all are helping us think differently about how we do research or how we engage the larger community. BIOS   Weslynne Ashton is a professor of environmental management and sustainability at Illinois Institute of Technology, with joint appointments at the Stuart School of Business and the Institute of Design. She is the co-director of the Food Systems Action Lab at Illinois Institute of Technology.  Dr. Ashton is a sustainable systems scientist, whose research, teaching and practice are oriented around transitioning our socio-ecological systems towards sustainability and equity. She studies the adoption of socially and environmentally responsible strategies in business, and the role of innovation and entrepreneurship in addressing social and environmental challenges. Her research is grounded in industrial ecology and the circular economy. Her current work focuses on increasing sustainability and equity in urban food systems, and developing regenerative economies in post-industrial regions, newly industrializing countries and small island states. Azra Sungu is a design researcher and strategist at the Illinois Institute of Technology ID Food Systems Action Lab. Her research focuses on narrative-focused approaches for cultivating radical transition imaginaries. Her work uses design to navigate complexity, surface patterns and discover new pathways. Dr. Sungu earned her doctorate from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Now more than ever, it's important to challenge the world's food and beverage manufacturers to address nutrition issues like obesity and undernutrition. Today, we're going to discuss the 2024 Global Access to Nutrition Index, a very important ranking system that evaluates companies on their nutrition related policies, product portfolios, marketing practices, and engagement with stakeholders. The index is an accountability strategy produced by ATNI, the Access to Nutrition Initiative, a global nonprofit foundation seeking to drive market change for nutrition. Our guest today is Greg Garrett, Executive Director of ATNI. Interview Summary You know, I very much admire the work you and your colleagues have done on this index. It fills such an important need in the field and I'm eager to dive in and talk a little bit more about it. So, let's start with this. You know, we've all heard of the concept of social determinants of health and more recently, people have begun talking about corporate determinants of health. And your organization really is focused on corporate determinants of nutrition. Let's start with a question that kind of frames all this. What's the role of industry in nutrition, according to the way you're looking at things? And how does the Global Index shine a light on this topic? Thanks for the question. We're working primarily quite downstream with large manufacturers and retailers. But we hope to affect change across the value chain by working with that group. Of course, when we talk about private sector in food, that's a very, very broad terminology that we're using. It could include farmers on the one hand, looking all the way upstream, all the way through to SMEs, aggregators, processors, manufacturers. SMEs are what? Small and medium enterprises, small and medium enterprises, local ones. All the way through to the multinational food and beverage manufacturers. But also catering organizations and restaurants. When we talk about business what we're trying to do is ensure that business cares about portability, and access to safe and nutritious food. And I think we can say pretty safely, based on the data which we'll talk about, that the health aspects of food are still not as, they're not at the forefront like they should be. Yet. We'll dive in and talk a little bit more about what the index is and what it shows in a minute. But let's start with a kind of broader question. What is the role of diet and consumption of processed foods in influencing health? Yes, so they say now one in five deaths are related to poor diet. It's arguably now the biggest risk factor related to global morbidity and mortality. We've seen in the last 20 years a slight slowing down of our efforts to combat malnutrition and undernutrition. Whereas we've seen over nutrition, obesity, really taking off. And that's not just in high income countries, but also low- and middle-income countries. So, you know, it might be too little good food and that can lead to at the extreme end of things wasting. It might be too little micronutrients, which can lead to all kinds of micronutrient deficiencies or hidden hunger that leads to many adverse outcomes. Including, for example, cognitive decline or reduced immune system. And then, in terms of diabetes and obesity, we're seeing that really skyrocket. Not only in countries where we have excessive food intake, but also in low- and middle-income countries where they have too much food with a lot of, say, empty calories. Not enough nutrients that are needed. In fact, the recent numbers that we've been working with, it looks like in the last 20 years, obesity rates have gone from about 7.9 percent to 15.9 percent. And by 2030, it might be that 20 percent of global population is considered obese if we don't mitigate that. Right, and of course that number is many, many times higher in the developed countries. So, you've got a tough job. You talked about the complexity of the food industry going all the way to the farmers, to the big companies, and caterers even, and things. And a lot of different health outcomes are involved. How in the world do you construct an index from all that? Why don't you tell us what the Global Index is, and then some of what you found in the most recent report. Yes, so the Global Index, we've been running it for 11 years since ATNI was founded. And it has gone through multiple iterations. This latest one was the biggest we've done and we tried to capture about a quarter of the world's market. So, what we did is we took the 30 largest food and beverage manufacturers by revenue. We looked at 52,000 of their products, and that's where we know the market share was about 23 percent global market share. We profiled the foods. We tried to understand their governance structures and how much nutrition features in the way they run their business. We tried to understand, for example, how they market the foods. Are they marketing them responsibly, according to the World Health Organization guidelines? Really dive deep. It's dozens and dozens of indicators where we ask lots of questions of the companies over a 10-month period. And, by doing that, we hope to understand how financially material is nutrition to these companies. We want to give something of use, not only for the companies, but to policymakers. Because we know there's a big role for policymakers to both incentivize the production and the marketing of healthy foods, but also disincentivize unhealthy foods. We want this to be useful for investors. So, we spend a lot of time, through collaborative engagements, working with the shareholders of these companies as well so that they can invest more responsibly in the food company. And then the other group that we hope to eventually work with are the consumer associations. The groups that would represent consumers so that they can put appropriate pressure on the demand side, you know. They can demand healthier food. It's not that we believe by running an index somehow companies are going to start doing everything right. No. We want to provide data and analysis to the sector so that all the stakeholders can use it to help influence change. That makes perfect sense to have some data driven enterprise to figure out what's actually going on. Otherwise, you're just having to go on intuition. So, what did the most recent index find? Right, so out of those 30 companies, what did we find? There's some good news. Let's start with the good news before we get into the bad news. There's maybe more bad news than good news. In aggregate, we're actually now seeing that 34 percent of the revenue derived from the products that we profiled, those 52,000 products, is based on healthier sales. Meaning 34 percent could be considered healthier foods. That doesn't sound great, maybe, but consider just 4 years ago when we ran this index, it was at 27%. So, there's some marginal increase and maybe if we can accelerate things, and that's what we're trying to do, it's our big strategic objective. We hope that by 2030, we could say that at least half of business' revenue is coming from healthier food options. There's a lot of changes that need to take place to get to that point, but some companies are doing it. Also, we noticed a lot more companies are now starting to use a government endorsed nutrient profile model to define the healthiness of the food products, to measure and monitor the healthiness of their food portfolios, and then to disclose that. That's really good. It's the beginning. First step is measure, disclose. The second step would be put targets on that and actually start to get substantive change towards 2030. But there was a lot of unfortunate news too. We had some backsliding from some of the major companies. For example, low- and middle-income countries actually had the lowest health score. What we think is happening, based on the data we looked at, is that if you're a low-income country, you're getting the lowest healthiness score of these products in your country. So, brand X would be slightly healthier in Europe, but less healthy in the low-income country. So there's a need for regulation there. Can I stop and ask you a question about that? I've got a million questions just flying out of my head that I'm dying to ask. But what you reminded me of is the history of the tobacco industry. When the policies came into play, like very high taxes and banning smoking in public places in the developed countries, US specifically, the smoking rates went way down. But the companies made more money than ever because they just went outside the US. Especially the developing countries and were selling their products. So, it sounds like the food companies might be engaged in a similar enterprise. But why in these countries would they be pushing their least healthy foods so aggressively? I'll start with the facts, because there's some speculation here. But the fact is, if you look at your own monitored data, the highest growth of the modern food retailers is in Africa. So, you've got, for example, 80 to 300 percent growth over the last 5 years in Africa of these modern food retail shops. And in Asia, that's, that's already happened. Still happening in some countries. So, you have enormous opportunity for packaged foods, right? Because that's usually what they're selling, these retailers. I think you have some aspiration going on there, too. I think there's consumers who aspire to have convenient foods. They're more affordable now as incomes increase in those settings. Now, regulation is definitely, in general, in those countries, not as mature as it might be in Europe when it comes to colorants, and taxing, say, sugar sweet beverages. So, what you've asked, I think there's some truth to it. I don't want to come out and say that that's exactly what's happening, but we ran the numbers and the healthiness score. So, we use a five-star rating system. The Health Star rating system, one to five. Anything 3.5 or above, we would consider healthier in a diet. 3.4 and below would be considered unhealthy. And the score in low-income countries was 1.8. And in middle to high income, it was 2.4. So, it's quite a, quite a big difference. That's really very striking. You know, I guess if I'm a food company and I just want to maximize my profits, which of course companies are in business to do, then what I'm going to sell are the foods that people eat the most of. Those are the ones that are triggering the brain biology, the 'over consume'. And the ones that have the greatest shelf life and are easiest to produce and things like that. So, I'm going to make processed foods and push those into new markets as aggressively as I can. So, I'm not asking you to think through the corporate mindset about what's driving this. But it sounds like the data that you have, the end product of all these practices, would be consistent with thinking like that. We like to think that there could be a role for healthier processed foods. But it has to be in moderation. So, what we looked at is the materiality of nutrition. Are companies actually able to have their business and have a healthier food portfolio? So, before we ran the global index, we did an assessment of this. And what we found is that if you're a mixed food company, and you decide to reformulate so that over time you have a healthier food portfolio, in fact, we found that their capital valuations and how they did on the market was slightly better. Not a lot. Than their say, less healthy counterparts. So, what we see is the beginning of a 'health is wealth' sort of narrative. And we hope that we can drive that forward. And of course, policy would help a lot. If policy would come out and say, let's tax the bad, subsidize the good. Then I think industry is going to fall in line. So, we're not sympathetic with industry because a lot of what's happening is not good. On the other hand, we're realists. And we know that these companies are not going away. And we need to make sure that what they offer is as healthy as it should be. And there's a role for everybody in that. All right, that's such an interesting perspective. So, you talked about the global findings. What can you say about the US in particular? What I'd like to do is actually refer to our 2022 US index. So, we did a deep dive just recently; October 2022, right after Biden's Nutrition Conference in DC. And, it wasn't really positive in the sense that we looked at 11 companies. The 11 biggest companies representing 170 billion revenues in the US. And 30 percent of all US food and beverage sales were based on healthier food options. Now, that was 4 years after we ran a 2018 US index. So, 2018, same thing, 30%. There's no change. It's still as unhealthy as ever. I think we need the US to come on board here because it is such a leader. A lot of these companies are headquartered in the US. So, we need to see that healthiness score go up in the US. You know, it's interesting some of the things you mentioned companies might be doing outside the US would be helpful if they did take place in the US. Like front of package labeling would be one example of that. So that would be a place where American companies are behind the curve, and it would be helpful if they caught up. It'd be interesting to dissect the reasons for why they are. But it's interesting that they are. What are some of the things businesses are doing to improve nutrition outcomes? Let's talk maybe on the more positive side. Do you think there's progress overall? It sounds like it from the numbers that you're presenting. But are there signs also of backsliding? And what do you think some of the successes have been? Yes, and I think we can get specific on a few. There's a company headquartered in Mexico, Grupo Bimbo. They rose up in the rankings six places between our 2021 Global Index and this one in 2024. They've been reformulating. They've been making their product portfolio healthier overall. It's about 50 percent now. I think some of that was their own initiative, but it was also prompted by a lot of Latin America's regulations, which is great. I think we can learn a lot from Latin America when it comes to front of pack labels and taxes. So, Group of Bimbo was a good success story. Arla, a Danish dairy company, they came out on top in the index in terms of marketing. So, they have basically said they're not going to market unhealthy foods to children under the age of 16. And they try to even go to 18, but it isn't quite being monitored across all digital platforms. And that's the next level is to take it to the digital platforms and monitor that. And that was a bit disappointing in general, just to find that out of the 30 companies, not one is able to come out and say that they followed the WHO Guidelines on Responsible Marketing 100 percent. The latest index shows that nine out of the 30 companies now, or 30%, nine out of the 30 companies are now using a government endorsed nutrient profile model to define healthy, and then monitor that across their portfolios. And that's a lot of progress. There were only a handful doing that just four years ago. We would ask that all 30 use an NPM, a nutrient profile model, but nine is getting somewhere. So, we're seeing some progress. Boy, if not a single company met the WHO Guidelines for Food Marketing it shows how tenacious those practices are. And how important they are to the company's bottom line to be able to protect that right to market to kids, vulnerable populations, to everybody really. So it really speaks to keeping that topic in the limelight because it's so important. We'd like investors to come out and say they will only invest in companies that are moving towards a 2030 target of marketing response. Zeroing in on 1) responsible marketing and 2) the healthiness food product. Zero in on those two things make really clear what the metrics are to measure that. So, you've mentioned several times, a very important, potentially very important group: shareholders. And you said that that's one of the stakeholders that you interact with. Are there signs out there of activist stakeholders? Shareholders that are putting pressure on the companies to change the way they do business. Yes. So, institutional investors have the ability to talk directly to the board, right? And they have the power in many cases to remove the CEO. So, they're a powerful group, obviously, and we've worked with over 80 now. And had them work with us to understand what investing in a progressive food company would look like. It's making better and better decisions, continuous improvements on nutrition. We have 87, I think is the latest count, who have signed a declaration to invest like this in a food healthier business. They represent $21 trillion of assets under management. It's a very powerful group. Now are all 80 actively, like you mentioned activist shareholders, you know, pushing, say, for example, for resolution. No. Some are. And they're using our data for that. And we applaud any kind of action towards better nutrition, healthier foods, better marketing using our data. We, as ATNI, do not sign these shareholder resolutions. But we absolutely will make our data available as a public good so that they can be used by this powerful group to yeah, hold the companies to account and hopefully invest in the long term. That's what it comes down to. Because it's true that this will take time for the benefits to come to both business and to people, but it's worth it. And I think the longer-term investors get it. And that's why they're doing these shareholder resolutions and different other investor escalation strategy. That strikes me as being pretty good news. Let's go down this road just a little bit further, talking about this, the shareholders. So, if the shareholders are starting to put, some at least, are putting pressure on the companies to go in a healthier direction, what do you think is motivating that? Do they see some big risk thing down the road that they're trying to anticipate and avoid? Is it policies that if the companies don't behave, governments might feel more emboldened to enact? Is it litigation that they see? What are they trying to avoid that's making them put pressure on the companies to move in these directions? That's a great question. When we ran the materiality assessment on nutrition earlier this year, we interviewed many of the investors and it seemed to come down to three things. One, there is coming regulation. There's more and more evidence that when you regulate the food system and you regulate food industry, and you do it in a smart way through a two-tiered levy system, for example, on sugar sweetened beverages. You tax the company, not the consumer. It actually does work. You have a decrease in consumption of these beverages. So coming regulation. The other one is increasing consumer demand for healthier options. Now, that might not be happening yet everywhere. And I think it only really happens when people can afford to demand healthier foods, right? But it seems like it's a trend everywhere as incomes increase and people's knowledge and understanding of nutrition increases, they do want healthier options. So, I think investors see that coming. And the third one is healthcare bills. Now, the investors don't always pick that up. Although in the case of some of our insurance companies who we work with, like AXA, it does. But they see the big macroeconomic picture. And we were talking to one of the investors last week, and they said it's all about megatrends. For them it's about investing in the megatrends, and they see this as a mega trend. This, you know, growing obesity, the cost related to obesity, growing costs related to diabetes and all NCDs. And they don't want to be investing in that future. We need to be investing in a healthier future. I think those are the three things we're gathering from the investors. So, Greg, there's sort of this jarring reality, it seems to me. And other people have written about this as well. That if the world becomes healthier with respect to its diet; let's just say you could wave a magic wand and obesity would go from its very high levels now to much lower levels or even zero. It means the world would be having to eat less food and the companies would be selling less food. And then you superimpose upon that another jarring reality that people simply buy more, eat more, of less healthy options. So, if a child sits down in front of a bowl of plain cornflakes, they're going to eat X amount. If that's sugar frosted flakes, they're going to eat, you know, 1.5 X or 2 X or whatever the number is. So, how can the companies try to make as much money as possible and be true to its shareholders and shareholders while at the same time, facing these realities. That's a great question. It goes to the heart of what we're trying to do at ATNI. That's why we say we're transforming markets for nutrition. Because if we don't help support that underlying market change, then we won't get very far in a sustainable way. You mentioned calories and over consumption. And that, of course, is part of the problem, but I think it's equally fair to say not all calories are treated the same and we need to look at the ingredients going into these food products to begin with. You know, why is sugar or any kind of corn derivative such an attractive cheap ingredient to put into food? And so bad for people if it's not eaten with anything else, if it's just an empty carb, for example. It's because of the subsidies, the billions of dollars of subsidies going into sugar around the world. In the United States, a very large subsidy going to the corn industry. And so, corn is then turned into many types of derivatives, many different types of ingredients that go into our foods. So, that's one thing. I think the other is that there's a big role for food policy to level the playing field. We hear this all the time from our industry partners, and we tend to agree. You know if two or three of the 30 companies that we just indexed stick their neck out and do something good, it'll work for two or three years until the other 27 start to undercut them. And if they're somehow making, you know, better money, bigger profits, more market share it's going to be very tempting for the three that made the good decisions to go back to what they were doing before. We have to change the market structure and end the perverse market incentives. Makes sense. One final question. What can policymakers do? I think we've touched on it a little bit. There's the fiscal policy space, which we're very excited about at ATNI. There are over 100 jurisdictions now that have put in place some kind of sugar sweetened beverage tax. But why not expand that take it to any kind of product which is too high in sugar, right? And again, make it like a proper levy on the company and not the consumer. Because that's where the evidence is that it works. Subsidies, you know, there's very few countries which are subsidizing healthier foods. Instead, you're seeing subsidies, as we just mentioned, going to the wrong kind of product. So that's one. And here's a new one: environmental, social, and governance investing metrics. As countries start to mandate the disclosure requirements for publicly listed companies, why not include two nutrition metrics? One on marketing, one on healthiness, so that every food company is mandated to disclose information on these things. That would be a real innovative way for policymakers to help regulate things. And front of pack labeling. You mentioned it yourself earlier. We would agree clear front of pack labels. So, the consumers know what's healthy and what's not. BIO Greg S Garrett is the Executive Director of ATNI (Access to Nutrition Initiative), a global foundation supporting market change for nutrition. Greg has held several leadership roles over the past twenty years, including serving on the Global Executive Team of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), directing Abt Global's health reform in Kyrgyzstan and leading strategy at ThinkWell, a global health organization. During his eight years with the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Greg served as Director of Food Fortification and Director of Policy & Financing during which time he established a multi-million-dollar financing facility and managed a portfolio that reached one billion people with fortified foods. Greg serves on the Global Nutrition Report's Stakeholder Group and is a member of the Blended Finance TaskForce. He holds a BA and an MSc in International Development from the University of Bath, UK.

The U. S. is the largest importer of aquatic foods, which includes fresh and saltwater fish, crustaceans, mollusks, and aquatic plants served in restaurants and homes. A critical piece of this global market is the cold chain, keeping these foods chilled or frozen during storage and transport to market. With 44 percent of aquatic foods sold live or fresh globally, the percentage of fresh over frozen aquatic foods creates an extra logistical cold chain challenge. What's more, most aquatic foods become, well, fishy from cold chain disruptions, which can cause perceived food safety concerns, potentially resulting in food getting tossed into the bin. Until recently, research to understand just how much aquatic food gets wasted or lost has been spotty. However, in a recent Nature Food article, researchers argue that aquatic food loss and waste in the United States is actually half of earlier estimates. And that's good news that we'll explore today. This interview is part of an ongoing exploration of food loss and waste. This episode is co-hosted by environmental economist, Martin Smith at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. Interview Summary Martin Smith - So I'm really pleased to introduce our guests for today. First up from University of Florida, a natural resource economist, Frank Asche. Frank is a long-time collaborator of mine and a good friend. And he's also one of the world's leading experts in seafood markets and trade. And honestly, Frank has taught me just about everything I know about aquaculture. Also today, we have Dave Love from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Dave is someone whose work I'm also very familiar with and is a leading expert in food systems and sustainability. And recently in my classes, I have often said out loud to some student questions that I don't know the answers to. I'll bet Dave Love knows the answer to that question. Norbert Wilson - So Dave, let's begin with you. Why was it important to develop better estimates and methods of aquatic food waste in the US? Why did your team pursue this research question? Dave Love - Great question. So, the US government has a goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030. And if you want to know how much you need to cut, you really need to go out and measure. And that's one of the areas of food waste that we really don't know a lot about for many different types of foods. We know the production data. We know how much is produced. We have a pretty good sense of what's consumed, whether that's in an economic sense of being consumed or actually eaten. But we really don't know how much is wasted. And groups come to the table with different numbers, different estimates, and they, they make their way into reports, into national guidelines. But for seafood in particular, the estimates haven't been refreshed in a while. So, it was about time to do that. And this study aimed to tackle that issue from all the stages of the supply chain, from production to consumption, looked at different forms of seafood and among the top 10 species. So, we rolled those species estimates and stage estimates into a national number. So yeah, that that's, that's why we did it. And we were really surprised at what we found. Norbert - Well, what surprised you? Dave - Well, earlier estimates were that about half of seafood was lost or wasted in the US and that came from UN Food and Agriculture Organization data. And when we actually crunched the numbers for the US supply, we thought it was more like 22.7 percent is wasted. So, a lot less than the FAO estimate. Which means we're doing a good job in some areas, but there's also room for improvement in others. Martin - So, Frank, maybe you could tell us a little bit more about the key takeaways from this Nature food paper are? Frank Asche - It's really that it's important to recognize that we are consuming a lot of different species and they have very, very different characteristics. For instance, the filler yield of a salmon is about 65 percent while for a cod it is about 40%. That makes your starting point really important. Moreover, this thing of looking at the whole supply chain is important because there are different ways to organize it, and there are a lot of potential uses for what food is sometimes wasted. And to look into what different types of producers are actually doing. What different companies that are operating these cold chains that Norbert spoke about are doing. And what they are doing when these things break apart. Kind of, there's all these people in the supply chain that may help us, and some of them do. Some of them aren't very good at it. But it's really nice to find that there are best practices that can really help us a lot of people take the trouble to figure that out and follow that up. Martin - That's really interesting. And it makes me wonder with all this heterogeneity that you're describing, are large producers better positioned to manage or, or reduce food waste than small producers? Or is it the other way around? Frank - Oh, I'm a good researcher. So it depends. Martin - It depends. Of course it depends. It depends! Frank - If we're going to say anything general then, in wealthy countries, large producers are better. In poor countries, small producers are better. In the sense that when labor cost is low, and food is relatively expensive people are much more willing to eat a fish that is not the best quality. While, if you're a small-scale producer in a wealthy country where labor is really scarce, you tend to focus on your main production process, which is the fillet. While if you become a big producer, then the quantities that potentially gets weighed that become so large that they actually are a useful raw material for new products. And we see big producers developing new products that it doesn't make sense for smaller producers to look at. You've all eaten your hamburgers. One of the more popular products in recent years is different kinds of seafood burgers. And they are great because they are trimmings and cutoffs and slices that doesn't fit well into that fillet that you're normally thinking about when you're consuming a chunk of fish. Martin - Yeah, and I think many seafood consumers have had that experience of being at the fish counter and saying, 'Oh, I only want this much,' and they put too much in there and like take a little off. And then you start to ask yourself the question, who's going to eat that little, little bit that gets sliced off. That's really interesting and enlightening. I had another question for Frank. Before we go back over to Norbert. So, in this paper, you describe different points along the food supply chain where the seafood might be lost or wasted. Can you talk a little bit more about that in different points in the supply chain and why there are some of these differences between species? You mentioned the sort of, yield of salmon and cod for a filet being a little different. And so, I'd like you to talk a little more about why different species might, might get different rates of loss. Frank - I think it starts with this thing here that for most seafood species, there's a choice part that is sort of your preferred chunk of meat. Most species it's a filet, but for a mussel, you eat everything that is within the shell. But it's different. But even for all those species, kind of, there are shrimps with small heads, there are shrimps with big heads, there are fish that gives you really good fillet yield, fish that doesn't. There are fish where there's a lot of useful meat that, say, the head or in the tail, that normally doesn't make it to a store, but it's useful if somebody chooses to use it. And then you have the quality issues. If a fish, say, falls to the floor during the production process, what do you do with that? And, yeah, that's one of those things we learned that in Vietnam, they will give it to a worker, and they will eat it. And Norwegian salmon, they will typically put it into some kind of acid where they use it to make animal foods. Small scale producers will just throw it into the bin. Other producers have good systems which, within the right hygienic control systems, are using what they can and not what they cannot. In general, producers have been getting better, but producers are still one of the key points in the chain. The companies from the producer of the raw fish to the consumer is generally pretty good. And there's fairly little waste in transportation and processing and so on. Then there's a bit more waste in the store. One of the cool little episodes I learned during this project was that one of the biggest items of food loss for fish in US grocery stores were people buying shrimp for the salad, and then deciding that they didn't want the salad anyway, and they are putting it in a shelf somewhere else. But you and I are the biggest problems. That is, what do we do with what we do not eat when we come home? What do we do with this portion that we put out of the freezer, and we didn't eat all of it. And we are pretty bad when we go to a restaurant too. And too often we don't eat our full portion. We may wrap it, but, but do we actually eat it the next day? In general, we do not. Norbert - Dave, I have a question. I recognize you as a sustainability expert. So how does understanding the pinch points for aquatic food losses and waste help households, the food industry and, and policymakers? Dave - Seafood is one of the most expensive proteins. If you go to the grocery store, it's going to be, you know, $9, $10 up to $15 or $20 a pound. And really, consumers don't have that amount of money to throw out. If they're going to buy it, it's in their best interest to eat it. So, we're looking at ways that the seafood industry can package and sell products that are going to help consumers, you know, stretch that dollar. One of the ways is through frozen seafood. Selling prepackaged individual units frozen. And, through this project, I've started to buy a lot more of that type of type of seafood. And you can also buy it now for other kinds of meats. And you just, whatever you want to prepare probably that, that next night you, you know, cut out the packaging, put it in the fridge and a little bowl in case from food safety standpoint in case it leaks. And then you don't want to leave it on the counter overnight or leave it out for a couple hours. But so, there are ways that you can package products that perceive what consumers are going to ask for. And you can still get that freshness in seafood, even if it's frozen. Because a lot of frozen seafood is frozen on board the vessel. It's frozen sooner than it actually would be if it was processed in a processing plant. So, you know, I think it's kind of a win-win. We've been exploring cook from frozen as a not just food waste, but also for other angles of sustainability. Because of course when there's waste is also the embodied energy and the embodied water and all the things that go into making that food. And when it gets to the consumer, it's got a lot more of those steps involved. Norbert - Thanks, Dave. I will say from some of my own research looking at package size, and package configuration that smaller, more readily used products are less likely to be wasted. I can appreciate that kind of innovation in seafood products could also be beneficial. And my family, we're big users of frozen seafood, and the quality is good. So, these are really helpful ways of thinking about how we as consumers can make adjustments to our behavior that can actually mitigate some of the food waste that you all observed. And so, because of this research, what new insights do you have about loss along the supply chain for aquaculture versus wild capture fisheries? Dave - That's a really good question. I can speak to the production stage. That's one of the areas we looked at where you see the most amount of food loss - at the production stage anyway. But we sort of split it out as the fisheries losses were either discards or bycatch. And from aquaculture, people had not really estimated what food loss looked like in aquaculture. But we looked at disease and mortality as a cause of food loss. We asked farmers, what's your typical mortality rate when you're raising shrimp or salmon or tilapia? We got back their mortality rate, we did some modeling, some estimation and found out when a certain percent of that harvest dies. Not just when they're babies, but when they die close to the harvest period, we'd count that as, as food waste. Because there are ways to control disease in aquaculture. You know, it's not going to be zero. There are always going to be some animals that die. But, if you do control disease, you can cut down on some of this kind of perceived food waste in the process. So, we counted those two things differently. I would think a good example would be Alaska sockeye salmon. Over the last 10 or 15 years, they've instituted a lot of new methods for reducing damage to fish when they're captured. For example, now you get incentives as a fisherman to put down rubber mats. So, when the fish come off nets, they don't hit the boat hard, they'll hit a rubber mat. Their incentive is to bleed the fish, which helps with quality. And of course, to ice them when they're caught. You know, a lot of the catch of sockeye salmon in the '80s - '90s, didn't necessarily get refrigerated after it was caught. It went to a canning line. And folks eating canned salmon, they couldn't tell the difference. But as the salmon industry in Alaska transitioned to more of a value-based fishery, they increase the quality, increase the percentage of fillets compared to canned. I think a lot of these things go hand in hand with value. As you decrease food waste, increase food quality, you can sell it for more. I think that's a nice transition point for a lot of farms and producers to think about. Martin - Since we're on salmon, I have a quick follow up on that. I noticed in the paper there is some differences in the rate of food waste for wild caught sockeye and for farmed Atlantic salmon. And in my mind, I immediately went to, well is that because most of that wild caught sockeye is ending up frozen? Maybe it's sold at the fresh counter, but it's been previously frozen. That's certainly my experience as a seafood consumer. And most of that farmed Atlantic salmon is actually sold directly as fresh and never frozen. And so, I'm wondering how much of that is a driver or how much it's really the disease thing? Dave - It's probably a little bit of both. At the retail stage, if you're going to a grocery store and you're looking at that fresh display case, the rate of waste there is somewhere between five and 10 percent of what's in that display case. It's going to end up in the garbage. They want to just have a nice presentation, have a lot of different products laid out there and they don't all get purchased. Some grocery stores will prepare that and sell it on a hot bar. Others, their principle is we just want to provide the freshest thing and they are okay with a little bit of waste. For canned and frozen seafood, the rate is more like 1%. And as Frank alluded to, sometimes people pick up a frozen item and they get to the checkout counter and they go, you know, I didn't really want to buy that. And they might slip it into you know, another aisle where it shouldn't be. That middle of the chain, there's not a lot of waste that we saw. You know, wholesalers and distributors, that's their job to deliver food and they really do a good job of it. And then at the upstream stage, the production stage, there's a big range in waste. And it depends on the product forms and at what point is the fish cut and frozen. Martin - So, I have a question for both of you now, maybe changing topics a little bit. So, reducing food waste, food loss and waste, is an important element of environmental sustainability. I think we all agree on that. And that's particularly in response to climate change. We know that Greenhouse gas emissions associated with our food system are a major contributor to climate change. I'm wondering, sort of looking ahead, what role do you see seafood in general playing in a future in which we might price carbon emissions. We might actually make it costly to buy products that have a lot of that embodied greenhouse gas emissions in it. Frank - Yeah, pretty well actually. But it depends a little bit on what's your current diet. If it has lots of red meat, seafood is going to do really well because red meat in general have significantly higher carbon emissions. If you're a vegetarian, maybe not that much. So, in the bigger scheme of things, seafood looks pretty good in the category of animal proteins, largely together with chicken. The difference between most seafoods and chicken is not too big. And of course, there's a little bit of variation within the seafood. They of course have a problem though in that nature produces a limited quantity of them. And if the amount completely takes off, there's no way you can increase the supply. So, then it must be aquaculture. And then you are more than slightly better or approximately chicken. Dave - And I'd say you know, if you want to learn more about this topic, stay tuned. We've got a paper coming out about that. It should be out fall 2024 or early 2025. Similar to the waste piece, we've done the energy footprint, the greenhouse gas footprint, and the water footprint of all the products you see in the Nature Food paper. And we're really excited to share this finding soon. Martin - That sounds really exciting and I can't wait to see it. Norbert - I'm curious about your thoughts on how trade incentives or restrictions could be used to remote access to aquatic foods in addition to climate resilience of the food system? Frank, could you give us your thoughts? Frank - Oh, there's a short answer to that or a complicated answer. So, the short is, of course, you can do like you're done with some other challenges. You also have dolphin-safe tuna and turtle-safe shrimp and so on. And you could basically make it hard to enter the market for people with bad practices. And you can make it easier to enter the market for producers with good practices. But if you go to the more complicated thingy, and particularly if you are also interacting with domestic supply chains, then we do know really well that eating beef is a real environmental challenge. But I still cannot see a world, at least within the foreseeable future, where US policy is going to sort of suggest that we're going to import more seafood so that we can produce less beef. And when you get to all those complicated interactions, yes, you can use trade policies to advance some agendas. But they are certainly going to run into some others, and it's a challenge when there's so large heterogeneity when it comes to what do you think a good food system is. Norbert - Dave, what about you? Dave - Well, I sort of come at this from a different angle. You're thinking about local; you know. What's the value of local food and local and regional food systems? And so, in principle, I'd like to suggest that to people to buy their food from regional markets. Because of the connection to place and that's really important. Once you have that connection to place, then you start to value the environment where it comes from. You get a little bit closer tied to the labor market and the folks who grow and produce that food. So, I like to kind of come at it from that perspective. Invariably we're going to have some internationally traded seafood. Right now, 70 percent of seafood is imported. But I think looking at opportunities to support your local and regional fisheries, and your local and regional aquaculture, I think there's a lot of merits to that. Some of them could be climate arguments. And there's lots of other good arguments for it as well. Frank - I agree with that, but I really think that you should have the caveat that producing your seafood, or really any food under good microclimatic conditions, with good soils or water for that product, gives you food with a much smaller footprint than what you have necessarily locally. And particularly if you're producing something that doesn't really belong that well locally. And it's also really important that, except if you fly your food by air the carbon footprint of transports is tiny. Dave - Yes, that was, that was one thing we found. With air cargo be really careful. You want to buy live seafood or fresh seafood that's air freighted, that's going to be a big piece of the carbon footprint. And really for consumers, an easy way to chip away at their environmental impact is to cut out stuff that's flown in fresh. But, you know, that flies in the face of what restaurants and grocery stores are trying to sell, which is 'the freshest.' ‘We're going to give you never frozen super fresh.' So there's a bit of a disconnect there. And I think unlocking that is going to be getting into some of these chefs' minds and talking to them about - you know fresh is important, but how do you want to spin this in a way that you can have it fresh today, but you also can have it fresh in the future. Not just today, but a few generations down the road when it is possible to fly in food from all over the world that have that perfect plate. And you know, this is something that we need to engage with lots of different people on. Martin - It sounds a little bit like you're suggesting a, a world in which we, we seek to consume fresh local, and frozen global. In the sense that, that you cut down all those, those transportation, greenhouse gas emissions, if you're doing frozen seafood, and you can exploit that sort of natural comparative advantages of different places to farm and different places to catch seafood with those global markets. But, but for the real fresh stuff, there might be some benefits to eating locally, including those, those greenhouse gas emissions. Dave - When we looked at the trade from Asia, 99 percent comes by container ship. You know, almost nothing's being flown in. And then when you look at closer markets to the US. What was Europe... it was maybe closer to 50 /50 for flown versus shipped by water. And yes, I think South America was similar. I guess the closer you get to the US market, you know, there's that incentive to kind of fly it in and get the price premium. There's definitely a reason to do it, but it does come with a part of the carbon footprint, you know. It's, it's maybe a quarter, maybe a third, you know? Frank - But as Marty alluded to, as long as there's no cost associated with the carbon footprint as is the case now, nobody will really care. It's first when you actually have a system where there's a price to it that you would expect to see any real change. Dave - Yes. And, we did some work, sort of a spinoff to this. We looked at the US seafood industry and then they become more carbon neutral. We teased that out for a couple of different sectors: farmed catfish in Alabama and wild caught salmon. And there are steps that producers and fishers can do, but a lot of it's going to have to depend on their local utility. What's the energy mix of the utility? Because that utility energy mix is what feeds the plant. It feeds the energy going to a catfish farm. And they use a lot of electricity, but they don't have a big say in what the Mississippi Electric Cooperative or Alabama Electric Cooperative chooses as its energy mix. So, I think there's, it's really a 360 issue that when you start trying to unpack energy and climate, it goes well beyond the seafood sector really quickly. So, we can be a voice. But it's going to take a lot of people to make systematic change. Martin - Great. So, I had one final question to ask each of you. And that's really about what's next? And I know we have this other paper that's coming out to look deeply into the life cycle of the different species featured in your food waste paper. But I'm wondering specifically what's next on seafood waste and, and what kinds of things will affect what kinds of policy changes might be on the horizon, what kinds of things will affect change, short of, I guess, what we've already talked about. Which is some, you know, sweeping carbon legislation that, that prices carbon. But short of that, what other kinds of things are going to affect change and what else do we need to know? Let's start with you, Dave, and then then we'll go to Frank. Dave - I think we sort of laid out the big picture. The estimates for the US supply for different production stages. But I think we really need to drill down into case studies where folks, us and, and colleagues, I know Ronnie Neff is exploring this with you Norbert, but really drill down into case studies that try out some of these ideas that we have. Some of the innovations being implemented and see how they work and maybe scale up the best ones. Frank - Right. And beyond that is like companies are doing what companies always have been done at all stages in supply chain. As long as new technology makes it profitable for them to be more sustainable, they're going to be more sustainable. So, there's going to be a lot of new packaging and new ways of chilling and so on that will help. But at the end of the day, the biggest challenge is you and I as consumers, and what we both buy. Because that determines what products is going to be on offer. And then how we treat them after we have purchased them. This podcast is co-sponsored by the Recipes Food Waste Research Network Project, led by American University and funded by the National Science Foundation. BIOS Dave Love is a Research Professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. Dave's work focuses on aquaculture and fisheries and the environmental, social, health and food system issues related to those industries. He also engages in a wide range of food-related topics including food waste, veterinary drugs and drug residues in foods, antimicrobial resistance, and CAFO worker and community health. In 2012 he founded a research and teaching farm at the Cylburn Arboretum in Baltimore and oversaw the facility from 2012 to 2015. The farm is now called the Food System Lab and is a place where students of all ages learn about urban agriculture. The Food System Lab is a member of the Farm Alliance of Baltimore and sells produce at the Waverly Farmers Market. Prior to joining Johns Hopkins Dave was a postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Kara Nelson, working at the interface of engineering and microbiology, in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California Berkeley. Frank Asche is a professor of natural resource economics at the University of Florida School of Forest, Fisheries, and Geomatic Sciences. He is a natural resource economist with a research focus on seafood markets, production of seafood from fisheries and aquaculture and the sustainability of these production processes. Frank is president of the International Association of Aquaculture Economics and Management (IAAEM), editor for Aquaculture Economics and Management and associate editor for Marine Resource Economics. He was also a member of the team that developed the Fish Price Index of the United Nation's Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).​  

If you feel like your grocery budget just doesn't buy you as much as it once did, you're not alone. According to U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, food prices rose 11. 4 percent last year alone - the highest annual increase in 23 years. The ongoing pinch at the grocery store has been in the news of a lot of media outlets, such as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Times Magazine, Forbes, and so many others. Our guest today, food economics and policy professor David Ortega from Michigan State, is going to walk us through the food price inflation phenomenon. Interview Summary We've been hearing a lot about food price inflation. Can you tell us how food prices have changed over the last four to five years, and how that compares to the recent past? Definitely. So, I think it's always really important to define what food inflation is so that we're all on the same page. We hear this word a lot and we've been hearing it for a number of years now. Inflation is the rate of increase in prices over a period of time - so how fast prices are changing or increasing in a given period. The time frame here is very, very important. Now, compared to last year, food prices are only up 2.1%. And this is for all food, which includes food at home and food away from home. Now groceries, food at home, are up 0.9% compared to last year. And menu prices at restaurants, or food away from home, are only 4.0% higher. Now if you're listening to this, you're probably thinking, ‘well, how can this be given how expensive things are at the grocery store?' And that's because you are likely thinking about how food prices have changed since the start of the pandemic, right? So, over the past five years, food prices have increased around 26%. And so that's the cumulative effect of inflation that we're all very familiar with at the grocery store. Wow. You talked about the recent past, and in particular, about the time since COVID. How has this looked historically if you take a longer time frame? Yes, so if we look at a few years before COVID, food prices generally increase around 2% or so, year over year. Now in the summer of 2022, we experienced double digit increases in food prices. More than 11%, year over year. And that was the highest rate of increase in around 40 years, since the late 1970s and early '80s. So now that's a significant spike and departure from what we would consider to be normal. But the rate of increase has come down to almost pre pandemic levels, which is really great news. But remember the rate of inflation is the rate of increase, so because that rate has come down, it doesn't mean that prices are decreasing necessarily. They're just not growing as fast as they were before. Correct. I have some ideas, but I really want to hear you talk about it. What has led to this significant increase in the last four and a half years or so? It's really been a convergence of factors. It's not just one particular thing, but really all these factors coming together and sort of compounding on each other. We saw increases in labor costs, and then as we go through the timeline, we had Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. And that really sent commodity prices surging for things like wheat, other grains, as well as vegetable oils. And it wasn't just the invasion alone, but we had countries responding with export restrictions on things like palm oil that really just exacerbated the situation. We also have the impacts of climate change. The summer of 2022, and for a few years leading up to then, there was this mega drought in the West and the plain states that affected anything from lettuce prices to the price of meat. Something that we're experiencing to this day. We also have the bird flu outbreak, now the largest outbreak in U. S. history. Egg prices have been through a bit of a roller coaster ride, and we've been hearing a lot about increases in egg prices. That's primarily due to the high path avian influenza outbreak, or the bird flu outbreak. Now, those are all what I would consider, for the most part, to be supply side factors. But we also have demand factors at play. And that is, that when we look at consumer spending on food, especially over the past two to three years, it's been much higher compared to before the pandemic. Even when you adjust for inflation. Now, this is likely attributed to households. Some of them accumulated savings. We had the fiscal stimulus payments from the government that injected cash into the economy. For a period of time, some households, we could splurge at the grocery store. We've seen, and the data from USDA shows, that consumer spending on food both at home and away from home is much higher in recent years than prior to COVID. So again, it's a combination of both supply side and demand side factors that have contributed to the significant rise in food prices. This is a really important point that it's not a single factor, but it's this mix of things, which also makes it really difficult to talk about how to disentangle it. And I definitely want to hit on that. But before we get there, I want to know what has the impact of these significant price increases on consumers been? The first thing that I want to point out is that food price inflation doesn't impact everyone the same. It's really low-income households that are hurt the most by these price increases. And that's because they spend a higher share of their income on food. When we look at the poorest 20% of American households, they're spending over a third of their income on food, compared to the average American household that spends roughly 10 to 12%. Now, when we look at industry data, we see that as a result of inflationary pressures, individuals are making shorter and more frequent trips to the grocery store. They're doing more price comparisons. They're turning and buying more of the private labels, the store brands, that sell at a much more affordable price point. And they're buying fewer premium items. So less of the stocking up that we saw at the beginning of the pandemic. But this in turn can also fuel an increase in the price of those conventional or cheaper items. And that's something that I found in the research that I've done on egg and poultry prices. When prices increase, consumers switch to the cheaper, more conventional items. And that increase in relative demand can put upward pressure on prices. So, we've seen this also reflected in the way that consumers are shopping for food and the prices that they're seeing. I think this is really critical for us to appreciate that while it is an often talked about issue, price inflation, and it does hurt lots of people, but appreciating that lower income folks are facing this at a much harder way is important. And, having spent time working with the charitable food sector and understanding the experiences of the individuals there, you're regularly hearing people talk about the high price of food and how they're trying to navigate it. And the role that these food pantries can play in helping meet that need, but it just still it's a grind. It becomes really challenging. Yeah. Recent economic data actually shows that food price inflation is moderating. So, it's not as hot as it once was. But consumers are still experiencing sticker shock at the grocery store. What's going on here? So, coming back to the earlier part of the conversation, people are really feeling the cumulative effects of inflation. And again, that's why I find it very important to define inflation as the rate of increase in food prices. Well, the average consumer at the grocery store shopper, they don't really care about the rate of increase. They care about the price level, right? When you see that eggs are $3-4 a dozen that's going to catch your attention. When we look at the last 4, 4.5 years, food prices are up 25%. That's a significant increase. Now, another reason for this disconnect in terms of what the economic data is telling us and how consumers feel about food price inflation, is the nature of food prices in our interactions with them. We see food prices on a weekly if not more frequent basis. We know when prices are going up. We encounter food prices, we go grocery shopping, much more frequently than we get a haircut or we buy a plane ticket. We see these prices rise. Now, it's also important, coming back to this discussion on the percent increase versus the price level, a 2% increase today is a higher dollar amount than it was a year ago, and certainly 5 years ago. Because the base has increased. It's not just in the consumer psychology. It's when we look at the price level and the increase. Prices are increasing more in terms of a dollar amount today than they were in the past. And so because of this, in many ways, the grocery store has really emerged as the face of inflation here in this country. And it really has impacted just about everybody over the past four or five years. As someone who hasn't had a haircut in probably 10 years, I really do know that prices have changed fairly quickly when it comes to food. But I don't know what's happening at the haircut. But I really appreciate this. And, but I think the thing that a lot of people struggle with in this conversation is, but inflation is coming down. We've just heard these reports and why aren't food prices going down? But you've made it clear. It was almost like we've reached this high level. It is hard for it to roll back. I mean, we don't expect prices to actually fall, do we? When we look at specific items, right, it's not uncommon to see, say, the price of eggs decrease when we have a period of low bird flu activity. But by and large, when we look at food as a category, say groceries, there have been some periods in the recent past where food prices decreased, say, 1-2% year over year. But we shouldn't expect prices to decrease to the level that they were before COVID. And that's because the nature of prices. They generally increase from year to year. And that's a good thing as long as they are moderate increases. And as the data have been telling us for a couple of months now, we're looking at food price increases in the neighborhood of what they were prior to the start of the COVID 19 Pandemic. This is helpful. And it kind of makes me think of something we were talking about earlier. And so I want to ask you this last question. There's been some conversation in policy circles about addressing this problem of food price inflation. What are your thoughts on how policy could be used to make a difference in this situation? That's an excellent question. We're coming up on an election and there's been proposals on both sides floating around and I appreciate the focus on an issue that is affecting consumers. But we have to look at the policies and what economic theory can tell us about what's going to happen. The first thing I'll say before I even get to that is that the President of the United States, policymakers, have very little control over food prices, especially in the short term. We really have to look at sort of the longer time horizon. How can we make our food system more resilient to future shocks? Investing in crops that are drought tolerance, right? That climate change is one of the factors that's going to be with us from here on out into the foreseeable future. We have to make those investments now so that we have a much more resilient food system in the future. In terms of coming back to policies, we have to look at economic theory. There's been proposals to ban, say, a price gouging at the federal level. That's something that I think we have to look at very carefully because there could be some unintended consequences. This is just straight out of Econ 101. Other candidates have proposed tariffs across the board. We've seen what happened when we had the trade war with China back in 2018. It leads to even higher increases in food prices because food producers, food manufacturers, rely on inputs oftentimes from abroad. And so now they're facing higher prices, they're going to be passed on to the consumer. As we look at policies, I think it's really important to look carefully at what some of the outcomes may be so that we don't run into some unintended consequences. BIO David L. Ortega is a professor and the Noel W. Stuckman Chair in Food Economics and Policy at Michigan State University. His research program focuses on understanding consumer, producer, and agribusinesses decision-making to better inform food policies and marketing strategies. Dr. Ortega provides timely analysis of forces and events affecting the agricultural and food sectors. He has been called to provide expert testimony before federal and state agencies, including the U.S. Senate and House agriculture committees. He is a frequent contributor to food price inflation reporting at The New York Times and NPR, and is regularly interviewed by prominent media outlets, including ABC News, NBC News, PBS, USA Today, CNN, Forbes, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Newsweek, and the Detroit Free Press, to name a few. Dr. Ortega earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University.

When we talk about problems with food insecurity and the food system, we tend to reference challenges at the national or international level. And of course, work at that level really needs to be done. But increasingly, there is a unique focus on regional food system strategies and right sizing solutions to best fit those unique characteristics of a particular locale. In today's podcast, we will talk with Rachel Sabella, director of No Kid Hungry New York. She leads the planning, implementation, and evaluation of the No Kid Hungry campaigns across the state of New York. Interview Summary Rachel, it is such a pleasure to have you with us on the show today. We've done several podcasts with No Kid Hungry staff in the past and discussed topics like your Summer EBT Playbook for state governments. I'm really interested to learn more about your work in the state of New York. Thank you so much for having me, Norbert. We have been so lucky to have No Kid Hungry on here to share the stories. And I'm excited to give you some updates about what we've learned with Summer EBT, and to talk about how things look in New York these days. So, can you help our listeners understand more about No Kid Hungry New York as an organization? What is your approach to addressing childhood hunger? No Kid Hungry is a campaign of Share Our Strength. And I have the honor and privilege of representing the organization across the state of New York as we work to create solutions, to draw more attention and awareness, and to help connect more kids and families with meals. We believe that every kid needs three meals a day to grow up healthy, happy, and strong. But too many children, and I know we'll talk more about this, are missing those meals. We really take an approach of working directly with communities. I don't know the right answer for each community. But my job and really my privilege is to work with school districts, with elected officials, with community organizations to look for challenges and work together to overcome them and really change systems. I can appreciate that local communities look very different and appreciate if you're talking about New York City versus upstate New York. Can you tell us a little bit about how you all think differently about the cities versus the more rural areas of New York State? I appreciate that question. I think all of my colleagues can hear me say, we almost run two different campaigns in New York. Because the approach in New York City, where there is one school district in five boroughs, but a large concentration of students, the largest school district in the nation, versus the rest of the state, is different. But ultimately, the challenges are the same. How are we communicating with families? What solutions are out there that we can implement? We really focus on listening, sharing tools, sharing toolkits, thinking about, in some communities, what they need are materials translated in different languages, so families understand that SNAP benefits are available, or summer EBT benefits. Or as in other communities, it's how can families get to a centrally located place to pick up meals? We really spend our time learning and listening and sharing these programs so that they can find the solutions that work best. This is wonderful. I grew up in Georgia, I should just note. And I grew up in rural Georgia versus Atlanta. And we always talked about two Georgias, the Atlanta region versus the rural areas. And I can appreciate just how different some of those challenges are. But you're right, the central issue of access to food is similar and how you address those issues will look different in those regions. I want to span out and talk about some national data that just has come out. USDA has reported food insecurity rates in the U.S. and we saw that hunger actually increased. And we see that for childhood hunger, food insecurity in general, it has risen since the 2019 pandemic. Why is this happening for children? It's a challenging time. I think something that came out of the pandemic was right away, people said, families are struggling with hunger. What can we do? The stories on the news. We saw it no matter where you were in the country, with the lines to pick up food. And we saw government responded very quickly. There were expanded SNAP benefits. There were no cost school meals provided to every child across the country. We saw pandemic EBT implemented. We also saw the expanded child tax credit. At a time when families were facing tremendous challenges, there was that support from the government. But many of those programs have now ended. And in these economically challenged times, incomes haven't changed. Some people are still dealing with an unemployment crisis. We hear a lot from families as well that they're underemployed. There may be a job, but it's not that same income. And without these expanded government programs, families are facing challenges. How is this looking specifically in New York State? Are there specific challenges happening in the state? I think so, and we have specific challenges in New York, but as we talked about earlier, I think we see every state is facing that. In New York State right now, hunger rose for child food insecurity. We're looking at one in five children in New York State. If we look at New York City, it's one in four children could face food insecurity this year. I often say that hunger hides in plain sight because I hear from people, well, they have a house. Well, with a set budget, they're paying to keep that roof over their heads, they're paying for their electricity bill, and what is the number that can shift in the budget, unfortunately? It's for food. We did a survey earlier this year, and four in five families in New York State found that it became harder to afford groceries. Their incomes just were not remaining at the same levels. And in those surveys, when we dig in a little bit, it was highest in rural communities and parents of school aged children. They are fighting hard for their families, but with all these economic challenges, as a society, we have to do more to help them. Thank you for sharing those insights. And I remember early in the pandemic, some colleagues at Tufts and I did a qualitative study talking to families who were using little free pantries. Those ‘lending library boxes' where people were putting food and one of the stories that we heard that kept coming up was. It was about price inflation, which was interesting because this was at the early part of the pandemic, and we did worry what happened to those families as inflation increased. And this was before some of those policies came into place about summer EBT and other food assistance programs. But now that those programs have gone away and inflation is starting to let up, but it's still a challenge for families. I really appreciate the way the campaign is thinking about these issues. You've already mentioned earlier that the No Kid Hungry team has worked on the summer EBT playbook as you prepared for a national launch of that program. Could you first just give us a brief overview of what the playbook is and then how has the rollout gone in New York State? Even to take it back a step, Summer EBT was a new program launched this year. Every state was eligible to opt into this program, which provided a grocery benefit for eligible children and families. Before this, it was available in certain states that were part of a pilot, and No Kid Hungry had been advocating for this to be nationwide. We also knew that there was going to be a short amount of time for this program to launch. So, what we did was bring all our tools and resources together, our staff members, and we said, what do states need to implement? We partnered with organizations like Code for America, like APHSA, and to really see what is this? So, is it tools to get the word out about the program? Is it about implementation? Is it connecting states that face similar challenges to learn from each other? What the state agencies did this year to implement this program in year one, in about six months, was pretty unbelievable. And we also hope that as we're learning from this, we're going to see even more exciting changes in year two. In terms of New York and summer EBT, we have been seeing so thrilled to see the uptake of the program, the outreach and awareness for summer EBT in New York. In August, Governor Hochul convened an event to celebrate the launch. We had members of Congress, we had No Kid Hungry, we had families there talking about this program. We heard from families how challenging the summer months have been and how this made that difference to get meals to kids. We've been working with the New York City Council on doing trainings for staff members. So many people trust their local elected official's office to get answers. How do I get a new card? How do I check my balance? We are learning a lot, we're seeing materials in different languages, and again, what we're excited to do is recap year one, and how do we learn more and make it even easier for families to access in year two? This is amazing work, and I, I know it's really a challenge when folks, if you will, leave money on the table. And so, helping people connect to the resources that they have legal rights to is a critical role that you all are playing. What do you hope will happen as you learn from the playbook as it was applied in New York? What do you hope to share with other states in this process? We want to show other states our best practices, what worked really well, what's something that we would tweak a little differently. We also want to make sure that those states that weren't able to opt in this year, because there were more than 10, I think about 15, that did not opt in. We want them to see what they can do and how they can use this program to connect kids with meals. But also, this money is reinvested in local communities. Families are using it at grocery stores, at local markets. In New York, we're really excited to see how they're using it at green markets, getting those fresh fruits and vegetables, supporting agriculture. This program while it addresses hunger, it's also an economic engine. And we want to make sure everybody understands that and are using those dollars in a valuable way. I want to ask you a last question, and it's sort of a big question about child hunger. So, what is the outlook of child hunger in New York, and what gives you hope about addressing this challenge? One of the things that gives me tremendous hope Is when we did our survey of New Yorkers, 93 percent of New Yorkers believe that solving childhood hunger should be a bipartisan issue. They don't see the politics of this in New York. We have seen that increasing the SNAP minimum benefit is a bipartisan solution. We have seen no cost school meals for all children has bipartisan support. I think we see New Yorkers recognize they want to make a difference. We get questions all the time. How can I help? We have media outlets sharing the deadlines, putting the updates out for families. We see elected officials in New York State that are paying attention to what's happening in their backyards and their local communities. And they want to make a difference. I hope that what we are seeing in New York translates into other states, translates to the federal level. There is an excitement right now around school meals, and we're hearing a different dialogue. It's something that people like you and I, we know the difference it makes, but I'm hearing from family, from friends, 'Rachel, I read this story on School Meals," tell me about this. My hope is the excitement, the enthusiasm and the interest really changes the conversation and helps us drive forward solutions that will ensure that someday there is no kid hungry. BIO   Rachel Sabella has been a respected advocate, strategist and leader for nonprofit organizations for more than 20 years. She has been the Director of No Kid Hungry New York, a campaign of Share Our Strength, since 2018. In this role, Ms. Sabella works closely with stakeholders across New York State to ensure children have access to the nutrition they need to grow and thrive. She oversees grant-making, awareness building, programmatic and advocacy priorities for No Kid Hungry New York and manages relationships with state and local policymakers. Since March of 2020, she developed and oversaw a strategy to distribute more than $9 million in emergency grant funding to organizations across the state of New York and Puerto Rico to connect more kids and families to meals. She has led successful advocacy campaigns at both the city and state levels on issues including expanding access to school meal programs and SNAP in order to connect more New Yorkers with meals. Ms. Sabella also serves as a member of the NYS Council on Hunger and Food Policy and was appointed to Mayor-Elect Eric Adams' transition team. Prior to this role, Ms. Sabella served as the Director of Government Relations and Policy for the Food Bank For New York City. During this time, she led advocacy campaigns to grow and strengthen resources for anti-hunger programs, which led to unprecedented support for food pantries and soup kitchens in New York City. Her advocacy efforts also led to the creation of 25 school-based pantries that distribute food, menstrual and hygiene products, and household cleaning supplies to families in need.

In today's podcast, we're discussing Fast and Furious. But it's not the movie series starring Vin Diesel. Instead, the catchphrase describes rapidly increasing and somewhat confusing food system environmental impact reporting. Food firms, farmers, and governments all have a clear need for more quantitative environmental impact data in order to measure and understand factors such as carbon footprint, sustainable agricultural practices, and food supply chain processes. But there is no single standard for such reporting and different measurement methodologies make it difficult to assess progress. What's more, greater transparency regarding environmental impacts and food systems will affect trade and supply chains. Our guest today is Koen Deconinck from the Trade and Agricultural Directorate of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD for short. Interview Summary You and your colleagues at the OECD recently published a paper called Fast and Furious: The Rise of Environmental Impact Reporting in Food Systems. Can you tell me a little bit about the paper? Sure. A while ago we were talking to one of the world's experts on sustainability in food systems. He alerted us that there was a major change happening in how people think about sustainability in food systems. He told us in the past, it was thought of almost as a checklist, right? People would say, here's a list of practices that you should or shouldn't use. And then we'll come and confirm whether that's the case on your farm. Then you either get certified or you don't. And he said, you should pay attention because there's a big change underway. We're more and more moving towards actually quantifying things like what is your carbon footprint? What is your water footprint? And so on. He convinced us that this was actually a major change that was happening. Oddly enough, outside of the role of the practitioners, not that many people have been paying attention to it. That is why we wrote this paper. This is a really important shift because just thinking about this in terms of economics, evaluating outputs versus the methods that you get to those outputs can have really significant implications for the various actors involved. So, this seems like a good move, but it seems also kind of complicated. I would love to hear your thoughts about that particular move. Why did you think, or why did you all realize this was a challenge and opportunity at the same? That's a great question. It actually gets to the heart of what we're describing in the paper. Starting with the good news, we do think that this has an enormous potential to improve sustainability in food systems. Because we know from the scientific evidence that there are big differences between different kinds of food products in terms of their average environmental impact. For example, beef tends to have more greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of products relative to poultry and then definitely relative to plant based alternatives and so on. You can see these kinds of average differences. But then the data also shows that within each kind of product category, there's huge differences between different farmers. And what you can do if you start quantifying those footprints is it actually unlocks different kinds of levers. The first lever, if you think about carbon footprints, which is maybe the most intuitive example. The first lever is people know the carbon footprint of different kinds of food products. They could shift their diets away from the products that have a higher footprint towards products that have a lower footprint. For example, less beef and more towards poultry or towards plant-based alternatives. That's one lever. A second lever is that if you can also start to get even more precise and use data that is specific to each producer, not just an average, then also within each product category, people can start shifting towards the producers that have a lower environmental footprint. So, for example, people will still be drinking milk, but then they can shift towards milk producers that have a lower carbon footprint. And the third interesting lever that you can unlock is if you have that data at a supplier level. Suppliers could then say, well, I changed my practices. I changed my inputs. I've done things differently to reduce my impact. You actually can stimulate innovation by each individual farmer, each individual company in the supply chain to lower that impact. And that is something that you can do if you're quantifying those impacts, and that is very difficult or even impossible to do with this previous checklist-based approach. So that's one of the reasons why we're, we think that this has tremendous potential if we get it right. That's right. Just saying that you're doing sustainable practices isn't sufficient. It's really critical to evaluate what kinds of greenhouse gas emissions or other environmentally problematic outcomes of that producer or firm is what really matters. But I have to ask you just how difficult, how realistic is it to be able to measure the environmental impact of every farm? That's a really good question. And of course, if you think about agriculture compared to other sectors, one of the big challenges for agriculture is indeed that there's just so many producers, right? I talked to people who work in the steel industry, and they say that their industry is complicated, but there's basically only 1000 steel factories around the world. That's not that many. The latest evidence suggests that there's more than 600 million farmers worldwide. So clearly, we're talking about a completely different order of magnitude, order of complexity. And the second difficulty is that when we talk about measurements, for a steel factory, in theory, you could put sensors in the chimney and sort of measure that. For agriculture, that's really not practical. Scientists would sometimes do that because, you know, otherwise it's hard to know what greenhouse gas emissions you have in agriculture. But it's clearly not something that you're going to do on 600 million farms. So, what people do instead is, scientists would do the primary research. There are different ways of doing that, to try and estimate which kinds of practices have which kinds of environmental impacts. If you have a cow and it has this kind of diet, how much methane is it burping and how is it affected by differences in the kinds of feed that you give the animal and whether it's inside or outside and so on. And then based on that very detailed research, that then gets simplified into a simpler model, a simpler tool, so that the farmer can plug in some key performance indicators from their farm. I can say ‘I have these many cows, this is the feed rations that I'm giving to them. These are the kinds of manure management options that I have.' And then that tool is a simplified tool that basically gives you an estimate of those emissions. And once you have a tool like that, of course, the challenge is already a lot easier. Because then, if your tool is user friendly and you can sort of focus on just a couple of key parameters that farmers would know, then, of course, you can scale it up. And there are actual examples like that. In Ireland, there is a scheme called Origin Green, which is an initiative by the Irish government to promote exports of Irish Agri food products. They cover something like 90 percent of all the beef and dairy farms in the country. And as part of the initiative, they do the audits anyway, but as part of that initiative, they also quantify the carbon footprint. They basically have farm level data for 90 percent of the farmers. New Zealand similarly has had a big campaign called Know Your Numbers, where they've convinced farmers to use these kinds of calculation tools to get a good insight on how much the emissions are on their farm. So, it is definitely not straightforward. But at the same time, we do see that it is actually happening. It is actually feasible. Thank you for sharing that. This is really impressive work that's happening in the European context and in New Zealand. I have to ask, how challenging is this for small or medium sized producers? I mean, both in a European or Northern context, but particularly when we start thinking about the fact that Agri food chains are global and, and so there can be production practices in the Southern countries that would be of concern. How do you think about this in this context? It is a really important issue. And actually, we've been here before. If you go back something like 20 years ago, and I think you actually did some research on this yourself back in the days, Norbert. There was a big increase in food safety standards, food quality standards. And these were not necessarily public standards. It was quite often retailers who started to impose that on their suppliers. And we did have all those concerns, right? Because on the one hand, it was making food safer and higher quality for consumers. But on the other hand, there was this risk that it would actually exclude, especially the poor producers, the small and medium sized enterprises from those supply chains. There's been a lot of research about that and it turns out that in the end, it was more nuanced than what people feared initially. But of course, we definitely have the same concern now. And there's a few elements to it. One is simply the difficulty of actually quantifying those things. I mentioned a few of these calculation tools and a few of these initiatives. So far, most of the investment in these things has been in high income countries. And even if you look at the underlying science, most of the research has happened in richer countries. So, if you go to tropical agriculture, we even have less scientific evidence that you would use to build a simplified tool like that. Then there's, of course, the challenge of actually getting farmers to use that. So, governments in developing countries typically don't have the same kind of capacity that the government of New Zealand, or the government of Ireland has to help farmers do that. So, there's definitely a role there for development cooperation, technical assistance, things like that. But there's also another concern, which is that one of the important drivers of the environmental impacts of food products is actually your productivity. There are many parts of the food system where your environmental impacts might be roughly the same, no matter whether you are actually very productive or not. So, if you have the type of variety of rice or wheat that you're using that just has relatively low yields, then, of course, you divide the total environmental impact by a smaller number. So, automatically, your relative impact is bigger. And typically, that is what we find in the Global South. So, typically, the producers there will have much lower productivity levels. And studies do find that they tend to have higher environmental impacts, all else equal. So even if they were able to quantify it, there is actually an additional risk that then they would still get excluded. What that means is that this rise of quantified environmental impact reporting is something that we need to pay close attention to. And development corporation agencies and everybody else should be thinking hard about how we are going to make sure that producers in the Global South are not only able to quantify, but also able to improve those environmental impacts. For example, through sustainable productivity growth. This is really helpful. And thank you for sharing that. And you're right. I did think about these issues. I was influenced rather by the experience of increasing food safety standards. I would say one of the differences that we saw with food safety standards was how safe can food be? I mean, we want our food to be extremely safe, but there are always these tradeoffs. With environmental impacts, I think it feels a little different. And I really appreciate the concern of the difference between these small and medium sized enterprises, particularly out of a developing country context. I've got to ask sort of a broader question. Why is all of this happening now? This increase of environmental sustainability measures, both in terms of the technical work and the demand. I mean, what's bringing all of this together? It is actually a pretty interesting story because it appears that, the way we look at it, there's been some changes on the demand side and on the supply side, so to speak, right? So, there's this growing demand for more information. Consumers are increasingly conscious about these things, even though it's not clear yet if this really translates into their shopping behavior. Civil society organizations, of course, have long been asking for more information on that. Governments, in some cases, are also pushing for that. One clear example there is in the European Union. There is this new rule in the EU. It's called the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. That's quite a mouthful. And one of the things it does is it requires all large companies to report not only their own emissions and the emissions from the energy that they're purchasing, but also their emissions upstream and downstream in their supply chain. People sometimes call this Scope Three Emissions. This has huge ramifications because it means that for the supermarkets, a large part of their Scope Three Emissions are the emissions from food. They would then probably ask the food manufacturers 'well, give us more information on your carbon footprints.' And in turn, for the food manufacturers, a large part of their carbon footprint comes upstream from the agricultural sector. So, everybody would be turning around and asking their supplier and all the way up the supply chain for more information. All the way, not only to the farmer, but even further up to the fertilizer companies and so on. So, there's definitely this push on the demand side. And, I guess governments and citizens and civil society, those are sort of the usual suspects, so to speak. There's also unexpectedly a lot of pressure from investors. We see organizations of investors pushing hard for more transparency. Their logic is that sooner or later, stricter regulations on the environmental side are going to come. For some of the companies that we're currently investing in, we have no idea how hard that would hit them. So, those companies need to disclose more information because we as investors need to know how much money is at risk if we invest in a business that is, for example, linked to deforestation and things like that. So, that's the demand side. But what is really interesting is that at the same time on the supply side, it's also becoming easier to actually provide that information compared to five or 10 years ago. Some of this is because people have been working in obscurity for a long time, trying to develop certain methods and databases. A lot of that work has been coming to fruition in just the last few years. For example, there's been development of new reporting standards, there's been development of new databases, there's been development of new methods, people are now using satellites and so on to try and quantify things like land use change, deforestation impacts and so on. A lot of these things are now converging and blending with each other. We do think that the combination of this greater demand and greater supply that is driving what we're seeing now. And of course, some of these initiatives are still at a relatively early stage. At the same time, I think the direction of travel is clear. So, we think that demand is not going to go down. It will keep getting easier to supply that information. We think that this is what explains this fast increase that we're seeing. This is really intriguing, and it makes me wonder how global value chains are going to be realigned. Going back to this idea of small and medium sized producers who may not be able to have the monitoring, or if you think of even larger firms who feel uncomfortable with having some outside agency evaluating the carbon emissions or other greenhouse gas emissions from their farm. I can imagine that this could realign value chains. Is this a fair assessment? Is this a concern? I agree with you that this is something people should be looking at. At the moment, there's not yet any data on that. I don't think anybody has really researched that. We see in general that many researchers aren't really paying attention to this trend, which was actually one of the reasons we wrote this paper. But what you're describing is exactly one of the questions we have as well. There are a few ways that this could play out. You could imagine that if it's only some markets that are getting very interested in this kind of information, you might have a situation where companies in a producing country decide to just send the sustainable stuff to the countries that care about sustainability. But they keep producing the unsustainable stuff for all the other markets. In that case, the total impact for the environment might actually be limited. But there could also be other cases where companies think, well, since a large part of our customer base is asking for more sustainability, we might as well make everything sustainable just to be on the safe side. You might have other cases where companies start working backwards because they want to make sure that what they are selling is sustainable. So, you might actually have situations where a retailer starts working with suppliers or where a food manufacturer starts working with suppliers to make sure that their production is sustainable. This is again something that we have seen in the wake of these food safety standards about 20 years ago. This was a really surprising development and there was a lot of investment from other companies in the supply chain to help farmers start meeting these stricter food safety standards. So, one possibility is that something like that might happen for environmental sustainability as well. At the moment, these are all really just hypotheses. And so I really hope people will start to investigate this more seriously, because I think it is very important also for policymakers to understand what has happened. I'm really appreciative of you making the point that there is just a great deal of uncertainty in this space and that there is a need for researchers to explore this issue. And I agree the food safety concerns of 20 or so years ago is a good example. But I think there are going to be some differences and I'll be intrigued to see how that plays out. I am interested to understand, are there any risks besides the ones that we've kind of touched on, any other risks or downsides to this movement that we're seeing? Yes, there are actually. Because the story I told so far was maybe a little bit on the optimistic side. I was explaining how it's becoming easier to supply the information in part because we now have better reporting standards. That is one part of the story. That's sort of the glass half full view of it. The glass half empty view is that actually, at the same time, there's also a fragmentation. There are also many different initiatives, and this is why we call it fast and furious. So, there's lots of different initiatives that are competing for attention. And you do end up with situations where you might have different ways of calculating certain environmental impact. Different ways of reporting it. And then it's not necessarily clear when somebody is reporting something what exactly they were using as methods. And so that poses an enormous risk, because if every supermarket or every country starts coming up with its own way of doing things, its own way of reporting, then the end result is just going to be confusion and frustration and transaction costs. And then the benefits for the environment won't even be there. So, it is really important if you want this to go well, that people get together, stakeholders, governments, researchers, to get together and try to align as much as possible on common reporting standards, common methodologies, etc. So that it's clear for everybody that the data that we're looking at is comparable. This is important, and I can imagine if we think about international accords on addressing climate change and how it takes a lot of effort to get agreement on those, you can imagine that when we're talking about these kinds of measures and getting concordance on that, there could be some real challenges. We've already touched on this, but I'm interested to know, are there other policy implications of the work that this paper is doing? Is there something we should be paying attention to? Well, one idea that I hope people would start taking seriously is I want people to start thinking in timelines and cycles. And let me explain what I mean by that. There's a lot of different initiatives out there. And you can even start to see a little bit of a hierarchy, how different things, some of these standards are building on other standards. Some of these databases are then in turn using some of those other standards. There's a kind of a logic that is emerging there. One of the problems that happens now is that it's not really clear when all of these elements are going to get updated. So, suddenly one of those standards might get updated and then now all of these other standards that build on that or those databases that build on that are suddenly no longer consistent with that original standard. And then there's some confusion and then it's not really clear whether the data you are using is actually still consistent with the original standard. One idea that I'm advocating for is that people should all explicitly define a certain iteration cycle where they say, look, every four years, for example, or every three years, every five years, we are going to review the standard. We'll give everybody 12 months of warning, and we'll have a stakeholder process, and we'll have a scientific process behind that so it's clear for everybody what we're changing and why. But this way, you know well in advance when each of these building blocks is going to get updated. Then that would make it a lot easier for everybody to make sure that what they're doing is aligned with those standards. And an additional benefit of doing it like that, I think, is these things are moving so fast and there's still so much new science and new technology coming in, that we have to keep the possibility open to keep improving and updating those methods and those standards as well. If you announce in advance that we'll do this on a three year cycle or a four year cycle or whatever it may be, I think that could help us strike a balance between the need for that flexibility, but at the same time that need for stability. Because of course, if things keep changing all the time, then you're never quite sure whether the numbers you're looking at make sense or can be compared. I think that idea would be very helpful. And that will probably require quite a bit of coordination between all the different stakeholders who work in that space. And I think that would be a very good thing to do. BIO Koen Deconinck is an economist in the Trade and Agriculture Directorate of the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) in Paris. He was lead author of the OECD report “Making Better Policies for Food Systems” (2021) and has worked on market concentration, seed markets, evidence gaps, resilience, and environmental impacts of food systems. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Leuven and has published research in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, the European Review of Agricultural Economics, Food Policy, and Business History, among others. He currently works on measurement of carbon footprints and other environmental impacts of food.  

Today's podcast is a gastronomic treat. I'm talking with Chef William Dissen, James Beard Award-winning chef and owner of the restaurant, The Marketplace, located in Asheville, North Carolina. William is the founder of four award winning restaurants and draws inspiration from traveling the world, creating dishes that tell a story, surprising guests with inventive food preservation techniques, and bringing classic dishes with explosive flavors to life. He published a debut cookbook in 2024 titled Thoughtful Cooking - Recipes Rooted in the New South. Food and Wine Magazine recognized it as the best spring cookbook and praised how he takes readers on a culinary journey organized by the four seasons of Appalachia's most sought-after ingredients. William also enjoys the fame of being the first and only chef to beat Gordon Ramsay in a cook off on NatGeo TV's Gordon Ramsay Uncharted Smoky Mountains. Interview Summary Will, you were early to the farm to table local foods concept. Some years ago, when I dined at your restaurant, the Marketplace, I liked the philosophy, not to mention the food, would you please tell us what led you down this road? You know, I'm originally from West Virginia, from the Appalachian Mountains, and my grandparents were, were farmers that lived in very rural parts of the state. I grew up in suburbia in the capital of Charleston, West Virginia, but spent a lot of my weekends on their farm. And they very much lived the Appalachian mentality and culture of farming, of putting things up for the year. You know, they canned and pickled and preserved and fermented and dehydrated, and they foraged and they had honeybees to pollinate their garden. They irrigated with fresh spring water and things that I think now in 2024, hipster DIY trends that people are saying they're doing in bigger cities. But these are things my grandparents were doing to sustain themselves. And I'd say that those ideas and ideals imprinted upon me about not just sustainability and how to treat the earth, but also about how to make food delicious because great food starts fresh. And from this initial exposure to food customs of your youth what led you to being a chef? You know I think in those hot sweaty August days, as they say up in the holler of my grandparents' farm, we'd sit in the front porch and shuck corn and string beans. I really kind of kindled a love affair with food. One of my first jobs I had, I was a newspaper delivery boy and shortly after that I was, you know, trying to hustle to make some more money. And I ended up washing dishes at a local country club. And I think a very similar story for a lot of chefs, one day the garde manger cook or the salad and sandwich cook called out. And the chef said can you make sandwiches and salads? And I thought, sure, I can do that. And haven't really looked back since. You've been a chef at many fine restaurants in major cities. What led you to Asheville, North Carolina in particular? After I left West Virginia, I lived all over the place. I was in New York and California and South Carolina and ended up back here where I'm now in Asheville where I have my restaurant, The Marketplace. And one of the things that really stood out to me was the really beautiful region. National Geographic has voted it time and time again as one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. It's actually a temperate rainforest. There are species of wild edible greens and medicinal greens. There are species of lizards and snakes and things that you only find here in this region. It's not just beautiful. It's also a really thriving ecosystem. Terms like intentional, mindful, and in your case, thoughtful - it's in the title of your book - can be applied to cooking and eating. What does it mean to you? I'd say in general, it's going back to what I mentioned about my grandparents. And really focusing on being present but also planning ahead. I feel like in this day and age, we're so connected to computers and phones and social media that we've kind of got disconnected from our food system. People say, well, you know, technology is driving the world and we need to be logged in to be able to stay relevant. And I don't disagree with that, but I feel as our society is doing that, we are losing touch with nature. And if you go back one generation, two generations and ask anyone, their grandparents, I'm sure grew a garden. Or were farmers, and they probably went through acts of preservation because there weren't Whole Foods in every corner. It wasn't Amazon delivery. They had to plan ahead, and to be in touch with the time of year enables them to sustain themselves and their families. And certainly, we're fortunate now in 2024 to not have to think that way all the time, but I do think there's a lot of value into being a little more thoughtful about the world around us. And I think that's really what I want to try to show people with my book, Thoughtful Cooking, is that connecting yourself to the food system enables us to connect ourselves to the environment. Enables to connect ourselves to our local economy, to our community, and to be reconnected with those that make our food. And I think that's an important thing that a lot of us are missing in this day and age. Please tell us more. What does thoughtful cooking look like in action? I think thoughtful cooking is kind of multifaceted, right? I think it's being aware of what's in season. Here we are in August and in the Carolinas. What's in season this time of year, right? We have tomatoes and peppers and corn and okra, and we have all these different things that are uniquely delicious and in season. But it's a conversation when I talk about local food and talk about sustainability. I ask people, it's a very cliche question: when would you like to eat a tomato? July? August? Or January, February. And people say, 'Oh, well, of course, July or August. That's when the tomatoes are delicious and they're bright in color and they're ripe and they're juicy and sweet.' And I think those are the things that we're not being as thoughtful about nowadays. About where our food comes from and why things are in season. So, I think that's one aspect of it. Another aspect of it is it's just taking the time to be mindful of the world around us. I think we're all moving so fast that I want people to be able to slow down and enjoy cooking. Cooking as a father of two, running many businesses, I joke with my kids it feels like a chopped competition in my kitchen. Some days when I open the fridge and I've got 30 minutes to make dinner for a couple hangry kids. But also taking the time to enjoy cooking. I think there's something to be said about slow food and taking the time to cook in your kitchen, open a bottle of wine, turn the music up. Actually connect with people around you rather than just staring and scrolling on your phone. I think it's a way to really bring people together. And then the other, the other facet of it is, thoughtful cooking is that the way we choose to eat really creates an opportunity to vote with our forks. That there's a lot of advocacy and sustainability you can do just in taking the time to think about where your food comes from. I can so relate to what you're saying. Not too far from where I live in Durham, North Carolina, there's an unbelievably wonderful farmers market. The state farmers market in Raleigh, which I imagine you've been at, been to one time or another. But what a pleasure it is to go there when the strawberries are just coming into season and then the blueberries and then the peaches and then the apples. Not to mention all the vegetables. And we just this weekend had guests and made a corn and tomato salad with all these wonderful things that were there. It just felt that there's something special about making it when you've gone to buy the ingredients from a farmer who grew them. And you're right, everything, every part of the experience is better doing that. How in the restaurant do you try to accomplish getting people closer to the food and more thoughtful about it? At our flagship restaurant, The Marketplace in Asheville, the whole premise is local food sustainability. I really like to show that we can create a sustainable business that can last the test of time. And I think we have, as we're celebrating our 45th year this year in 2024. But for me it's taken the time to meet the makers. The artisans who are making cheeses or types of charcuterie. Dairy farmers, vegetable farmers, livestock farmers, fishermen. And taking the time to talk to them about what they do to be a little more thoughtful and inquisitive about how we're eating. Doesn't necessarily mean that we're all eating healthy food all the time, right? But understanding how they're taking care of it. As you really dive into the food system, there's a lot of things that if you look at what's happening behind the scenes in some of these big, bigger commercial commodity farms - you may not like about people are being treated that are growing the livestock or the vegetables. About how they're treading on the environment in a non-sustainable way. And then also, what's going into the product that's going into your body? Are they putting hormones on or different types of spray or whatnot, you know, to cut the chemicals that could affect your body in the long run. And I know I'm not a crazy health nut, but I want to make sure that, when I'm eating clean, I feel good. And I think a lot of it too I was very fortunate after I did undergraduate studies at West Virginia university, I went on to the culinary Institute of America for culinary degree. And I took a wine course there. It really imprinted on me about viticulture with how they grow grapes. They study this thing called a Brix level, which is the sugar level in a grape. They use this fancy electronic device called a mass spectrometer that measures the sugar content in a grape. And so, the vintners go around their farms, and test the grapes as they are approaching ripeness. They wait to pull them off the vine until the grapes reach that perfect ripeness because the grapes are higher in sugar. They're naturally sweeter. They're going to ferment into more delicious wine, but every fruit and vegetables has a Brix level. So if we're able to really be in touch with, with nature, with the time of year, when vegetables and fruits are ripe, they're naturally going to taste better. The vegetables are going to be bright in color heavy for their size because they're naturally ripe and sweet and they're just going to taste better. I don't know about you, but that doesn't necessarily make me feel like I'm a health nut. But it makes me feel like I'm in search of great flavor. Well, it shows how much you appreciate good food and how important good food can be for the way we feel about ourselves. Obviously for the environment and things. You know, I've often thought it would be a wonderful experience to go to a restaurant and have a meal, but before the meal, be able to interact with the farmer. The farmer comes in and talks about whatever she or he has contributed to that particular meal and how the food was created and what their relationship is to the land and whatever practices they use. You get those things outside of a restaurant. But I've always thought it'd be really interesting in a restaurant to do that kind of thing. Maybe that's something you've already done. We've definitely hosted a number of farm dinners. I actually have one coming up. There's a group out of Santa Cruz, California called Outstanding in the Field. This will be our eighth dinner we've done with them over the years. But we will do a white tablecloth dinner in the middle of a farm field for 200 people and cook over a wood fire. And you know, the hogs and the sheep are grazing the pasture beside it. And the vegetable garden is in other pasture over. And for a lot of people, they've never stepped foot on a farm. And it's a really transcending experience. I think the answer to this is pretty obviously yes. But it seems like today's youth, like I think about students that I teach in college, are so much more interested in the story of their food than people were just a generation or two ago. But I think I, when I grew up, all we cared about was that we had food. And the, you know, the better it tasted, which basically meant how much it was processed and how much sugar and things it had in it. That was really about all we knew. But now people are asking a whole different level of questions about where their food came from. Do you see opportunities for working with children to help maximize that? I do, yes. There's an organization that I've been on the board for a long time locally called the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. They have a subsidiary called Growing Minds Program. And it works to put healthy local food into schools and to teach children about the opportunity to healthy and eat fresh. I think it's a great thing. I do a lot of food advocacy work as well on Capitol Hill where I go and lobby for different food policy. I've done that at Capitol Hill, you know, and internationally as well. I helped create the Chef's Manifesto for the UN's World Food Policy. And I spoke at a number of conferences around the world about it. But it starts with children, right? If we're able to teach them about eating healthy and eating local, it's going to be something that's ingrained in them forever. And about local food, I feel like a lot of people say, 'Oh, well, shopping at the farmers market, like that's only for the 1%.' And I feel like I find a lot of great deals in the market. But a lot of farmers markets nowadays, because of different food policy and food advocacy, they have things even with SNAP benefits that they'll do two for one. So, you can really get some great deals at the market as well. You mentioned you've done some advocacy activity in Washington arguing for certain policies, what kind of policies have you been involved with? Given that we're in a presidential election year, I always like to tell people I don't really like politics very much, but I really like policy. Because policy is where you can take action and make change. I've done a lot of advocacy work advocating for things like the Magnuson Stevens Act, which provides federal fishery management and sustainability ratings for different species of seafood. I, also worked on the Childhood Nutrition Reauthorization Act, which was to add more funds to school lunches for children. Farm bill. Gosh, I've done so many different things. It's good to get out there. Our politicians get bombarded with different bills and lobbying groups all the time. But I think when they see somebody like myself, I'm a chef, I'm an employer, business owner, real estate owner, it's different than maybe your standard blue suit lobbyists. A lot of times take the time to listen. And many of them come in and eat at our restaurants. So, it's an opportunity to really try to direct change and hopefully when they go to vote for these various bills, they think about the opportunity that they've had to meet with constituents like myself. And hopefully they remember to do the right thing when they place their vote. You also show how many ways there are to interact with the food system. And ways to try to make improvements, and the scope of your activity is really pretty impressive. So, let's loop back to your book. In your book, you talk about, again in the title, you talk about the New South. What is the New South? I think a lot of people think of Southern food as shrimp and grits and gumbo and very heavy, rich country cooking. There's a lot of African American influence from the days of slavery. And recipes, ingredients that were brought over during slavery from West Africa, and traditions that arose in Southern cooking from those times. Like everywhere else in the world, the South is evolving and it's one of the most popular places for people to move to within our country, the United States. And we're starting to see this evolution of Southern food, right? It's not just this kind of typical stick to your ribs, Southern cooking anymore. We're starting to see other cultures come in. There's Indian culture, African American culture, Asian cultures that are coming in and they're taking these traditions of Southern food and local food, but then adding their flavors to it. And to me, it's a really exciting time because I'm biased, I love Southern food. I love shrimp and grits. I love these different dishes that are so wonderful. But I love when somebody comes in and they take a recipe, and they add their own touch to it and they tweak it. Because to me, that's, that's adding to our heritage as Southerners. And so, for me, recipes rooted in the New South is this evolution that we're, we're taking Southern food on. If you wouldn't mind, give us some examples of some of the recipes that are in your book? I have a number of dishes that I think are really exciting. One of my favorites: I have a red wine braised beef short rib. Serving that with a chili cumin sauce and then a blue cheese and green apple coleslaw. So, it's kind of taking this idea of, you know, of beef and coleslaw, but kind of adding in some other flavors from other cultures. You know, like within that there's a lot of kind of Hispanic flavors as well. I loved looking through the recipes in your book. And I don't think there was one that I looked at where I wasn't surprised by some ingredient that I didn't expect. Or putting things together in unique ways. The book strikes me as being highly creative. I can just imagine how much work was involved in putting that book together and how long it took. It must sort of be the culmination of a lifetime of work, so congratulations for doing that. Well, thank you. I think as I mentioned before about the other work I do outside the restaurant. I didn't just want to write a Marketplace restaurant cookbook. I wanted to write a cookbook that talks about, you know, the power of food and the philosophy behind it. But then also have some delicious and creative recipes in there that can be inspiring to folks as well. BIO William Stark Dissen is a renowned chef, author, culinary diplomat, restaurateur, and early pioneer of the farm-to-table movement in Asheville, North Carolina, and surrounding regions. His titles also include Seafood Watch Ambassador to The Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, and Official Ambassador for Le Creuset and Mountain Valley Spring Water. Named Fortune Magazine's “Green Chef of the Year” two years in a row, William's endeavors in sustainable food and dining, coupled with his passion for foraging and fly-fishing, often take him from the kitchen, into the mountain streams and peaks of the Southeastern, United States, Appalachian region, and beyond. William's efforts to uplift the principles of food sustainability in his restaurant and network of vendors and suppliers, has not gone unnoticed. It caught the eye of Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay, who featured Asheville on NatGeo TV's, “Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted, Smoky Mountains.” The hour-long episode featured William touring Ramsay through the forest and rivers of Western North Carolina and concluded with the two chefs competing in a peer-reviewed cook-off. William beat Ramsay for the first and only time in the show's three seasons. Through this experience, Gordon Ramsay named William, “The Most Sustainable Chef on the Planet!” A career in the culinary arts led Dissen to become an advocate for food policy on Capitol Hill starting in 2010, where he's lobbied to Congress about the importance of passing legislation, such as The Farm Bill, The Childhood Nutrition Reauthorization Act, and The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act. The Barack Obama administration lauded William as a “White House Champion of Change for Sustainable Seafood” for his work to create healthier oceans. He also serves in the American Chefs Corps in the U.S. State Department, which sees him traveling around the world to promote American food culture and sustainability practices.  

Join Kelly Brownell in a conversation with Michael Dimock, Executive Director of Roots of Change, about transforming food systems through innovative policies. Discover how Roots of Change collaborates with various stakeholders to create nutrition incentive programs and support sustainable agriculture, focusing on community-first approaches. Learn about pioneering projects, insights into policy influence, and the future of agricultural practices. This episode provides an optimistic view of the evolving food system landscape and the potential for significant positive change. Interview Summary Why don't we begin by you explaining what Roots of Change does. What's the mission and role of the organization? Yes. We were originally founded by a group of philanthropic foundations that were very interested in food system change but had not seen much success in years. So we were really designed to be a catalyst to ignite the growth of what we would call the Good Food Movement. For 10 years, we were actually a philanthropic fund investing in different projects that built the power of the food movement. And then implemented projects that would catalyze change. That would show how you could scale change fairly rapidly by building collaboration. So that's really what we've been doing. And in 2013, the philanthropic fund ended, we'd spent down all the money. So we joined the Public Health Institute at that time because public health is such an incredibly important engine for food system change because the food system impacts public health so greatly. We've been since that time focused on policy change and implementing model demonstration projects. Thanks for that explanation. You talked about catalyzing change for transforming the food system. What sort of changes have you emphasized? We've been focused on a few key things. I would say that one of the most important for us has been healthy food access. And doing that through the creation of nutrition incentive programs. And the reason we're interested in that is, all the changes that we pursue are aimed to hit several different levers of change simultaneously. By building nutrition incentive programs, you help the small and midsize farmers who are supplying local grocery stores, the farmers markets, and at the same time, you're creating the funding for low-income families to actually purchase organic, regenerative, sustainable agriculture. From their local market. You get a lot of payoff for that kind of action. You mentioned incentives. How do incentives fit into this? There is a program, a federal program called the GUSNIP. Named after Gus Schumacher, who was Undersecretary at USDA during the Clinton years, and actually worked with us early on. And so that program is a pool of funding through the Farm Bill that is given as grants to either states or nonprofits that are creating these programs where a family comes in with their SNAP benefits, and their purchasing power is doubled. They're given matching dollars to buy fruits and vegetables from a farmer's market, a local store, grocery store. So it's an incentive to purchase fresh nutritious food. And so, we have worked on the original federal policy. We're one of the first demonstration projects to show how you do nutrition incentives working with folks in the upper Midwest and in the East. And then we created an analog. California also has a matching fund which helps us pull more money from the federal level. So, we can really get a big impact at the local level. And we built that California program as well. We've been really deep in nutrition incentives. But we also work on farmer farmworker protections from heat. It's a big problem out here in the West. Increasing temperatures. We're working with different scientists, epidemiologists, and farmers to figure out best management practices or technologies that keep farmers cool. And then we also work on programs to provide incentives for ranchers to produce regenerative meat, that is grass-finished meat. So, those are the three areas working in right now. But we're also just starting a project. I have a meeting today with the California Department of Food and Agriculture to develop a plan for mid and small-scale infrastructure for regional food systems in the state of California to be achieved by 2040. One thing I really like about your approach is the lining up of incentives to produce food in a way that's better for both human health and the environment. Because so many incentives are lined up the other way. Obviously, the food industry wants to make as much money as they can, and that comes from highly processed foods that aren't very good for health. And then the same sort of incentives lines up for agriculture to do industrial forms of agriculture where you maximize the yield per acre. To turn that around is really going to be a major effort. One thing I like about your approach is that you're trying different things that can become models for what could be used in a very broad scale in terms of public policy. I really admire that and like what you're doing. Do you have an overall strategy for helping bring about change? One of the things that we did in 2010-11 is we did a deep analysis of the food system and did a systems dynamic map of the entire food system. Working with leaders, Secretary of Agriculture for California, farmers - big size, small size, organic, conventional, with food justice folks. And we looked at where are the real intervention points. One of the things that we really realize is that, as you were pointing out, the current incentives are for industrialization, basically. And so, the question is, how do you actually change that? And policy is one important lever for doing that. So, we work a lot on trying to change the policy levers to create incentives for what we would call healthy and resilient agriculture. Tell me more about how you go about doing that. I'd love to hear when you're done with that, how you go about doing that with policymakers. Well, I'll jump right in on that. Let's look at what we did with nutrition incentives. So, working with Fair Food Network out of the upper Midwest, and Wholesome Wave out East, Roots of Change did a study. We created our own nutrition incentive programs using philanthropic dollars and some USDA kind of innovative dollars, and then we studied it for two years, what the impacts were. We wrote a report then, which went to Congress, to Debbie Stabenow in Minnesota, who was the Senator there who was on the ag committee. And she began writing a bill that would say, okay, let's provide incentives for people to buy healthy food that also helped the small farmers. So that switched the incentive from the big agricultural systems to the regional food system players. That was one way we did it. The other thing that we did in California was we organized all the farmers markets to go to the State of California and say, look, if you provide this nutrition incentive program in California and analog, we'll pull down more dollars from the federal government. The California legislature said that's a great idea. They got on board. Which then helped the farmers markets to provide more funding because farmers markets are often stressed. Too many markets, so there's problems. Competition between markets. So, to provide a new market, which is low-income families who are using nutrition incentives and their SNAP dollars, that was really important for the farmer's market. Those farmer's markets became another big piece of our strategy. Our way of making change was just to build collaborations, large collaborations of people. We work with many other nonprofits and farming groups in California to approach the legislature and over the last three years we've gotten $1.3 billion dollars in investments from the state of California into sustainable agriculture and food justice. Because we're able to build these large collaborations who convince the legislators who really care about votes that there's enough people out there want to see this happen. And we have just placed a billion-dollar request on the next bond, which will be in the next election, November. This November there's the climate bond. It's called a climate bond for the State of California. Ten billion dollars, one billion of that will be dedicated to nutrition, nutritional health, farm workers, and sustainable agriculture. So, in all ways, it's about getting enough voices. So, if you look at what we're really trying to do, we're trying to build the power of what we would call the Good Food Movement. Best of luck with that billion-dollar request. I really hope that goes through. You know, in the beginning of your response to my last question, you talked about a report that you did in concert with other organizations around the country and how that became influential in the policy process. Very often, some of the people in my orbit, scientists, wonder how they can help with this kind of thing and how they can do work that makes a difference. And I've often thought that speaking with people in the policy and advocacy world, like you, turns up some really interesting questions they could help address, if they knew what those questions were. But they often aren't having those conversations because they're mainly speaking to other scientists. That's one of the reasons why I so much like having people who approach things like you do on this podcast series. Scientists aren't our only listeners, but they're among them, and it's nice to give them ideas about how they can connect their work with what's going on out there on the ground in terms of policymaking. So, you emphasize putting people in communities first. What does that mean? And how does that play out in the work you do? It's a great segue from what you were just saying about the need to combine community voices with nonprofits and scientists, academics, and people who are good at research and who are good at analysis. Back to this idea of nutrition incentives that really grew out of what community groups were doing. The IRC (the International Rescue Committee) works with immigrants from Africa, primarily at that time who were coming into San Diego. And they were farmers, mostly. They were escaping violence, war, in their countries. And they came to San Diego and the IRC worked with them to create a farmer's market, and a farm - a community farm. And those folks were the ones that were saying, this program works. And this is a really good way to solve many problems at once. So, we were hearing from community members and the nonprofit that had created this model. So, it was a way of us understanding what was actually working on the ground. So that's one example. I can also say that in 2017, 2019 and 2020, we had terrible fires here in California. We also had all that followed with COVID in 2020. We were working with the University of California at Davis. Tom Tomich, who at that time was with the Ag Sustainability Institute at UC Davis. And we were doing research on how do you deal with climate change as small farmers? And what we realized is there was this moment in time when all of these things that have been piling up were impacting the ability to get meat. You'll remember that meat disappeared from shelves for a while because all the big plants that process meat in the Midwest were shut down due to COVID. So, what we did is then went out and we interviewed ranchers up and down the State of California, and we asked them, what do you need? And are you interested in finishing animals for grass-fed markets? Are you interested in building local markets? We got a lot of feedback that led to a white paper that Roots of Change published with the University of California at Davis and put out to the world. Which led to us getting a grant to actually take some of the suggestions and the recommendations we had gotten from the producers about what to do. What's that led to now? We have built a relationship with the University of California: ten campuses, five medical systems. They have committed to buy regenerative regional meat from the State of California. That grew out of a white paper, which was fed information by the ranchers on the ground, analyzed by academics and nonprofits, and delivered in a system that's now gotten the university to make a commitment. So, it's another example of just how you can mix all these great parties to get some sustainable change at a large scale? Now that leads me pretty nicely to what my next question. And it has to do with what's needed going forward and how do these things occur in more places in a bigger way than the places they are now. Now you mentioned, for example, the regenerative agriculture pledge that got made by the University of California system. That's a big enterprise. There are a lot of people that get touched by that system. So, that's a pretty impressive example of taking an idea that might've been smaller to begin with and then became bigger. Going forward, what kind of things are going to be needed to make that kind of thing happen more often? That's a really good question. Kelly, I think that one of it is communication. I mean, perhaps some somebody will hear this and reach out to us and say, how'd you do that? And then we'll say, well…and they'll tell us what they did and we'll learn from them. One of the things I'm really interested in, always been interested in, and one of the things that Roots of Change is focused on is trying to convene people to share information. Because you build partnerships when you share information. And those partnerships can become the engines for getting the policy makers or the corporations to change their modalities. How they're doing things. Because they realize, hey, the writing is on the wall. This has to happen. We need to figure out how to get there. And sometimes it's complex to get there because the food system is very complex. So, I would say that one of the things I'm really looking forward to is more cross collaboration. You know, we're living in the season of elections. We're hearing it on the news all the time. And the thing that drives the policy makers is whether or not they're going to be elected or reelected. And so, the more that we can convince them that there is a large majority of the public that wants to see these fundamental changes in the food system. We will have their support. We've seen it in California. We are getting incredible support from our Secretary of Agriculture, our governor, and our Secretary of Natural Resources. They work together to create things on the ground. I would say that the Tom Vilsack and Biden did a lot for regenerative agriculture, working on two big projects that have been funded by the USDA that will touch a thousand ranchers of bison and beef to get them to learn about, adapt, adopt, and then build new markets for their products. So that's an important piece. The other is the marketplace and companies want to sell their products. So, the more that consumers become discerning and what they're purchasing, the better off we're going to be. So, we have a podcast like you do. And what we're trying to do is just educate people about the connections between what they're doing and what the farmers and ranchers out there who are trying to do good work with the land and with health and with their workers. We just try to promote this idea of making good decisions about what they purchase. Tell us a little bit more about your podcast, which is called Flipping the Table. Tell us more about what you're trying to accomplish and the kind of people that you speak with. Well, it's similar to yours in a certain way, I would say. Because what I'm doing is interviewing the people that are doing the kinds of projects that we think are scaling change or could scale change. Or people who have a depth of understanding. So, the regenerative meat world, we've done a lot in the last few years. Talking to Nicolette Hahn Nyman, who wrote a couple of books about the meat system, with a great rancher up in Northern California, who advises other ranchers on how to finish their animals on grass in California in a dry environment. I just, today we dropped a podcast with Cole Mannix from the Old Salt Co op in Montana about the ranchers he's pulled together. The co op he's built that has a slaughter plant, restaurants, a meat shop, and has an online thing. And then they do a big, they do a big annual event in the summer during the solstice. So, you know, we're just trying to get voices who, like you are, who are, who are modeling and educating the public around what is happening. How much is actually happening. I've been in this world for 30 years almost, and I have to say, I have never been more optimistic about the scale of change, the accelerating speed of change, and the possibilities that lay ahead. BIO  Michael Dimock is an organizer and thought leader on food and farming systems and heads Roots of Change (ROC) a project of the Public Health Institute. ROC develops and campaigns for smart, incentive-based food and farm policies that position agriculture and food enterprises as solutions to critical challenges of the 21st century. Since 2006, Michael has been spawning and leading education and policy campaigns, community dialogues and creative engagements with government and corporate leaders to advance regenerative food and farm policies and practices that make agriculture and food enterprises solutions to critical public health challenges of the 21st century. His leadership has helped create one new law and funding program at the federal level and three new California laws that included two new funding programs and five successful budget requests. He began his career in 1989 as a sales executive in Europe for agribusiness and in 1992 founded Ag Innovations Network to provide strategic planning for companies and governments seeking healthier food and agriculture. In 1996, he founded Slow Food Russian River and, from 2002 to 2007, he was Chairman of Slow Food USA and a member of Slow Food International's board of directors. Michael's love for agriculture and food systems grew from experiences on a 13,000-acre cattle ranch in Santa Clara County in his youth and a development project with Himalayan subsistence farmers in Nepal in 1979. He is the host of the podcast Flipping the Table featuring honest conversations about food, farms and the future. 

Study after study has shown that consumption of sugar sweetened beverages poses clear health risk. So how have the big soda companies, Coke and Pepsi in particular, reacted to this news and to public health policies that have aimed to restrict their business dealings like marketing, labeling, and even taxes? A fascinating and important part of this history has been told in a new book by Dr. Susan Greenhalgh called Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca Cola. Dr. Greenhalgh is the John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society Emerita at Harvard University. But hold on, what in the heck does China have to do all this? Well, we're about to find out. This will be a very interesting discussion. Interview Summary Let's begin by setting the context for your book, again, on soda science. Back in 2015, the New York Times published a major expose, written by Anahat O'Connor, and a critique of what was called the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), that was funded by Coca Cola. Could you explain what this network was? Sure. The GEBN was an international network of researchers that argued that the energy balance framework is the best approach for addressing the obesity epidemic. So that simple framework calls for balancing the energy in the number of calories consumed through eating with a number of calories burned through moving to achieve a healthy weight. While that sounds neutral in practice, in the early 2000s, Coke and the food industry at large, adopted energy balance as their motto. It had several advantages. One is under the banner of "energy balance," the industry and the scientists working with it could say that people could eat whatever they wanted and then exercise it off. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for most people. Second, in practice, the energy balance slogan was used to promote exercise as the priority solution. What the research shows about energy is that exercise helps, but the primary answer to the obesity issue is to eat fewer unhealthy foods. Now the third advantage to the energy balance framework is that talking about energy balance meant the companies and the GEBN didn't need to mention soda taxes, or other legislative and regulatory measures, that worked but that might hurt the industry. So, in my book, I call this body of ideas adopted by the GEBN and the food industry “Soda Science.” That's short for Soda Defense Science - a science created not so much to understand obesity, as to defend the profits of the soda industry. Okay, that all makes sense, and I totally agree with your interpretation of the science that food intake is much more important in the obesity epidemic, in particular, than physical activity. It's not that activity is unimportant, but to divert attention away from the dietary part of it is really a public health misdeed. But one can obviously see the benefit to the industry for making that diversion. So, in that 2015 article, it was highly critical of the conflicts of interest that had been created by the soda industry paying prominent scientists. What benefits did the company reap from making these payments and what happened after that article got published? The GEBN was the product of the 15 years that came before it, of gradually building up this soda science. The GEBN itself lasted only about a year, but during that 15-year period, the industry benefited by having fewer people, fewer specialists, fewer countries talking about soda taxes. But what happened after the GEBN was outed in the New York Times in late 2015 was Coca Cola was absolutely mortified. The revelation that the company had paid for industry-friendly science was just incredibly embarrassing. So, under absolutely withering criticism from scientists and the public, Coke stopped funding the GEBN, which of course led to its collapse. The company also took a major turn in its approach to obesity. Vowing to no longer single-handedly fund scientific research, and by publishing a long so-called transparency list of all the individuals and organizations it had funded over the last 15 years. So, those things helped, but Coke's reputation remains tarnished to this day. But meanwhile, as for the academic scientists behind the GEBN, they saw things differently. They continued to maintain that their science had not been affected by the 20 million dollars that Coke had promised to support their network. Of the four researchers who led the GEBN effort, two stepped down and found wonderful jobs elsewhere. They both have leadership positions in different universities. One retired and the fourth continues to work in his previous position. So, there was no single, discernible impact on these debates within the academy. I know some of the individuals involved. And by the way, I know a good bit of information available to understand what this network was doing came from Freedom of Information requests that various parties made. And your book contains transcripts from emails and things like that, that these various scientists were sharing with the industry. The content of those is extremely interesting and very telling. And the result, it's sort of this good-old-boy-back-slapping-network of people who were kind of winking - let's go get the people that don't like us. It's just interesting. My impression is that some pretty negative consequences befell at least two of those academics afterwards. You know, there was a lot of embarrassment. One basically, I think, had to leave the job he had. Another, suffered some real penalties in his academic life. And so, it wasn't outcome free, or it wasn't penalty free for these scientists at the end of the day. But I do think that your basic point is well made. That lots of people take lots of money from lots of industries on lots of topics. Not just on food, but you know energy and environment and all kinds of things. And very rarely do they pay any kind of a penalty. It only took this investigative report by the New York Times to shed special light on how pernicious this particular one was. But let me ask you a question, and then I kind of have my own thoughts about it. Why don't you think anything more happened to the people that got caught? I don't know if caught is the right word. But at least that they're taking industry money and their favorable science for industry got exposed. Why don't you think more happened about that? The scientists themselves were deeply convinced that they hadn't done anything wrong. They were convinced that their science was not affected by all the money that they had taken from Coke, and the scientific nonprofit working for the industry, over all those years. I think there's a significant fraction of folks in the public health field, or at least in the obesity research field, who think the same thing. There's just a lot of support for them. As I see it, the two people who lost their original jobs have bounced back. I haven't done a survey of the field to ask people what they feel about these researchers, but they did pretty well given what they did. The reason I think that they're convinced that they didn't do anything wrong is they have these practices, I call them “doing ethics,” to assure the world and themselves that their scientific integrity is intact. And one of the practices that these guys used was to constantly say, "This problem of obesity epidemic, it's huge. We have to include the food industry as our partner." And then when you go there, food industry begins to have a huge voice and there's very little you can do to effectively restrain it. You know, it's an interesting way to think about it and consistent with the way I've thought about it over the years. I've done some writing on this topic and it seems to me that scientists have, not all scientists by all means, but a few select ones, get sought out by industry. And then this blind spot ensues where if you ask these scientists sort of, in general, does research get tainted or affected by industry money? They'll say yes. But if you ask does YOUR research get tainted by it? They'll say no. ‘Oh, no, I'm above that. I can be objective We have to change from within.' There's a whole series of rationalizations for taking the money. But do they ever stop and ask, why is industry investing this money? And industry is not stupid. They wouldn't be paying you $50,000 as a consultant, or putting you on boards, or flying you around the world, or funding your research if there was no return from it. And the research on it is absolutely clear. Industry-funded research typically finds industry favorable results. So, all that's been documented. But the scientists who want to get involved with industry and take the money don't kind of interpret it that way. Like ‘I can take money but be free of the temptations to bias the work I do.' May I just interject something here? I think that they believe it's a win-win prospect. Of course, Coke wants to emphasize exercise to make people forget about their sugar. But I've just dug long and hard into those emails, which none of the scientists ever thought would be read and used in scholarly accounts. But in the emails, the leader of the GEBN wanted to fund a major research project that he was promoting, and he's arguing all the reasons that Soda Science was good for Coca Cola. I suspect that he thought that Coke wasn't influencing him. Instead, he was influencing Coke. And in fact he was, but it doesn't matter where the influence comes from because in the end the science is affected. You know, I've often asked myself, if there are negative consequences from this, the question is isn't there a police force out there looking after this kind of thing? And it's hard to know who that would be, because the scientists themselves have shown that enough of them are willing to take the money. And so the scientists aren't policing themselves sufficiently. Their institutions, the universities, tend not to do it because they're taking money from industry, too, in some way, generally. And their university's response to that is you have to disclose that you're taking money from industry. But there's research on disclosure, and that seems to make things worse rather than better. The journals that people publish their work in do the same thing. They make people disclose, but that doesn't have much impact. And professional associations have been investigated every which way by one of the same people who wrote that article in 2015, showing that they take money from industry. So, how can they police their members? So, it seems to me that the police have to be the press and people that do investigative scholarly work like you've done in this book. The book is pretty new. So, it's a little early to say what its impact is going to be. But let's hope that a lot of people read this book. And get more insight into how this works, how people feel when they're involved in this money taking, and what the ultimate impact might be. So let's turn to one particular area of expertise you have. Let's talk about China. So almost all the criticism on industry-funded efforts like the Global Energy Balance Network have been focused on the U.S. But you follow the soda trail to China. So why did you do that and what's the significance of this inquiry? Really significant. The GEBN was part of a much larger corporate project that was absolutely global in scope. So, from the vantage point of the industry, the U.S. has long been a declining market for soda. The important markets for sugary drinks are the large rapidly developing countries in the Global South. So that's where the industry is focusing its efforts to sell product, that is junk food and drinks. And to promote a corporate science and corporate policy that stresses exercise over dietary change in soda taxes. So China. China has 1.4 billion people these days. One billion back in 1980 when Coke set up shop in China. China was the single biggest market for the soda companies. Coke was so keen to get into the China market that it started lobbying early. Actually the mid 1970s, when Mao Zedong was still alive. And in 1978, Coke became the very first Western company to set up shop in China as the country opened up for the first time in 30 years to the market, into the global economy. And another advantage of the Global South, from the point of view of the food industries, is an attitude toward Western firms that's less critical than what you find in the U.S. In the U.S., huge companies are always under suspicion that they will promote corporate interests over socially valued goals. So those attitudes are much less prevalent in many countries in the Global South where big companies are often seen as agents of development, essential agents. In China, big Western companies were celebrated as sources of capital and advanced interests. So, nobody would suspect they were hurting the country. And the industry has lots of ways of dressing this up in a self-serving, positive way, by talking about developing emerging markets, investments in the developing world, and things like this. But it strikes me also as being stunningly similar to what the tobacco companies did when they got hammered in the United States. They simply moved outside the United States and tried to sell as many cigarettes as beyond our borders as they could. And a lot of these same sort of phenomenon take place. Does that seem true to you? Absolutely. So let me ask what actually occurred in China. So, Coke sets its sights on China. It has this kind of process established that's trying to affect policy through connections with scientists. So, what actually took place in China? What was the impact on policies? Well, to understand that, we need to know that the food industry had a magic weapon way back in the late 1970s. The food industry created an industry-funded scientific nonprofit based in DC that was global in scope. And whose job was to sponsor science that served industry needs. Its name was ILSI (International Life Sciences Institute). So, in China, the local branch of ILSI organized a series of major conferences and other activities designed to combat obesity. Over time, the proportion of these anti-obesity activities focusing on exercise rose dramatically, while the proportion focusing on diet sank.What this shows is that the food industry had tilted China's approach to obesity. ILSI China also played a major role in creating China's first and most important policies on obesity. The most important was the National Campaign for Healthy Lifestyles, ironically modeled after the patriotic health campaigns that Mao used to promote in his day. So, that healthy lifestyle campaign drew heavily on the Soda Science created by Coke, ILSI, and their academic friends. So, that ‘healthy lifestyle' campaign prioritized exercise in a number of ways. Said nothing about sugar and soda. And it made the individual, not the government or industry, responsible for fixing the obesity problem. So, with this campaign, ILSI China had smuggled the policy favored by the food industry into China's policies. That's an amazing history that you've documented. And it occurs to me that in the United States, we can celebrate public health victories, like the huge decline in cigarette smoking that occurred. And, the big decline that's occurred in sugared beverage consumption too. And those things are all good. But if this is like a balloon and you're just squeezing the end of it here, but it expands elsewhere in the world, the overall public health impact could be even worse than when you started, not better. And it sounds like the industry-funded front groups have been pretty responsible for making that happen. Yes, they're incredibly effective. In my view, I really took apart ILSI, looking at it as an organizational sociologist. And I think it's just brilliantly designed to make academic-looking science that benefits industry. And to keep everything hidden from sight under that label nonprofit. It's really quite brilliant. They're not very happy with this project. And the work that you've done, and the investigative journalists have done in the U. S., to expose these industry ties can have traction in the U. S. much more so in a country like China. So, it sounds like there's probably not much to put the brakes on this kind of thing in China. Is that right? To tell the truth, there's a younger group of obesity experts, trained in the U.S., who now are based in China and have written major articles. There was a three-part series in The Lancet in 2021 on obesity in China. And they are on board with a critique of the food industry and working in every way they can to bring that to the attention of officials. But the government has a vested interest in the success of Coca Cola. I have to say that Coca Cola, and there's a huge state-owned enterprise called CoffCo, they now have a partnership called CoffCo Coca Cola, that runs the bottlers in 19 provinces, representing something like 60-70 percent of the Chinese population. So, the government has a vested interest in making sure Coca Cola remains happy. Let's talk about that just a bit more. So, Susan, you'd think that the Chinese government would be in a conflicted position with this. On one hand, they want to financially benefit from Coca Cola prospering in their country. And I'm sure officials are benefiting individually from that kind of thing. But the country doesn't benefit because they certainly don't want high rates of diabetes and heart disease and obesity and other things that come from consumption of these products. How do you think that that plays out? Is it just that the short-term financial benefits are prevailing over the longer-term health consequences? I think the government is highly conflicted. It has a number of policy, overarching policy themes, that it has been promoting ever since opening up in the late 70s and early 80s. One of those themes is marketization, growing the economy, advancing the technology in high end industries. And nothing can interfere with the achievement of that goal. China is known around the world for having very sophisticated environmental policies. But when push comes to shove, market goals prevail over environmental goals. I think the very same thing happens with health. It's just astonishing to see how market forces and market logics pervade the health sector. I did a separate piece of research, it's not in this book. But it shows that the major western food companies have been partnering with the Chinese government to carry out China's policies on chronic disease. And that means they're teaching the Chinese people basic notions of good nutrition. And what they're teaching them is not that soda is bad, is that, you know, it's that you can drink soda as long as you go ahead and exercise at all. I think there are major fundamental conflicts here at the level of profound party policy. I think this is going to be very hard to address. I was going to say that's just a stunning observation. That part of the food nutrition education has been turned over to the food industry. Absolutely. And you can, you can read about it in the Chinese media every year. They have, it's called Food Week or Nutrition Week, that's sponsored by the Chinese Nutrition Society, which is nominally independent. And they invite Western food companies to come in and sponsor a big project within that week. And of course they're very happy to do it. Unbelievable. And also, the policies that ILSI created that are very much pro industry, that was back in the 2000s. Those have now been built into central policy. So they continue to impact policy today. So, a chapter of your book is entitled Doing Ethics, the Silent Scream. What do you mean by that? Let me start with just a little bit of background. So, in China, the head of the ILSI branch operated as a virtual health ministry official. Kind of a de facto part of the government. So, no one could question what she did, part of the government, no questioning the government. As I just mentioned, most of the scientists I interviewed believed that Coke and other food and beverage companies were positive forces in China. They loved Coke's corporate social responsibility programs and had them all in their head and regaled me with these stories of schools in the rural areas supported by Coke. They thought everything was above board. They thought that ILSI's science was objective or disinterested. They couldn't imagine that Coke was supporting policies that benefited the corporate bottom line while harming the health of the Chinese people. Now, getting to that chapter, some very senior scientists, folks who had worked in the field before money came to dominate everything in China, they knew in their hearts that the food industry was corrupting China's science and policy. But it was very dangerous for them to talk about it. They certainly didn't volunteer those feelings to me. But when I began to ask really probing questions, they quietly acknowledged that yes, of course, corporate funding shapes the science. But the whole subject caused them just incredible angst. They couldn't talk about it. They certainly couldn't talk about it in public, and they couldn't do anything about it. And so, they issued a silent scream. And this is a really important part of the story of China. There really are voices of resistance, voices that see through the official line that everything's being done correctly. The readers of this book can hear that silent scream in that last chapter. That's a pretty, pretty amazing story. Well, you know, it's heartening in a way that in a country like China, where the government controls so much of what day to day life is like, that there is some activity. At least some pushback, some resistance. So, let's hope ultimately that the objective science prevails. That the industry influence wanes, and the public health will be protected. So, speaking of chapters in your book, the last two chapters are titled, Soda Science Lives On. And then the final chapter, So What and What Now. Tell us more. Oh sure, I'd love to. Soda Science Lives On: that's like the conclusion to the China part. I show how, even to this day, the provisions of Soda Science continue to shape China's policies on obesity and chronic disease more generally. In the last decade, President Xi Jinping has stressed the importance of including health in all policies, which is good. But a close look suggests that his signature policy package, that's called Healthy China 2030, bears the imprint of the Coca Cola company and -promotes ILSI's trademark exercise programs that omit soda taxes. And have a strong market orientation that makes individuals, again, not companies, not even the government, fundamentally responsible for maintaining a healthy weight through their healthy lifestyle choices. This, of course, neglects the importance of China's obesogenic environment and the impact of that environment on the choices available to individuals. So, this part of the book also introduces a group of next generation Chinese scientists who understand the threat posed by big food constantly lobbying the government to introduce policies to restrict its power. I've talked about the impact on China, but I'm also very interested in the impact on America, especially American fitness culture. In the book's conclusion, what I do is I take the short history of Soda Science. And I place that in the context of the much larger history of the post-World War II history of American fitness culture. What I suggest is that Soda Science was instrumental in creating today's Fitbit wearing, step counting, exercise and obesity-obsessed culture that assumes that exercise by itself can take off pounds. That 10,000 steps a day is going to solve all my problems. It won't, but the idea is very much part of our everyday thinking about obesity. There's a lot of work to do. As we all know, those big food companies are some of the wealthiest and most powerful forces in the world. Way richer than any of any fields of science in America. For critical scientists and social scientists, the effort to chip away at their power through the power of expose and documenting the truth often feels quite futile, time consuming and useless. But in fact, our work can make a difference. And I document this in the book. In the last few years, Coca Cola cut its ties with ILSI. That is big because Coca Cola was the founding company behind ILSI. Two other companies have also dropped ILSI. ILSI itself has also undergone a major reorganization and this is big - ILSI China has dissolved. It is no longer. I'd like to think that the in-depth research of the social sciences has exposed what is really going on and left these corporate science organizations little choice but to close shop, or fundamentally change how they work. That's my secret dream. So this, this is progress, yes, but the food industry is still at it, for sure. Especially in the Global South. The industry is focusing its energies on defending junk food and drinks by opposing regulatory measures that have proven successful. You know, taxes, front of package warning labels, marketing restrictions and so on. So even in countries that have developed, often with the assistance of American researchers, really impressive chronic disease prevention programs, the industry has been moving aggressively to weaken, delay, or block them. Our work has just begun. And I really hope some listeners will be, will be encouraged to join the force of all of us working to expose and change how things are happening. BIO Susan Greenhalgh is John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society Emerita in the Anthropology Department and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. A former Guggenheim fellow, she is a specialist in the social study of science, technology, and medicine, especially as these intersect with questions of policy, governance, and the state. Her latest book, Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola (2024), uncovers the secret strategies by which Big Food, working with allies in academia, created an industry-friendly, “soda-defense” science of obesity that argued that the priority solution to the obesity epidemic is exercise, not dietary restraint, and that soda taxes are not necessary – views few experts accept. For 15 years the “soda scientists” were highly successful in promoting these ideas, eventually getting them built into Chinese policy, where they remain today. An earlier study of the American obesity epidemic, Fat-Talk Nation: The Human Costs of America's War on Fat (2015), illuminates some of the unexpected consequences of the national panic over obesity for the bodies, lives, and selves of vulnerable young people. Under the Medical Gaze: Facts and Fictions of Chronic Pain (2001) presents a case study of iatrogenic injury, illustrating medicine's power to define disease and the self, and manage relationships and lives, and sometime induce suffering.

Join host Norbert Wilson and co-host Kerilyn Schewel in the latest episode of the Leading Voices in Food podcast as they dive deep into the world of small-scale fisheries with two distinguished guests: Nicole Franz from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and John Virdin from Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability. Discover the significant role small-scale fisheries play in food security, economic development, and community livelihoods. Learn about the unique challenges these fisheries face, and how community-led climate adaptation alongside top-down national policies can help build resilience. This episode also highlights collaborative efforts between academia and organizations like FAO, painting a comprehensive picture of the state and future of small-scale fisheries. Interview Summary Kerilyn - So, Nicole, let's begin with you. Why is your work at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization focused on small-scale fisheries and fishing communities? And could you share with us how they are different from fisheries more broadly? What's unique about them and their role in food production? Nicole - Yes. Let me start with the latter question. And I think the first thing is to clarify actually what are small-scale fisheries, no? Because sometimes if you think about small-scale fisheries, what most people will have in mind is probably that of a man in a small boat fishing. But in reality, it's a sector that is much more diverse. There are, for example, women in Indonesia that are collecting clams by foot. Foot fishers. Or we have examples from small-scale fisheries that are fishing boats in Norway, which are comparably small, but if you compare them, for example, with how small-scale fishing looks in a place like Mozambique, it's a very different scale. But all of that, however, is comprised in what we understand as small-scale fisheries. It is also important to understand that when we talk about small-scale fisheries in FAO, we don't only limit it to what is happening in the water, the harvesting part, but we also include what happens once the fish is out of the water. So, once it's processed, then, and when it's traded. So, so it's a whole supply chain that is connected to that small-scale fisheries production that we understand as being small-scale fisheries. And with Duke University, with John who is present here, and other colleagues and other colleagues from World Fish, we did a global study where we tried to estimate the global contributions of small-scale fisheries to sustainable development. And what we found was that at least 40 percent of the global catch is actually coming from inland and marine small-scale fisheries. And that's, that's enormous. That's a huge, huge amount. More important almost is that, that 90 percent of all the people that are employed in capture fisheries are in small-scale fisheries. And that is the human dimension of it. And that's why the community dimension is so important for the work. Because it is that big amount of people, 61 million people, that are employed in the value chains. And in addition to that, we estimated that there are about 53 million people that are actually engaging in small-scale fisheries for subsistence. So, if we consider those people that are employed in small-scale fisheries, plus those that are engaging for subsistence, and all their household members, we're actually talking about close to 500 million people that depend at least partially on small-scale fisheries for their livelihoods. We also looked at the economic dimensions of small-scale fisheries, and we found that the value from the first sale of small-scale fishery products amounts to 77 billion. So, these numbers are important. They show the importance of small-scale fisheries in terms of their production, but also in terms of the livelihood [00:05:00] dimension, in terms of the economic value that they generate. And, last but not least, we also looked at the nutritional value from small-scale fisheries. And we estimated that the catch from small-scale fisheries would be able to supply almost 1 billion women globally with 50 percent of the recommended omega 3 fatty acid intake. So, I think with all of these numbers, hopefully, I can convey why the focus on small-scale fish is, in the context of food security and poverty eradication in particular, is of fundamental importance. Kerilyn - Thanks, Nicole. That's really helpful to get a kind of global picture. If I could follow up to ask, what regions of the world are small-scale fisheries more common, or do economies rely on them? And in what regions do you see them disappearing? Are they common in countries like the US, for example? Well, they're certainly more common in what is often considered as a Global South. In Asia in particular, we encountered the largest total numbers, absolute numbers, in terms of people involved in terms of production. But also in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean. In the Pacific, obviously, they play a crucial role. They are more and more disappearing in the US, for example, in Europe. We see that it is a livelihood that is no longer very common. And one of the features we see there that it's an aging sector, it's a shrinking sector, for a number of reasons. But they still define the characteristic of certain areas where they really are part of the identity and of the local culture, even in the U.S. or in many, many places in Europe. Norbert - Nicole, this is really fascinating. Thank you for sharing this broad overview of what's happening and who are small-scale fishers. What are some of the common challenges that these small-scale fishers and fisheries face? And what is FAO's response to those challenges? Nicole - Well, where to start? There are so many challenges. I think one fundamental challenge that is common across all regions is securing access to fishing grounds. But not only to fishing grounds, but also to the coastal areas where operations, where they land the boats, where they, where the process of fish, where the fishing villages and communities are located. In many areas around the world, we see expansion of tourism, expansion of urban areas and coastal areas. The increase of other industries that are competing for the space now, and that are often stronger economically more visible than small-scale fisheries. So, the competition over space in those areas is quite an issue. But there are also many challenges that are more outside of the fishing activity directly. For example, often small-scale fishing communities lack access to services. We had basic services such as education or health services, social protection. And in many cases, women are particularly disadvantaged in relation to access to these services. For example, women that are involved in harvesting or in processing of fish in small-scale fisheries, they often do not know where to leave their children while they are at work because there's no childcare facility in many of these villages. And there are 45 million women that are engaged in small-scale fisheries around the world. Another set of challenges relates to the value chains and the markets. Often there's limited infrastructure to connect to markets. The processing and storage facilities are not adequate to bring the product to the market in a state that allows it to then fetch good prices and to benefit from the value chain. Often small-scale fishers and fish workers are also not well organized. So, they become more subject to power imbalances along the value chain where they have to be price takers. Now they have to accept what is offered. That also relates often to a lack of transparency in relation to market information. And of course, then we have another set of challenges that are coming from climate change that are becoming more and more important. And from other types of disasters also. One thing that brings together all these challenges, or makes them worse, is often the lack of representative structures and also institutional structures that allow for participation in relevant decision making or management processes. So that small-scale fishers and fish workers don't even have an opportunity to flag their needs or to propose solutions. So, FAO has facilitated a process to develop Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food security and Poverty Eradication. Quite a mouthful of a name. In short, we call them small-scale fisheries guidelines. In which all the major challenges in a way are compiled in one document together with guidance on how to address them. And these guidelines are the result of a participatory development process. So, they are really informed by the involvement of fishing communities from around the world, but also other stakeholders. And they have been agreed on and have been endorsed by the almost 200 members of the FAO. We are now working with countries, with the small-scale fishing communities around the world, with other partners, including Duke University, to help implement these small-scale fisheries guidelines. Norbert - Oh, this is really fascinating and it's important work. I'm intrigued with the participatory process. How are small-scale fisher organizations involved in this? Are you working with different organizations? Or is this more individuals who are just interested in this issue coming to the fore? This is through organizations at all levels. Be it at the national level where we are, for example, facilitating the formation of new women organizations in a number of African countries. Be it at the regional level, in particular in Africa, there are existing structures in the context of the African union, which has established so called non state actor platforms for fisheries and aquaculture, which we are supporting in order to bring their voice into the processes and to facilitate peer learning. And then there's a number of global social movements and producer organizations for small-scale fisheries that we are working with and using them as a facilitator to involve as many as possible. And gather as much insight that is coming from the membership of those organizations to then bring into global, regional, national processes from our side. Norbert - This is really important to hear how different forms of governance and at different levels are playing a part in developing these guidelines. Thank you for sharing that, Nicole. I'd like to turn to you, John. You have more than 20 years of experience in studying and advising government policies to regulate human use of the oceans. With a particular focus on marine conservation practices. How has your thinking about marine conservation changed over the last 20 years? John - Yeah, it's changed a bit. As you mentioned, my interest in work has been on ocean conservation and how it can alleviate poverty. A lot of times that has meant managing fisheries to address poverty. And I think in the past, that meant that I was really focused on what governments could do to increase the efficiency of fisheries. The economic efficiency. How do we increase incomes, how do you increase revenues for communities? All very important, but for all the reasons that Nicole mentioned, I spend a lot more time now thinking about the process rather than the outcomes, and thinking about what institutions are in place, or can be created, to help empower small-scale fishing communities to have much more of a voice in the decisions that affect them. In how the resources are used. How the space is used. And Nicole outlined really well a lot of the challenges that are facing communities from increased industrialization of ocean use to the squeeze from climate change and the effect on resources. And even the fact that climate change may be driving people to the oceans. I mean, as farms and agricultures maybe fail or face challenges, oceans are often open access, and can even be a sink for people to make a livelihood. And so, yet more pressures coming from outside these fisheries. How can fishers have a greater voice in making the decisions that impact them and safeguarding their livelihoods? Norbert - Thank you for that. I'm interested in understanding how do these fisher folks, who are trying to organize and are organizing, how does that interact with sort of larger markets? I mean, I would imagine a number of these folks are catching fish and other seafood that goes into global markets. What's the interaction or challenges that may happen there? John - As Nicole mentioned, because small-scale fisheries are so diverse you have markets in many places. These may be located near an urban center where you can have easy access. You can get fresh fish in a cooler and put it on a plane and off it goes to an export market. We found that, what may be surprised us, is a significant number of small-scale fishers are exporting in some cases. So, then that can be challenging because you might get higher prices, which is a good thing. But it might drive, for example, more fishing effort. It might drive higher levels of exploitation. It might change traditional practices, traditional rules for fisheries. It might really change how fishers organize in a given place. So, the access to export markets, even say an island setting, has kind of scrambled past fisheries management in some places and can be an outside force. Kerilyn - John and Nicole, I want to ask you both a question now about painting a picture of these communities that you're working with. You both mentioned how diverse small-scale fisheries can be. I was wondering if you could just share what one community in particular looks like that you've worked with? What are the challenges that a particular community faces, or alternatively, where do you see things actually working well? So Nicole, could I ask you to respond first? Nicole - I'm working more with global processes and the global level. So, through that, I have the privilege of working with representatives from many, many communities. So maybe what I can share is the feedback that I'm getting through that, in terms of the change that we can observe, and that is affecting fishing communities around the world. I think one thing that is being brought up as a concern by many is what I mentioned before. It's a process of aging in fishing communities and often a lack of capacity to retain young people in the sector. And that has different reasons. Now there are all of these challenges that small-scale fisheries have to face and that are difficult to overcome. So, that often drives people, in particular young men, to leave the communities. Or within the communities, to look for other alternative livelihoods now and not to take on the skills of fishermen or getting engaged in small-scale fisheries more broadly. So, in some cases, yes, it's not only other activities within the community, but really leaving the community and leaving in some cases also the country. What we see there is that sometimes people that have the skills, maybe still as a fisher, they have tried to fish. So, they have a knowledge of fishing. They emigrate out into other countries. And in some cases they are then hired into industrial fisheries where they work on industrial boats that go out fishing for longer periods of time. But where they at times end up in situations that can be called slave labor, basically, that are subject to serious violations of human rights. And that is in a way generated by this vulnerability to the poverty that is still there in those communities. The lack of being able to make a living, a decent work in the fishing community. So, that is something that we have seen is happening. We have also seen that in some cases, there's an involvement of fishers into say more illegal activities, be it in drug trafficking, be it also into the trafficking of people. I'm thinking even about the Mediterranean. I'm working out of Italy, Rome. We have a lot of immigration from North African countries, for example, coming through that route. And oftentimes it happens that the transport of migrants is actually carried out by fishers and their boats because they have the skill to navigate the sea. And they make a better living by transporting illegal migrants than going fishing. So, those are some of the challenges we hear. And the other one is there in relation to what is now a concept that is getting more and more traction. It's often known as the blue economy, which is, in a way, looking at the ocean as the last frontier for economic development. And that includes on the one hand, the expansion of previously existing industries, such as tourism. But also the expansion of newer sectors such as alternative energy production. Think wind parks now in coastal areas. So, what happens here is that in many cases, this adds again, additional pressure on the available maritime space. In the water and on the land. The expansion of marine aquaculture is another example. So, that also is something that we hear is becoming an issue for small-scale fishing communities to defend the space that they need to maintain their lifestyle. Kerilyn - John, is there anything you'd like to add on this question of how fisheries are changing? John - Very, very briefly. Taking the example in West Africa where I've spent some time over the years, you certainly have some communities there where it actually doesn't seem as if the fisheries are changing as much in the sense it's quite static and stagnant. And this could be caused by a lot of the reasons that Nicole mentioned, but the community, the economy, the fisheries aren't growing. People, young people may be leaving for a number of reasons, but it doesn't have to be that way either. I mean, there are positive examples. I was in Liberia last week, and there, from the numbers that the government has, small-scale fishing communities are growing. The number of fishers are growing. They've actually made a conscious effort to protect a certain area of the ocean just for small-scale fisheries. And to prohibit trawling and to give the communities more space to grow and operate in the 20 years since the conflict ended there. So, again, it doesn't have to be sort of stagnant or grinding on in some of these communities as they cope with competition for resources, for example, competition for space from others. Where they were given that space, in some cases in Liberia, they've grown. That may have its own challenges but. Kerilyn - Interesting. In the back of my mind, when thinking about these communities and aging and migration of younger generations away from these livelihoods, you know, as someone who studies the relationship between migration and development, I think it's a common trend where, you know, as countries develop, young people leave traditional economic activities. They get more educated, they move to cities, they move abroad. To what degree is this somehow just part of these countries' development? Should we expect young people to be leaving them? And to what degree might we think differently about development in a way that would enable more young people to stay? And I think, John, you mentioned a really interesting point about how protecting the space For these small-scale fisheries to operate is one thing that seems to have kept people engaged in this livelihood. I'd be curious if there's other things that come up for you. Other ways of thinking about enhancing the capability to stay in small-scale fishing livelihoods. John - Sure, and I'd be curious what Nicole's seeing from her perspective. I think, to some extent, it's a different question if small-scale fisheries are economically viable. And so, what I think Nicole and I are referring to in many cases is where for a lot of these external pressures upon them, they may not be as viable as they once were. And that has its own push on people, whereas where fishers are empowered, they have more of a voice in what happens to the fisheries and controlling those spaces and resources, and it can be more economically viable in these fisheries. That presents a different set of choices for young people then. So that's where we've really focused is: okay, what is the process by which small-scale fishing communities have their voices heard more, have much more of a say and much more power in the use of the fisheries, the use of the coastal areas, the things that affect those fisheries and their livelihoods? And then we can see what those choices might look like. But Nicole, I'm not sure if that's consistent with what you've seen in a number of places. Nicole - Yes, and maybe to also rebalance a bleak picture I painted before. Like John said, there are obviously good examples. I think an important condition is probably a linkage to markets. Non-economic viability in many ways does play a role. And there are examples of how that can happen in different ways. For example, in Morocco, the country has made quite a significant investment to build a whole series of ports for small-scale fisheries. Specifically, along the entire coastline of Morocco where they are providing a port that is not just a landing site for small-scale fisheries, but it provides like a system of integrated services. There's an auction hall. So, the fish comes in, it's immediately kind of weighted. They get the information, the label for what they have brought in, then it goes into an auction that has set rules and everybody is tied to. But in that same area, for example, there's also a bank or there is an office that helps with the access to social protection services, for example. So, it's a whole integrated service center, and that really makes a difference to help make the sector more efficient. But at the same time, also really keep the tradition. So, it's not only economic efficiency, but by having all these different centers, it allows to maintain many people employed and to also maintain the characteristics of each of those different lending sites. That's one example. I was in Korea last year and there, they were doing something similar. They are reviving some of their traditional fishing villages where they are also investing in those fishing communities and providing them with funding to set up, for example, restaurants that are run directly by those involved in the fishery. Those are particular places that are close to cities. In my case, I was in Busan. So, it's very closely connected to the consumers now that come out there. They are focusing on certain products in these villages that they are famous for traditionally. They have little shops and they're starting e-commerce for some of the products. So, the way they package, and the label has become much, much wider than before. So again, that has revived a bit those communities. In Italy, it's a country that's famous for its food, you know. And they are in the region that's called the Amalfi coast. There's a tiny village and it's famous for the production of a value-added product made from tiny sardines that are fished by the small-scale fisheries boats. And they are processed in a very particular way. And there is like a label of geographic origin of this product, and it can only come from that village. And it has a high price and has it's like a high-end product, so to say. And in a way these are also approaches that provide dignity to this profession. And a sense of pride which is really important and should not be underestimated in also increasing the willingness, for example, of young people to be part of that and maintain the viability of the sector. John – I'd like to just add, I think that's a really important point on the dignity and pride and the importance of these fisheries in so many places and cultures. I mean, I'll never forget talking to a minister of finance in one country and starting to try to make the economic case for supporting small-scale fisheries. He cut me off in about 30 seconds and started talking about growing up fishing in the village and going back home for vacations, and just the importance to the entire community of fishing to him and just how much it was a part of the fabric of the culture. Kerilyn - I love that. That does seem so important and wonderful to hear those very specific examples that do give some hope. It's not just a bleak future. Norbert - You know, it's great to hear how government policy is helping shape and reshape these fisheries in a way that allow for economic viability and also these are opportunities to connect communities to these traditions. And so, I find that really fascinating. I want to kind of push a little bit beyond that and bring back the idea of how to deal with climate that was mentioned earlier. And also change our focus from government policy to sort of what's happening within these small-scale fisheries and fishery organizations. So Nicole, a lot of your work focuses on building more inclusive policy processes and stakeholder engagement. And so, from your perspective, how does community-led climate adaptation, rather than top down adaptation agendas, lead to different outcomes? Nicole - Well, I think one way that seems quite obvious, how community-led adaptation can lead to different outcomes is simply that in that case, the traditional and the indigenous knowledge that is within those communities will be considered much more strongly. And this is something that can be really critical to crafting solutions for that very site-specific context. Because the impact of the climate change can be very different in every region and every locality not due to that specific environment that it's encountering there. And holding the knowledge and being able to observe the changes and then adapt to them is something that certainly a community-based approach has an advantage over something that would be a coming from a more centralized top down, a little bit more one-size-fits-all approach. And this can then imply little things like, for example, if the water temperature changes, we see a change in the fish behavior. Now we see how certain stocks start to move to different environments and others are coming in. So, the communities obviously need to adapt to that. And they do that automatically. Now, if it changes, they adapt their gear, they adapt to the new species that is there. So, in many cases, there are solutions that are already happening, and adaptations that are already happening that may not carry that label, that name. But if you look at it, it is really what is happening, no? Or you can see in some cases, that for example, there are initiatives that are coming also spontaneously from the communities to replant mangrove forests, where you can observe that there is a rising seawater level that is threatening the communities and where they have their houses, where they have their daily lives. Now, you can see that through NGOs and often there is support projects for that. But you can also see it happening more spontaneously when communities observe that change. So, the top-down approaches often they lack that more nuanced, site-specific considerations in their approaches and the consideration of that specific knowledge. On the other hand, it needs to be said though, that the top-down approaches can also play an important role. For example, countries develop their national adaptation plans. And those plans are usually, you know, developed at a higher level, at the central level. And often fisheries and aquaculture are not necessarily included in those plans. So that is something where the top-down level can play a very important role and really make a difference for small-scale fisheries by ensuring that fisheries and aquaculture are included in a sector. So, I guess that in the end, as always, it's not black and white. No, it's something that we need to take into account both of it and have any climate change adaptation approach to small-scale fisheries being grounded in both. And have a way to bridge the top down and the bottom-up approaches. Norbert - I really like this idea of bridging between the top down and the bottom-up approaches, understanding the local knowledge that's there. I would imagine that's also knowledge that when used to make decisions makes it easier for people to stick with those decisions, because it's a part of their voice. It's who they are. And then the other side, it's critical to make sure that those plans are a part of a larger national move, because if the government is not involved, if those higher-level decision makers are not involved, they can easily overlook the needs of those communities. I really appreciate hearing that. I think sometimes we hear this tension. It needs to be one or the other. And you're making a really compelling point about how it has to be integrated. John, I'm really intrigued to see from your perspective. How do you see this top down versus bottom-up approach working in the work you've done? John - I'll do what I typically do is echo and agree with Nicole, but just to give an example that I love. I teach this one in my classes. There's an old paper by Bob Johannes, a marine ecologist. And the standard practice in managing fisheries as government scientists is you count the fish, you then set limits for them, often from the top down. And his point was in the case of Indonesia, if you look at the reef fisheries that go through most of the communities, one tool to assess the fish stocks is to do a visual census. You swim transects along the reefs and you count the fish. So, he did a back of the envelope estimate and he said, well, if you're going to do that through all the reefs throughout Indonesia, it would probably be finished in about 400 years. And that would give you one snapshot. So, he's saying you can't do this. You have to rely on the local knowledge in these communities. I don't want to romanticize traditional knowledge too much, but I just can't imagine how policies would effectively support adaptation in these communities without building upon this traditional ecological knowledge. Kerilyn - John, since coming to Duke from the World Bank, you've regularly collaborated with non-academic partners like the FAO as well as the UN environmental program. Can you tell us more about how your partnership with the FAO and your work with Nicole more specifically began? John - Sure. I think more than anything, I got really lucky. But when I first came to Duke, I started working with a colleague, Professor Xavier Basurto at the Marine Lab, who I think is one of the world's leading scholars on how communities come together to manage common resources like fish stocks. We organized a workshop at Duke on small-scale fisheries. We got talking to Nicole, invited her and some of her colleagues at FAO to that workshop, together with others, to think about a way forward for small-scale fisheries for philanthropy. And I think from those conversations started to see the need to build a global evidence base on how important these fisheries are in society. And Nicole could probably say it better, but from there, she and colleagues said, you know, maybe you all could work with us. We're planning to do this study to build this evidence base and maybe we could collaborate. And I think we're very fortunate that Duke gives the space for that kind of engaged research and allows us to do it. I don't think we knew how long it would be when we started, Nicole. But over five years and 800 researchers later, we - Javier, Nicole, myself, and so many others - concluded with this global study that we hope does have a little bit clearer picture on the role of these fisheries in society. Kerilyn - Nicole, from your side, what does an academic partner bring to the table? What's your motivation for partnering with someone like John or Duke University more specifically. Well, I think as FAO, we like to call ourselves a knowledge organization, but we're not an academic institution. We don't conduct research ourselves, no? So, we need to partner around that. We work with the policy makers though. So, one of our roles, in a way, is to build that. To broker and improve the science policy interface. So, this is why collaboration with academia research for us is very important. And what we experienced in this particular collaboration with Duke University to produce this study called Illuminating Hidden Harvest, the Contributions of Small-scale Fisheries to Sustainable Development was really that first we realized we have a shared vision, shared objectives. And I think that's fundamental. Now, you need to make sure that you have the same values, how you approach these things. And in this case, it aligned very well that we really wanted to take in a way, a human-centered and multidimensional approach to look at small-scale fisheries. And then it was also very important to understand what every partner brings to the table, no? The different strengths that we have. And then based on that, define the roles and what everybody's doing in a project. And the added value for us was certainly the capacity from the Duke University side to help develop the method that we develop for the country case studies that we conducted in 58 countries. And not only to develop that method, but then we had a postdoc at Duke University for this project, who was actually then engaging with all of the people. People in these 58 countries. And, and she was. coaching them in that methodology, actually in three languages, which was quite amazing. It was very, very thorough. We could not have done that. And we had a lot of other students from Duke University that helped us once we had the data gathered. To then screen that data, harmonize that data, clean that data, obviously under the leadership of John, Xavier and other colleagues, no? So that was really something that was adding a lot of value and actually also helped us to get to know a lot of the students from Duke. And some of those then ended up also becoming consultants working with us more broadly on small-scale fisheries. So that was certainly great, great value for FAO as collaboration. BIOS Nicole Franz, Equitable Livelihoods Team Leader, Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. Nicole is a development economist with 18 years of experience in intergovernmental organizations. She holds a Master in International Cooperation and Project Design from University La Sapienza, Rome and a Master in Economic and Cultural Cooperation and Human Rights in the Mediterranean Region. From 2003 to 2008 she was a consultant for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). In 2009-10 she was Fishery Planning Analyst at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris, focusing on fisheries certification. Since 2011 she works for the FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Division where she coordinates the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines) with a focus on inclusive policy processes and stakeholder empowerment. Since 2021 she leads the Equitable Livelihoods team.  John Virdin is director of the Oceans Program at the Duke University Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability. He has a total of over twenty years' experience in studying and advising government policies to regulate human use of the oceans, particularly marine conservation policies to reduce poverty throughout the tropics. His focus has been largely on managing fisheries for food and livelihoods, expanding to broader ocean-based economic development policies, coastal adaptation and more recently reducing ocean plastic pollution. He directs the Oceans Program at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, aiming to connect Duke University's science and ideas to help policymakers solve ocean sustainability problems. He has collaborated in this effort with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, as well as regional organizations such as the Abidjan Convention secretariat, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, the Sub-Regional Fisheries Commission of West Africa and the Parties to the Nauru Agreement for tuna fisheries management in the Western Pacific. He co-created and teaches an introductory course for undergraduate students to understand the role of ocean policy in helping solve many of society's most pressing development challenges on land. His work has been published in books, edited volumes and a number of professional journals, including Nature Ecology and Evolution, Ecosystem Services, Environment International, Fish and Fisheries and Marine Policy, as well as contributing to China Dialogue, The Conversation, the Economist Intelligence Unit, and The Hill.    

With food insecurity rising the world over, we cannot escape the reality that climate change is changing our food supply. This means people's livelihoods and lifestyles are changing too, particularly in developing countries. Join us on the Leading Voices in Food podcast as we discuss the rising impact of climate change on food security and livelihoods in Central America, specifically Honduras. Host Norbert Wilson, Director of the World Food Policy Center, along with co-host Sarah Bermeo, delve into the challenges and solutions with experts Marie-Soleil Turmel from Catholic Relief Services and Ana Andino from Duke University. Learn about the Dry Corridor, the effects of climate shocks, land restoration practices, and the role of international support in building community resilience. Interview Summary Sarah - Marie, some of your work with Catholic Relief Services engages with smallholder farmers in an area known as the Dry Corridor of Central America. Can you explain what the Dry Corridor is and provide some context about the food security situation in that area, and how much do residents depend on their own crops to provide food for their families? Marie - So, the Dry Corridor of Central America refers to a region that stretches across the Pacific side of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The region has a long dry season and a rainy season when the crops are produced. In the last 10 years, this region has been characterized as one of the most vulnerable to climate change. Mainly due to prolonged dry spells in the growing season and more unpredictable rainfall patterns. This region is made up of many small holder farmers in the rural population. These are small hillside farms growing staple crops, maize or corn, and beans with relatively low yields. And most of the household consumption is coming from these farms, and they're selling any surplus that is produced in a good year. These are rain-fed production systems. So, the amount of food that the farms produced is directly tied to the amount of rainfall, making them extremely vulnerable to droughts and climate shocks. And also the region has a very high degree of soil degradation. It's estimated 70 percent of agricultural soil is in a state of severe degradation. This makes farms even more susceptible to climate shocks. So, this is a region that's already struggling with poverty. Close to 8 million people are living in a situation of food insecurity. And now with increasing climate shocks that are affecting crop yields, it's sending more people into a situation of food emergency and requiring food aid. Norbert - Thank you, Marie, for providing that context. Ana, let's now turn to you. I understand that you've worked with the Honduran Ministry of Finance and the Inter American Development Bank on issues relating to economic development in Honduras. What do you view as some of the key development challenges facing the country? Ana - So Honduras faces several challenges which have been dragged out for many years. And now some of them have even worsened, particularly since 2020 when we were hit by the pandemic and the storms Eta and Iota. It's tough to pinpoint just one or a few of them since it's a convergence of complex scenarios, but if I had to mention one - and going along with the conversation we're having today - I would mention intersection between climate change and economic vulnerability. As we heard Marie talking about the Dry Corridor, there are many rural communities that rely heavily on agriculture. But climate variability has made it even more difficult to maintain stable food production, affecting income and food insecurity. So, by mid-2023, about 25 percent of the population was suffering from food insecurity. Nationally, agriculture provides employment for approximately 30 percent of the country's workforce. And there's verification agriculture is also limited, which, this dependency constrains sustainable growth and resilience. Also, I cannot leave behind the access to basic services such as water and electricity. Of course, I'll include in this education, right? It is important, and it's not only a matter of access to them, but also the quality of their services. Many households lack access to clean water. This impacts their daily life, but also their agricultural productivity. And even in the main cities, there is an inconsistent access to water and electricity, which affects livelihoods, but also small businesses to larger industries. Education is a no-brainer, since both access and quality remain a serious challenge. In this list, I would also like to add crime and violence, which remain high. And even though there has been an improvement in the last years, particularly reducing homicide rates, it still remains as one of the highest in Latin America. The situation is even worse when we look at femicide. Because Honduras is still one of the highest or has one of the highest rates of femicide in the region. That often goes along with high levels of impunity. And finally, we're almost getting there to my list of challenges, I would say that there is a lack of infrastructure, particularly in rural areas. There is no reliable access to roads or markets, which affects a lot of smallholder farmers. This also affects connectivity for roads. It limits access to health care and education. And these all are challenges that compound together. And yeah, to finally wrap it up, it's that without institutions that can effectively implement policies and manage resources, it'll be hard to, to have development efforts and to see growth in the country. Norbert - This sounds like a daunting set of challenges. And I realized that obviously in this conversation and the work that's going to happen later this week, we're not able to address all of those. But I would like to pull back and ask you both about issues around climate. And so, for the both of you, I'd be intrigued to understand this. Central America is believed to be highly susceptible to climate change, and Marie, you've already mentioned this. What are some of the key effects that climate change is having on the region? And I've heard you already talk about issues around availability of water. But how do these affect the livelihoods and particularly, how does this affect food security? So, Ana, let's begin with you. Ana – So, as Marie mentioned, there are a lot of extreme weather events going around, such as prolonged droughts, intense rainfall, tropical storms. And these weather patterns have a direct and severe impact on agricultural productivity. Especially in regions where families rely a lot on subsistence farming. It becomes a challenge to plant, to harvest crops. This leads to a reduction in yields. Also, people have less income, referring to income losses, which in the end has a cascading effect on food insecurity and poverty. So basically, what happens is that families have less to sell, but also have less to eat. If we transition to urban areas, climate change could cause floodings and damage to infrastructure, affecting severely industrial activity as well. This will disrupt the livelihoods of the people. In urban and rural areas, it exacerbates difficulties in accessing food, in accessing clean water, in accessing electricity. And just to give you an example, this happened back in 2020, right after Eta and Iota. We had long lasting effects, causing damage to agriculture, to livestock, to infrastructure. The effect on GDP was approximately eight to nine percent of GDP. And unsurprisingly, poverty rose 14 percentage points, which is a big increase. If you see national surveys going around, they have shown that people are having issues with getting access to food. And many people have also had to change their diet, leaving behind some proteins and introducing more carbohydrates or, or foods that are less expensive than proteins, right? And I would leave it there. Yeah. Norbert - This is really important. Thank you for sharing that. Marie, what about you? Marie - Ana really summed it up well, but I would add that it's really important to understand that that these farmers don't have crop insurance to fall back on like farmers in the U.S. So, we're seeing more frequent climate shocks, sometimes years in a row. Droughts and hurricanes. And farmers might be able to borrow seed or money, or to buy inputs to replant the next year, but after consecutive bad harvests, they run out of options and resources and really can't recover. And also keeping in mind that about 60 percent of the food in the region is coming from smallholder farms. And these climate shocks resulting in yield damage have implications for food prices and food security at the regional level, not just at the farm level, right? Sarah - So, Ana and Marie, you do a very nice job laying out the multiple challenges that are facing in urban areas. Turning from that to thinking about adaptations or policy changes that could be successful, can you think of some that might help in decreasing the negative impacts of climate change on farmers, particularly in the Dry Corridor? And, have you seen evidence? Can you bring evidence from your previous work for this to think about pathways forward and whether or not those would be scalable to additional farmers. Marie - So, a focus on land restoration and soil restoration is really key to building climate resilience. As I mentioned, these are areas with really highly degraded soils that are even more susceptible to these climate shocks. So, we're talking about managing the soil to manage water. And I just want to take a moment to explain why soil is so important for climate resilience. A healthy soil will capture and infiltrate more rainwater. These are rain fed systems, depending on every drop that falls. They store more water for plant production and also percolate more water down to recharge groundwater, which has an implication for water availability in the whole area. In a degraded soil, like much of the agricultural land in the Dry Corridor and other parts of the world, soils have lost this function, and the rainwater runs off, it's not captured, it's not stored, and the resulting, the crops grown in that soil are much more susceptible to periods without rain, and there's overall less water availability. When soil and water resources are degraded, agricultural productivity is low, the families are susceptible to climate shocks, and this keeps them in a cycle of emergency and recovery and poverty. The good news is that the ability of soils to capture and store rainwater can be restored with good agricultural practices that build soil organic matter, protect, and protect the soils from erosion. In Catholic Relief Services and in our programs, we call this Water Smart Agriculture Practices. In one of our programs from 2016 to 2020, we monitored a network of farms where we tested these practices with farmers on their farms and side by side plots comparing the water smart agriculture practices with conventional practices. Within that period, a very severe drought in 2018 hit. It affected the whole region and we found that these soils during a very severe drought could store up to 26 percent more moisture during this drought period. And on average yields were 39 percent higher. In a drought year, this can make the difference between a family producing enough food to still meet their household needs or being in an emergency situation and having to rely on food aid. And also, we found it in good years, yields were also much higher because of these good management practices. Meaning that farmers could produce and sell more surplus and improve their income savings. And this also contributes to greater overall resilience. And just to note also that these practices also sequester more carbon in agricultural systems, which also has climate mitigation impacts. Now this alone, soil management alone, is not going to bring farmers out of poverty. We need to build on this foundation of good natural resource management with market access, diversification with more lucrative crops access to financing and, of course, increasing opportunities for women and youth. But all this needs to be built on this foundation of restoring soil and water resources so that we can be successful with these other types of development interventions. We're working to scale these practices in the Dry Corridor by working with a network of partners, including other local NGOs, government agencies. And one of the main limitations is that farmers have is gaining access to any type of agricultural extension services. So, we're really working to strengthen local extension. We're using a hybrid model that combines field training with digital extension tools and radio for mass communication to reach more people. And we know from some of our work and some of the work I'm doing with Sarah and Ana to look at the adoption of these practices, that when farmers do have access to extension services and training, they are in fact applying and adopting the practices. Sarah - Thank you, Marie, for providing the detail about some of the programs that you're seeing and that the evidence, these are evidence-based practices that are actually making a difference for the farmers that you are working with. I want to turn to Ana now and shift the conversation just a little bit. You know, Marie was laying out potential ways to turn things around and ways that life could become better for farmers. But what do you see as some of the consequences of inaction if we don't keep on with these programs and if programs are not scaled up to help smallholder farmers and others in the region. What do you think will be the consequences of that for poverty and food security in Central America? Ana - Sarah, that's a great question. Again, it's hard to give an exact answer on what would be the exact results of this. But there was this one thing that popped into my mind immediately, which is an accelerated flow of people migrating both within the region and towards the U.S. as well. Because people are seeking to escape these harsh living conditions, right? So, food insecurity will get worse, particularly in susceptible areas like the Dry Corridor where farmers are already struggling with this climate unpredictability. Rural families will also face greater challenges in meeting their basic nutritional needs. potentially leading to malnutrition and health crises. And even in urban areas, high prices and food shortage will disproportionately impact the most vulnerable communities, exacerbating inequality. Now, in addition to that, failing to act now will result in a greater cost in the future. And I believe another concerning consequence of inaction is the displacement of young people. And here I must add that right now Honduras has a demographic difference and we're not taking advantage of it. Many young individuals migrate in search of better opportunities, leading to the so-called brain drain. Or they even leave the country without any further motivation to help the country while they're abroad. So, with insufficient opportunities for education, for employment, we are risking youth becoming trapped in cycles of poverty. We're losing people that are capable of helping the country, and this will undermine long term community development and stability. Norbert - Ana, thanks so much for providing that context for the need for action and what consequences of inaction might be. You know, this has been a challenging conversation. We've talked about a number of things that are going wrong or where some of the challenges are. I actually want to turn the conversation to see some ways forward. And so, what are some of the positive changes that can take place? And, you know, Catholic Relief Services is doing some really important work. And I want to hear more about that. But I also want to hear about it in the context of what could happen if policy makers, government officials or decision makers in the international development institutions, if they changed policy or created new opportunities. What would you say are still some really pressing needs and where would you focus money and efforts to get the biggest impact or hope for the most people? Marie? Let's start with you. Marie - I want to emphasize again just the importance of investing in land and soil restoration as a foundation, as a strategy to build climate resilience. Now, we really need programs that are also creating economic opportunities and developing markets for farmers, but this needs to be linked with land restoration initiatives in order to ensure resilience and the sustainability of these activities. You know, when land and soil is restored, these practices aren't just implemented, and they're not just implemented at the farm level, but like over whole landscapes. This improves productivity, but also water availability for households, urban areas, and other activities. So even programs that promote irrigation technologies as a solution for the Dry Corridor, which is really like a way forward also. These need to be linked with the land restoration activities because this water needs to come from somewhere. So, we need to ensure that we're protecting our water resources and ensuring the availability for these other activities, or else we won't be successful. And they also won't be sustainable. We also really need to invest more in capacity-building aspects of our development programming. Not just focusing on asset replacement, which is necessary, but we need a good balance of investing in capacity building. This means farmers, agronomists, agricultural institutes to strengthen the extension systems and improving access to information around soil and climate, for improved decision making and management of these resources in order to also take action to reduce overall risk and climate risk in the area. So really building the capacity in the management practices that can in the long term reduce dependencies on external aid. Norbert - Ana, what about you? Ana- I think Marie summed up everything very well. But if I had to rephrase what she said in my own words, I would focus a lot on infrastructure development. Both physical and digital. This is essential. Investing in better roads, market access, but also digital connectivity would enable the population of farmers and entrepreneurs to reach bigger markets, fostering economic growth and development. And I'll also include improvements to infrastructure to be climate resilient and friendly to the environment. And going along to what she said about capacity development, I would also give focus on improving productive skills. Many companies in the region and especially in Honduras highlight the limited ability of the workforce to generate high value opportunities as a major constraint. So, concrete advances in competitiveness and innovation are needed in this sense. And I would wrap this wish list saying that for any policy to be considered if you want to talk to them to any government official or international organization, there has to be more focus and importance on inclusive policies. They have to engage local communities, they have to engage women, they have to engage youth in decision making processes. Basically, we want to ensure that these groups have voice in policy development. Sarah - Great. Thanks Ana. I want to, you know, turn this attention now to thinking about research. So, Duke is an institution where research is one of our primary functions. And thinking broadly about the impacts of climate change on agriculture and food security, where do you see the biggest need for additional research? And maybe to think about in another way which research questions if they were answered could be transformative? And how might academic research and researchers partner with organizations like Catholic Relief Services and others doing work in the field in order to answer some of these questions about practical applications that could help on the ground? And Ana, let's begin with you. Ana - Thank you for your question, Sarah. I would say our work with Catholic Relief Services has given us a lot of ideas on how we can improve in this sense. For instance, we need to understand how different technologies and practices performed in diverse kinds of conditions are crucial. What factors influence farmers' adoption of one technology more than another, considering the heterogeneity of each farmer and each living condition. But I would also be interested in exploring how climate change impacts household dynamics and whether there is a shift in roles. Men and women, right? If there is an increase in women empowerment within the agricultural context once they're exposed to these new technologies. How they make the decision on what to eat, how much to eat, what to produce, what not to produce. And I would say also, and this is my Santa wish list of the things I want to research about as well is understanding their desire to migrate even under these improved conditions. Like even though we're giving them this technology, it's like what is actually keeping these farmers that we are helping stay and keep doing or producing what they're doing in involving improving with time. Sarah - Marie, what about you? Marie - Yes, so from the development organization perspective, collaborations with academic institutes can really provide an opportunity for us to go beyond the scope of the kind of monitoring and learning that we build into our development projects. And bring in different levels of expertise, and research methods. So definitely something that can be beneficial for our programming. I see two main areas that require more research and where, you know, collaborating with academic organizations or institutes could be, could be a benefit. The first is really around the whole biophysical type research on agricultural systems. Practices to accelerate land restoration, drought tolerant crops and varieties to improve resilience to climate and market shocks. And calibrating and applying different tools for decision making around soils and water resources. And then the other area is really research in development. So, what's the effectiveness of our different delivery methods of our programs, our extension models, and strategies for reaching and including women and youth. Understanding the scaling strategy and how we can reach more farmers. And also, translating these results and program impacts into policy recommendations. So really, research that informs our development strategy to ensure that programs are really leading to transformative, sustainable change and improvements in livelihoods and food security and resilience. Norbert - I really do appreciate hearing this. As a researcher, it's, it's so easy to get, sort of, how do I get the next paper in a journal. But what you're talking about are research questions that really move the development efforts forward. That are, sort of, informed by what's happening on the ground to make sure that the work that you all are doing is the work that leads to the best outcomes for the largest number of people. BIOS Marie-Soleil Turmel is the Scientific Advisor for the Catholic Relief Services Water Smart Agriculture Platform in the Latin America and Caribbean Region. She is an Agronomist/Soil Scientist with 15 years of experience conducting research and extension to promote soil health, productivity, and climate resilience of smallholder farming systems in Latin America. Before joining CRS, she worked as a Research Scientist for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) and Bioversity International. Marie holds a Ph.D. in Soil Science from McGill University and an M.Sc. in Agronomy from the University of Manitoba.   Ana Andino is a PhD student in Public Policy with a concentration in Economics at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. Prior to joining Duke, Ana worked on development issues in Honduras with the Inter-American Development Bank and Honduran Ministry of Finance. She is now an integral part of the Duke team collaborating with Catholic Relief Services. Her research interests are in political economy, climate migration, food insecurity, and international development. She holds a Master of Science in local economic development from the London School of Economics. 

I'm Norbert Wilson, a professor of public policy at Duke university and director of the world food policy center. Now, I am an agricultural economist by training and today's podcast, we will explore a creative and down-to-earth book titled Food Economics. Now stay with me, gentle listener. I already can sense the wave of anxiety, math anxiety, and discomfort with economics. but hear me out. To make the food system work for everyone, we must understand the economics of food, agricultural production, business decisions, consumer behavior, and of course, government policies. Tufts University Professor, economist William Masters, and Allegheny College economist and nutritionist Amelia Finaret, developed a wonderfully engaging textbook that is friendly for readers and learners who do not love math or who have a complicated relationship with economics. Interview Summary So let's start at the very beginning. Why did you write this book? Will: Well, I'll start. I love the subject. And I love the opportunity to work with Amelia on something. And we talked about taking the course that she was a Teaching Assistant for and making it into a textbook. And finally being able to do it has been revelatory. I've learned a lot, learned a lot from Amelia, learned a lot from the process of writing. The motivation really is because the topic is so compelling. As you said, food economics is crucial to whether people can afford to and do have the material requisites of wellbeing, as the original definition of economics put it. And so, food is this really distinctive, strange thing that's, as I say, often hidden in plain sight. It's something that many economists want to teach about, but don't really know much about. And many people who work in food without economics would like to use some economics. So, putting the two together has been definitely a situation where two plus two is more than four. Putting the two together is something new and different. Amelia: I think also that food is a very special type of good. And so, when we're talking about economics we talk a lot about goods and services. And food is a special type of good in that you have to have it to live. And we also really found during the process of writing the book, as Will talked about, more and more examples that many of the fundamental lessons of economics can be learned with examples from the food system. So, we think that using a topic like food, which really resonates with a lot of our students, is a great way to teach econ and it can get them more excited than learning about widgets. I am really intrigued by this, and I want to pick up on this idea that food is special and that is something I think is a critical part of what you all are doing. But I also heard something new in this idea of using food as a pathway into economics. So, as you know, folks react really strongly to economics because of math or a disdain for capitalism or other issues. Why do you want people to understand the economics of food? Amelia: So food is something that all of us make choices about multiple times a day. And there's very few other things, maybe about our time management overall, that we make choices about so frequently. But food is one of those things that we make choices about multiple times every day, all of us. And that's whether it's about producing the food, doing something else to the food or consuming the food. And economics fundamentally is about understanding and analyzing those choices and those behaviors. So, people, of course, are going to be confused sometimes about how to make those choices. And that's one of the biggest and most important discussions in public health: how do we encourage folks to make better food choices? People are also just very confused because there's so much different information floating around. So, what we wanted to do is to provide an economics perspective of food choice because economics is really great at analyzing choices. And this, of course, helps people connect what's something that's personal to them, which is making those kind of frequent food decisions. Even if they're not thinking about it, they really are thinking like an economist frequently about food multiple times every day. And then connecting it to this discipline of economics to understand the formal logic of how we analyze those choices. Will: And I would add the opportunity that we've had in teaching economics to people who didn't like economics, chose not to do it, and wanted to do public health nutrition instead. For me, at Tufts in the Friedman School, and also with students from agriculture – I taught previously at Purdue students who didn't like economics because they wanted to work in agriculture – I really want to demystify a lot of what became a kind of high jargon of fancy language. For example, in economics, people would speak of an individual “optimizing.” And we just don't say that. Instead what we say is people are doing the best they can with what they have, and often it's the least bad of their options. Similarly, economists talk about an equilibrium, but it's not a “nice” thing. It's just a prediction of a model of an explanation. So, much of our task here, I think, is to demystify economics for students, but also to help economists find a better language because economists use that off putting technical jargon way too much to talk to each other. And that really harms our ability to communicate with people who, as you said, might have a disdain for the outcome, for example. They don't like the way capitalism is turning out and they want the vocabulary to change it. And we hope the book can provide that. I really appreciate this. Picking up particularly on Amelia's comment, I remember as a student at the University of Georgia, I had an amazing intro to agricultural economics teacher. His name is Joseph Broder. And he got me excited about this idea of how people make choices. And we were talking about it in the food and Ag space, and I just started to see that happen everywhere. I realized that this was a powerful tool to help me understand the choices that people were making and the choices that maybe they wanted to make but couldn't because they were facing different constraints. So, I really appreciate this effort of what you all are trying to do in this text. That raises the question of who do you really want to read this text? I mean, who was your target audience and why those individuals? Will: So, the number one audience is instructors, to make it easy for them to teach this material. Someone who comes from economics, works on some other topic, can teach a course in food economics just by picking up the book. A student who is assigned the book can get an explanation that is perhaps richer in detail with more examples. And then we also provide a lot of data analysis in the book that a student can read on their own. But I honestly believe that quite a few general readers can find it attractive to just pick it up and flip through it. When I wanted to learn about general nutrition, just vitamins, minerals, reading a nutrition textbook was actually great. And I hope that this textbook is something that people can just pick up and flip through. You can, because it's open access, you can just search for a word in the book, and you can flip around and see what catches your eye. And I hope people find that experience interesting and enlightening and useful. Amelia: And I think the book could be used by students, undergraduate and graduate students, and their instructors for all different kinds of courses that intersect with the food system. So, not just straight up economics courses, but also courses on the food system, maybe even on sustainable agriculture, on public health nutrition. And I think that, you know, for those courses, certain chapters could be selected and used in a course. So, we hope that people can use it really as flexibly as they want. Yeah, and then we also think that for economists who never learned about the food system, that it might benefit them as well, because we really do give a complete picture of what the food system is, what it looks like with all kinds of data. And they maybe haven't thought about, you know, economists know econ, of course, but they maybe haven't thought about the food system and how it's kind of a unique sector. And this I think would help them really to formalize that for themselves too. This is helpful. I'm going to bring up a different group of people who I think could be interested in this text. How do you see someone going into a department or ministry of agriculture or food or development agency, seeing policy differently based on the work of this text? Amelia: In terms of the policy aspects of the book, the material in each chapter can intersect with different types of food policies. So, for anyone who works at a ministry of health or a ministry of agriculture who's developing food policy, they might use the book to see, “okay, well, what am I going to be able to tell qualitatively? What will happen if this policy is implemented?” Of course, if they want to understand something about quantitative change, they would need to gather data and do some statistics and econometrics. But if they want to make a sketch of “okay, well, if I implement this policy, here's what I can expect qualitatively to happen to prices and quantities and imports and exports.” They can definitely do that using the material from this book. I think that it might also help because it spans everything from production to consumption and health, it will allow policymakers to really see those connections between those aspects of the food system. So not just consumers, and not even just consumers and farmers, but also thinking about input markets and food manufacturing and processing, as well as retail. I think that it gives that kind of that whole picture of the food system, which could be really helpful to those policy makers. Will: Another aspect of ‘whole picture' thinking that we tried to instill in the second half of the book is just showing a lot of data. And in particular, zooming way out so that we show all of the data. We believe, I think with pretty good evidence, that when people choose a case study, choose a narrative, choose an example, there's a lot of selection effect there. And when you zoom way out, as we do in the second half of the book to show scatter plots and line graphs, I think policy makers will see whatever decision they're making in that quantitative context. They'll get the qualitative insight that Amelia just described, plus the overall context. And that will really guide decisions, we hope, towards a more mindful and well-informed kinds of choices. Now, that's I think really powerful. And there's something else that's unique about this text is, you mention it, it's open access. And so that's really different for a textbook. And because it's open access, that means it's free for everyone. So as an economist, I have to ask, what does that mean? How do you make it free for everyone? So why did you choose that approach? And then this book also does something else a little differently. It doesn't use extensive citations or footnotes and references. What was your thinking in that approach? Will: Great question. I'll talk about the open access and Amelia can talk about the structure and the tone, the voice. Open access was an opportunity that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation provided because of their support for the Agriculture Nutrition Health Academy that I've been privileged to be a founder of, to create a community of researchers. The Gates Foundation does support open access fees that are quite high. For this book, it's $20,000, but the grant was willing to pay that. The total royalties that Amelia and I might've earned is very small compared to the effort in writing the book. And so, we really wanted to take advantage of that grant to have people be able to just click on the link and read the book. It takes all the delay and the challenge and the difficulty our and makes access seamless as well as free. So, it's not just low cost, but also low time transaction difficulty. You can put it on any device and refresh. You know pick it up on your phone, pick it up on any laptop at any time. And that makes a big difference, we hope. Amelia: Yes, the lower the barriers are for students to read the better for sure. And in terms of the structure of the book and having kind of the sprinkling of sources within the narrative text, what we really wanted was to create kind of a just a seamless narrative. So, we didn't want readers to have to flip to the end to see about where the sources were. But we kind of describe key thinkers, key economists, and also experts in other fields whose work has really influenced economics within the narrative text. And so, we feel that this kind of helps it flow better. And we also put all the data citations right next to the figure so that you can click out to that source and see the data yourself when the data are updated. You know, students and readers could make their own charts with that same data. So, for the data visualizations, all the citations are right there, ready to go. And then for anything else that you might include normally as a reference, it's all woven into the narrative. We also have a handbook chapter that has more than 300 citations for the health side of the literature. So people can use that if they want a guide to published papers that are individual studies. Great. This sounds like a wonderful opportunity and really a unique way of contributing to both the educational component, but also sort of this idea of outreach of what university professors do. So it sounds almost like more of a public service than I would think we would normally look at a textbook. I gotta ask this question, because you start and you end with a poem about kiwis. Not the small animal or the people from New Zealand, but little furry fruit. So why do you do this? What are you trying to tell us through this poem? Amelia: I mean, I think first is just to demonstrate that economics can be really fun. And also that the food system can be kind of confusing. Right? And that's right in the title of the poem. Why are kiwis so cheap? This was Will's poem. I'm going to let him talk about other reasons why you wanted to put it at the beginning and then at the end. Will: Yeah, the question came from a journalist asking why are Kiwis so cheap because they come from the other side of the world, right? And when I first got the question, I thought it was a kind of a silly question. And I didn't want to answer pedantically. And I had just written a sort of doggerel poem for my brother's birthday. I had like doggerel poetry on the brain and I was thought – I could just write a fun little poem. So, there you go.

When you hear university dining, you likely have images in your mind of college students with trays and hand waiting in a line for a meal in a dining hall. You may even think of a food court or a trendy food hall in the cool part of town. But there is so much more happening behind the scenes. Today we will learn about Menus of Change University Research Collaborative, MCURC for short, which is a nationwide network of colleges and universities using campus dining halls as living laboratories for behavior change. The Collaborative's goals are to move people towards healthier, more sustainable and delicious foods using evidence-based research, education and innovation. Our guest today is the Collaborative's co-founder and co-director, Stanford University's Sophie Egan.  Interview Summary I'd like you to tell our listeners a little bit more about the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative. What is it and how does it actually work? The Menus of Change University Research Collaborative was co-founded by the Culinary Institute of America and Stanford University, two divisions there, the Stanford Prevention Research Center and the School of Medicine, and Residential and Dining Enterprises. And that should tell you something is different in our vision, which is that first and foremost, we wanted to break down silos that exist on campuses between experts in food who work in academic realms. So, researchers, faculty who may be studying food, either from one certain discipline or ideally some cases transdisciplinarily, and those who actually feed students, the experts in the dining programs on campus. And Stanford was a good place to co-found this because of this great partnership that already existed between the dining program and between Dr. Christopher Gardner at the School of Medicine. But that model has actually now been replicated. We are at 70 plus institutions, not only across the U.S., but actually increasingly internationally. In addition to fostering that collaboration and breaking down those silos on a given campus, we really wanted to foster collaboration between universities to take what we consider kind of a plug-and-play research protocol. You know, a given design of a study that, as you said, uses campus dining halls as living laboratories and actually replicate research. So that's what we've done. It's been incredibly fun to be part of it from the beginning, and it's been incredibly exciting and impactful because of the approach that we take. We really democratize even what it means to be a researcher, to be involved in research. We have involvement in the collaborative and in research projects from students, faculty, of course, who are critical in their expertise, but also executive chefs, nutrition and sustainability experts. And many other research collaborators who are mission aligned organizations like EAT and REFED and Food for Climate League, who bring their own kind of comparable expertise. And we all work together to shape these living lab studies and then to test those at multiple sites to see if this a more generalizable effect? Or is that something just those west coast schools work for? Or is this only something that, you know, more elite schools where students of a certain demographic really respond? But that's also the beauty is the diversity of the institutions that we have. Geographically, public private, small and large. And we're really brought together by the kind of common language of what's also in our name, Menus of Change. And these are these principles of optimizing both human and planetary health through the food on our plates. And for us really, especially through students, changing that trajectory and cultivating the long term wellbeing of all people in the planet, one student, one meal at a time. Wow. This sounds like a really amazing program. And I love the fact that you're working across different types of universities across the U.S. and even outside. And it does make me believe that the findings that you have are applicable in a broader setting than if one institution does it. I can appreciate the power of the Collaborative. I want to know a little bit more about the impact of the collaborative. What has it been up to this point and in what ways have you seen this collaborative generate new ideas or new research findings? Yes. So, we've got about six peer reviewed publications under our belt with more on the way. Our latest is called the University Procurement and Planetary Health Study led by Dr. Jackie Bertoldo, who was at the Johns Hopkins University and also Stanford Food Institute. But we have a number of academic publications also in the works. And then importantly, we actually have produced 13 operational publications and reports. So, what that illustrates is that we've come to realize that those that are collaborating have different currencies. Publishing in a peer reviewed journal, that's what motivates academic researchers, right? That's what's going to enable them to invest time and resources. Fundamentally, this is primarily something that people do,  in their free time, right? It's a volunteer-based network of over 300 members. But if they're going to work on a project, it has to have some value to their own work. But what has value to those in dining operations is implementable, real, tangible strategies, recommendations, and guidelines that translate 'these are the findings of a certain study into what do you want me to do about it? How do you want me to change my menu, sourcing, the design of the dining hall, the choice architecture, right? The food environment itself. How do you want me to change something in the operational setup?' Maybe, if it has to do with food waste. All of these resources are on our website. We also have three really exciting new projects in the pipeline. So that's our research and publication impact to date. But I should say that importantly, it's much more meaningful to us who take those resources and acts upon them. We know that universities are unique places to conduct research, but our research is not aimed only at the campus dining sector. It's actually offered open source to inform and shape the entire food service industry. We have been thrilled, for example, one of our kind of flagship publications called the Edgy Veggies Toolkit has been implemented and adopted by some of the largest food service companies in the world. Think of Sodexo, Aramark, Compass, who are phenomenal members of the collaborative. Think of corporate dining programs, hospitals, hotels, elsewhere. K 12 environments. And that's, to us, the most important kind of reach is to know that those toolkits, those resources. Edgy Veggies was about how you could simply change the way you describe vegetable-based dishes on a menu, to use more taste focused language, to increase the appeal. We actually demonstrated you can measurably increase selection and consumption of vegetables. So, you can imagine that has applications in public health in countless settings. Even those of us trying to feed our kids. Hey, if I call tonight's broccoli, you know, zesty orange broccoli versus just broccoli, maybe my kid will eat more of it, right? So, it has applications in countless different contexts. Another really big area for us is our collective purchasing power. So, we learned at some point that it's not only that these organizations, the institutions that are part of the collaborative are brought together by a desire to co create research, but it's really that alignment on healthy, sustainable, plant forward future for the food service industry. And so we've actually created this collective impact initiative where it's our combined purchasing power. We've now measurably reduced our combined food-related greenhouse gas emissions. By 24 percent just between 2019 and 2022, and that's across 30 institutions, 90 million pounds of food. I mean, this is a huge outcome for us, and we're not stopping there. We had a goal to reduce by 25 percent by 2030, and now reaching that, we're A, enhancing the target to a 40 percent reduction by 2030. But importantly, we're actually measuring now the uptick in diet quality. So, because human health is equally important to that sustainability part, that University Procurement for Planetary Health study that I mentioned, we're actually able to see that if we are aligning our procurement, meaning what do we buy in the total pounds of an institution and then in the aggregate, right? How plant forward, how healthy and sustainable is that kind of portfolio, that total mix of foods that we're purchasing? And we can actually really increase the diet quality and that kind of average health profile at the same time. So, getting that data layer is really key. And it's the kind of area of impact that has so much momentum and will only continue into the future. Also, lastly, just to say our student engagement numbers have really grown, and that's critically important because educating and cultivating the next generation of food systems leaders. is also core to our work. We have our MCRC Fellows program and that has really grown to have about 30 fellows from a number of institutions all around the country. That's another great way that anyone interested can get involved in. Students are a reason for being. So, it's key that they see these ways to make an impact through their work as well. I am really impressed with the improvements in lowering greenhouse gas emissions or improving sustainability of the dining facilities. How actually did you all do that? I mean, it sounds like you're asking people to report and through that reporting, you see reduction? Can you explain? Coming soon is our 2.0 learnings report that will answer that exact question, but we do have a 2020 version. We call it the early learnings report that shares what it sounds, you know, the early learnings of what works, what doesn't. But what I can tell you can have been kind of the big keys to that success. First, collective target setting. We have been able to welcome institutions that really don't necessarily have the political support, the kind of stakeholder buy in, to make a big public commitment. Some schools do, some institutions do, and that's great. And others, they can sort of take cover, so to speak, in contributing to something where, you know. Their pace of change may be different. And so, it's really kind of contributing to something larger than only their institution, but also having the comfort that it's going to be fits and starts. It may not be linear. It may not be all forward. It might be a little bit backward in terms of the progress trajectory. So that's been really key to having a real diversity of schools where it's not only those that are at the very leading edge. And it's in again, places that aren't as comfortable coming out with a big splashy public wedge. The other big thing that's been key is that we have created a very streamlined framework for data collection. Instead of kind of saying you must submit your data for every single item you've ever purchased, we've on a smaller subset of food categories, where it's easier for them to track, we've created a streamlined and standardized template for them to submit the data, and we also provide individualized reports back to that university. It's confidential. They are the only one who gets it. And that's very motivating because a lot of institutions don't have that resource or that expertise to conduct that analysis to track their emissions year over year. It's almost like getting kind of a free consultancy. But it's what creates that reciprocity where we need their data. We need their collective contribution to the collective effort. And they're getting something out of it because they do have to take the time to find the data and to submit it to us. And then the other thing I think has really been key is, and this was kind of the core concept of collective impact, is continuously iterating. Every year we're listening to those involved in tweaking, you know, how we're asking for the data, how frequently we used to ask for it twice a year, and now it's annually, for example. So always kind of iterating, testing and iterating to make the processes mutually beneficial as possible. And then also keeping the door open for those other institutions to join. It's kind of a cohort effect where we have some institutions that have been part of it from the beginning and others that have only been submitting data for a year and everyone is playing a role. Great. Thank you for sharing that. I want to ask you a little bit more about your other work that you're doing because you're the co-director of the collaborative. You're also the co-director of the Stanford Food Institute. Can you tell our listeners more about that institute and what you're working on there? The Stanford Food Institute was founded by our visionary leader, Dr. Shirley Everett, who's Senior Vice Provost for Residential Dining Enterprises at Stanford. And she really had this vision to bring together an entire community of people to shape a better future of food for the benefit of all humanity and, and really embracing how much food is happening on the Stanford campus. To have the Stanford Food Institute be really this hub and this home for what belovedly we say at Stanford, it's a very decentralized place. There's a ton of entrepreneurial spirit and that's fantastic and should be, but often we don't know what everyone else is doing. So, it's a great opportunity for the Stanford Food Institute to be that magnet and say, come one, come all, whatever student led group, research project, course, event, you know, we want to work with you. So, in practice, what we really do is we work across research, education and innovation to bring together that community and work on this better future. We have a really strong focus on racial equity in the food system, as well as bold climate action. Those are kind of some cross-cutting themes. Our R&DE (research, development, education) core values that have to do with excellence and students first, sustainability, health, deliciousness. All of those things are kind of foundational at the same time. So we actually collaborate with faculty in all seven schools, which is for me super fun because I get to learn about the business dimensions of food and the psychology and social sciences. We have the new Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability that is a very active partner. We have phenomenal partners in the School of Medicine. And when possible, of course, we bring them all together. One really phenomenal culmination of all of those different research efforts is we host something called the Stanford Food Institute Food Systems Symposium, where every year, I like to explain it as a food systems science fair. It's a kind of exhibition style showcase. Researchers get really creative with how they show their work. We had over a hundred researchers at our latest symposium. And it demonstrates that real diversity of disciplines and topics that, that touch food because that's what's so exciting about food. It touches all parts of society. That's one big example. And then we have a number of community partnerships in the Bay Area. One is with the nonprofit Farms to Grow and we're really committed long term to helping support black farmers, not only in California, but sharing our model for increasing supplier diversity and equitable supply chains with other institutions. So those are just two examples, but it's really such a pleasure and an honor to lead the Stanford Food Institute. And as you can likely gather, it's really quite complimentary to the menus of change university research collaborative as well. I am really excited to learn about this symposium. And I got to say, I've worked in land grant institutions before, and I studied at land grant institutions. And so it's interesting to hear of a school like Stanford that is not a land grant. That doesn't have a tradition of agriculture in a narrowly defined sense engaging in this work. I mean, how is it that you're able to find that many people? You said a hundred folks were working on different projects related to the food system. Is it just happening, and people don't necessarily know that it's happening and you're able to bring them together? What's going on there? That's a good question. I don't have a scientific answer. I have a hunch. Anecdotal evidence. We're talking about research here. So, I've got to be clear on my methods for answering. I'll tell you, Norbert, so before I was in this role, one of the things I did was I taught a class at Stanford in the School of Design that was all about food systems careers. And it was essentially a stopgap because there was so much interest from undergraduate students in careers in food systems. But they didn't know what on earth they were going to do to make money, to make a living. How were they going to tell their parents I'm going to use all this money you spent on my degree to do what exactly? There also was just not a clear sense of even what the role types were. What's out there? What's possible? How can I make a difference? And so that class that we co-taught for several years. And I say that because that was just an interesting signal of how many students were interested, sort of, you know, poking at the edges. But a lot of them, to be honest, I call it off ramping. They didn't see the path. They just went the path that was more clear cut. They went to law school or they went to med school. And then they said, ‘well, I'll just like cook at home as a side hobby instead. Because maybe my passion for food doesn't need to be my career.' And so I think what we're really doing with the Food Institute, and there's a number of other kind of similar initiatives, is trying to say, let's try to, you know, address this in a more root cause kind of way. We have something now called the Stanford Food Systems Community, which is just a list serve. And in the fall, we host an event right at the beginning of the year where it's, it's kind of a, again, a come one, come all. We come to the farm, the actual farm at Stanford and have a pizza party and get to know all the different events and things on campus. I think to me, it's, it's a groundswell that's happening nationwide. So, I'm also an author and I've spoken for my books at a lot of universities. And I will often get asked to speak to the career services department. They'll ask me, can you talk about careers in food systems? I've seen this groundswell of interest from students. And then I think a lot of faculty also are really seeing how maybe they study law or a certain dimension. But its kind of either like backs into food or stumbles upon food, maybe. You know, we don't have, like you're saying, we don't have a department in nutrition. I mean, we don't have a specifically food kind of academic framework. But it's more those inherent intersectionalities with food where it's almost in, I think, inescapable to faculty. And then it's really kind of bolstered by how many students are expressing interest. It's something I'm really excited to see where we're in conversations with faculty to do even more to just make students aware of how many classes there are. Because I think sometimes that is the challenge that it's there, but they just don't know how to access it. Right. Thank you for sharing that. And I got to say, I've been taking notes, so I may follow up with you some more later. You've been working with campus food leaders for over a decade now. And you talked about that even in, I guess, in referencing the class as well. What is it about colleges and universities that excite you when it comes to making positive changes in the food system? And you've given me a little bit about that. I'm intrigued to see what else are you seeing? You know, it's surprising. It's the longest I've done something, like a certain one specific role is, is co leading this collaborative. Because I actually co-founded it when I was with the Culinary Institute of America on the other side of the partnership. And I think I have just a deep appreciation, and maybe I like to describe myself as an I realist, idealist mixed with a realist. A realistic view of the potential for universities to be change agents in society. Does it mean they always use that potential? No, but it's there. It's everything from the incubators of new knowledge. They're where new ideas emerge, right? I remember when I first went to the University of Bologna, and it's been there for a thousand years. That's just incredible, right? But it's also a place of growth and expanding your mind for students. Many of these higher education institutions are what's been referred to as anchor institutions. They are huge employers in a region. They are huge thought leaders in a region. They're places of opportunity for all kinds of different things. Whether it's collaborations with private sector and industry, whether it's international kind of tourism and exposure, I mean, so many different possibilities there. And I think the other big thing is that, and I should just say on the anchor institution point, it's the, all that purchasing power too, that I mentioned right there. Very streamlined, fairly agile decision making. I'm sure someone on the podcast is going to say, you think Higher Ed is agile, you know. There's bureaucracy, I know, but I just mean compared to some other food service companies or industries where it's really hard to make changes within campus dining, in particular, you do have a fairly sizable, you know, amount of purchasing power that can have fairly quick, they can be early adopters and they're known as early adopters. The food service industry really looks at what's campus dining doing. That's the tip of the spear. That's a signal of the trends to come. That's a signal of what are going to be the new norms. And the last thing is that we really embrace the fact that students in college, this is this unique period of identity formation. They're figuring out their relationships to food. What is the role that food is going to play in their lives? What do they value? How does that get reflected through food? How does that make them feel? How do they perform academically, physically, et cetera? And of course, for community and belonging, coming together, breaking bread, et cetera. We really love this stat where we've seen that in a given year, we have 4 million meals across the collaborative. But it's not just the meals that these students eat when they're on our campuses. It's the billions of meals they will go on to consume in their collective lifetimes, and when they go on to be decision makers and parents and in the other future realms. And again, that shaping formative opportunity. There are many reasons, I guess, that I've been motivated and I think the potential is still just tremendous. I'm excited for all that's ahead. This is great. And I love the idea and the recognition that this is this formative time for students. That their taste, which may have been shaped, of course, from home, but are being transformed in the dining halls. The place where they're learning to step out and make decisions about food in a way that they couldn't even in high school. I really appreciate this idea and this opportunity. And I appreciate the sort of seriousness that you take at approaching this issue. I have to say, as someone who's related to or connected to a policy center, I am intrigued to think about what kind of policy initiatives, federal, state, even university, do you see coming out of the work of the collaborative? Well, you know, it's really exciting when there is, again, I mentioned that our schools are both public and private, right? So, policy has so many opportunities to kind of shape, again, that social or political will that the decision makers administrators, dining directors may have to pursue something. So, you know, the University of California has been part of the collaborative, most of their campuses have been part for a very long time. And it just is a good example, I think to me, where in that state, there is so much support from the governor's office for farm to fork, local procurement, direct procurement, supplier diversity, regenerative agriculture, climate friendly and plant forward meals in public schools, in K 12. It's that sort of enabling environment, I think, that policy can create and also learn from. So, if it sees constellation of institutions, making a bold move or all aligning on the same kind of, you know, targets or metrics, that can give them the wind at their backs to pass something that maybe applies to all publicly run institutions. Or all food vendors in their state. For example, I would love to see more policy efforts on data and reporting. As I shared with you about collective impact, we're really proud of what we've done, but this is all voluntary, right? We're just choosing to measure this and hold ourselves accountable and keep striving. But I think at some point if it becomes required, you could have more resources in these institutions being brought to do that hard work that is required. I mean, it's not only, you know, sharing with us, but then it's analyzing your menu. What were the strategies that led to that biggest reduction? How did the student feedback go? Working with suppliers is a huge area that Stanford's really excited to have begun, but it takes time. It's, and we need more support, more capacity to do that. I could envision that if there were more requirements kind of coming from policy for some of that tracking and disclosing. And an example that gives me reason to think that's possible is again in California. Something called SB 1383 requires Institutions like ours and all others to disclose their food donation amounts. And I think that's a really interesting example again of measuring something. Bring a measurement requirement from policy to something that maybe everyone's already been doing because it was just best practice, or something that they wanted to know for themselves again that more voluntary. I think there's a lot of opportunities to do more of that. And I would love to see more of those state and regional policies, but also some of these kind of best practices emerge from some of these states and counties that become perhaps nationwide. You know the old saying, if you don't measure it, you can't change it because you don't know. And I love the fact that the collaborative sees itself as a place to prototype, to figure out how do we collect these data. How do we make it less burdensome? Because if you can figure those things out, then I can imagine allowing others to replicate that. This is a great test bed for what policies could look like by the work that you all are doing, it sounds like. And I think that's a really important point because I think the fear would be that policies get created in a vacuum, right? Where you just say, we're going to require you to disclose XYZ crazy detailed things that either an entity doesn't know how to get, can't get, or it costs them thousands and thousands of dollars to collect, or something along those lines. And so, really marrying feasibility, sort of what measurement tools exist how is the kind of dynamic between humans in your environments and those technology tools? I mean, food waste measurement right now is an area that we're really focusing on that because AI and there's a huge opportunity to kind of reduce the burden on staff. But so far, it's been difficult for pretty much every food service operation, including campuses, to get really high-quality food waste data. Even though they may have these tools. And it often has to do with how difficult, how much time it requires staff. I think it's really key that policymakers really, yeah, work with institutions like ours. We love to be, as you said, that kind of prototyping place to find the right balance of rigor and frequency and volume of data with, again, kind of labor and financial constraints and operational realities. And for us, it's also critically important to keep in mind the student experience. How do we not do so many research projects in a four walled space so that we forget this is their home. This is where students eat and live every day. It can't only be about us getting as much data as possible, of course. It's just really accounting for all those variables in the equation. I appreciate this. And I swear, Sophie, we could talk forever. Let me ask you one last question. And I think this is a good place for us to come to an end. What are the different ways people can get involved in the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative? Excellent. Well, please do. So first, the easiest thing is just check out our website. Everything that we create is open source. As I mentioned, it for sure can be applied in university settings, but it pretty much across the board can be applied in a number of other settings. Food service, for sure, but also there's a lot of, whether it's prepared foods at retails, other settings in general. Check out moccollaborative. org in particular, our resources and research. The other way is if you're affiliated with an institution, if you're an academic researcher, and you can get in touch with us to find out about. Or you can become what we call a member institution where dining services and at least one academic researcher are involved. Then you're actually part of all that data collection kind of effort. I think the other biggest area is if you have students who are interested, if once you become a member institution, as I mentioned, there's tons of opportunities to get involved in shaping research. But also in the educational side, which is through our MCRC student fellows program. So those would be some of the big ones, and we always love feedback, too. Tell us how you're utilizing the resources and how we can continue to identify gaps in the research agenda that we are uniquely positioned to help fill. BIO Sophie Egan, MPH is the Director of the Stanford Food Institute and Sustainable Food Systems at R&DE Stanford Dining, Hospitality & Auxiliaries, where she is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Menus of Change University Research Collaborative. She is also the author of How to Be a Conscious Eater (Workman, 2020)—named one of Bon Appétit's “Favorite New Books for Climate-Friendly Cooking and Life”—and the founder of Full Table Solutions, a consulting practice that's a catalyst for food systems transformation. An internationally recognized leader at the intersection of food, health, and climate, Sophie is also a contributor to The New York Times Health section and Director of Strategy for Food for Climate League. Previously, Sophie served as the Director of Health and Sustainability Leadership/Editorial Director for The Culinary Institute of America's Strategic Initiatives Group. Sophie's writing has been featured in The Washington Post, TIME, Parents, The Wall Street Journal, Bon Appétit, WIRED, EatingWell, Edible San Francisco, FoodTank, and Sunset. She is a member of the Food System 6 Advisory Board, James Beard Foundation Sustainability Advisory Council, and the Food Tank Academic Working Group. She holds a BA with honors in history from Stanford University; an MPH with a focus on health and social behavior from UC Berkeley; and a certificate from the Harvard Executive Education in Sustainability Leadership program.

Today we discuss a new and provocatively titled book written by Southwestern Law School professor Andrea Freeman, an expert on issues of race, food policy, and health from both legal and policy perspectives. The book's title, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground, the Politics of Food in the United States from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch, has been called the first and definitive history of the use of food in the United States law and politics as a weapon of conquest and control. Freeman argues that the U. S. food law and policy process has both created and maintained racial and social inequity. She documents governmental policies from colonization to slavery; to the commodities supplied to Native American reservations. She argues that the long-standing alliance between government and the food industry has produced racial health disparities to this day. Interview Summary Let's talk about the title of your book. What are you trying to communicate? So 'ruin their crops on the ground' is a paraphrase of what George Washington ordered his troops to do, to try to displace Indigenous people and take over their land. That's a pretty powerful image to think about that. So, in your book, you use the term food oppression. Can you explain what you mean? Yes. So I originally started writing about food oppression as the alliance between corporations, the food and agricultural industries, and the government that [00:02:00] create stark health disparities on a racial basis, sometimes gender and class. And as I've come through thinking about this over the years, I'm also using it to describe the way that food has always been used as a tool of subordination by the U.S. Government in history. An interaction between the industry and government isn't inherently oppressive. How does it come to be that way? I mean, it could be good, good for the public, it could be bad, but why does it, how does it become oppressive?​ Yeah, I agree that the problem with the food industry is that the desire to make profits is in conflict with the nutritional needs of people that the U.S., Government programs focus on nutrition are supposed to be serving. Let's go back to some of the earlier times. You've written about the role that food played in slavery. Could you explain? Absolutely. So, enslavers were very careful about the portions and the type of food that they gave to people. the people that they enslaved. And they would write pamphlets and advise each other. Hoping to find a balance to give enslaved people enough food to be able to work and be alive, but not enough to give them the energy to revolt or perform acts of resistance that they inevitably did. And then food was used to create hierarchies within enslaved peoples. It was used to, I don't know, take away pleasure, really, from life to oppress people in so many ways. And so, not just from the content of the food, but even the way that food was delivered. So, instead of eating on plates, food might be poured into a pig trough or scattered on the ground, right? There are so many ways that enslavers used food to try to degrade and subordinate people through either the portions or the content or the delivery. Food is such a fundamental and kind of elementary form of reinforcement. You could imagine it being used to punish particular individuals and reward others. Absolutely. And the law backed up the way that enslavers used food. And even when enslaved people wanted to grow their own food, and perhaps sell it to gain some advantage, the law prevented that. Enslavers might just take over those gardens. Steal the food. Use it for their own purposes. That was all perfectly legal. And the law tried to protect other enslavers from having enslaved people come and steal their food by having some laws in place that said, you must give adequate provisions, which looked like something that might protect enslaved people, but in fact was only to protect other enslavers. Going back to the title of your book, it makes reference to the Trail of Tears. And people have highly varying levels of knowledge of what the Trail of Tears refers to. In North Carolina, it's a really important and tragic part of the state's history for the native individuals living in the western part of the state. But could you tell us more about how food figured into this, what it was and how food figured in? Of course. So the United States wanted the land that Indigenous people were living on. And they designated a part of the country that covers Oklahoma and some states around there and called it the Indian Country or Indian Territory. And to try to force indigenous people to move to that land and to make a journey across the country that was so dangerous, and ended up killing maybe half of the people who made that journey, they destroyed the food sources of people. They had no choice at all. They were starving. They either had to go or die there with no food. And food played into the promises that were made by the United States government of rations that would be given along the way and when people arrived. However, in reality, the rations were gone by the time many people arrived. Or they were bad meat or they were just inedible. And so, they caused not only people to move, but then once they arrived, caused many more deaths. Either along the way or once they were there. A lot of it was unfamiliar food that couldn't be cooked or digested. Food played a major role in the Trail of Tears and what happened both before and after that journey. And the quality of the land for agriculture that they were forced to settle on was part of the picture too, wasn't it?  Yes. Some of it was good and some of it was absolutely terrible. And people were given no choice about where they were going to end up. Let's fast forward to more current times. The U. S. Department of Agriculture has created several very important nutrition programs with the stated aim of improving nutrition. But you've raised some concerns. Please tell us why? Yes. If we just think about that journey that began with the Trail of Tears and with George Washington's order. And then the role that food rations have played in the relationship between the United States and Indigenous people. The rations that were first introduced in trying to force that move, then played a role in many elements of this policy. For example, rations were taken away if parents would not give up their children to the federal Indian boarding schools. They were taken away as a punishment if Indigenous people engage in their own cultural and kinship practices under the Code of Indian Offences. And so, rations played a huge role, and they continue to do so. They have now transformed into what is the food distribution program for Indian reservations. Which is another system whereby the United States is providing food to Indigenous people who are living on reservations, do not have access to many food sources at all, and so, are in need of nutrition. But the contents of the food that are given out through this program don't reflect the needs of the people who are receiving it. They reflect the needs of the agricultural industries and the surpluses that the USDA is responsible for getting rid of because of federal subsidies through the Farm Bill. You've written as well about food marketing. Tell us what your thoughts are on that? Food marketing is so important because it really defines in our society who eats what. It tells us a story that is rife with racial stereotypes and kind of propaganda about food. And it also determines the food landscape in many ways. When I think about race and marketing, marketing first of food really just employed a lot of racist tropes. Because marketing was directed only to white people. And, you know, racism was something that sold. We've seen that change and become more subtle over the years to the present where we even see food marketing taking on anti-racism as a form of what's called woke washing, to try to gain consumer dollars by adopting a certain political position. The issue of who is targeted by marketing is enormously interesting, complex, and highly important. I'm glad to see you addressing that in your book. Let me ask one final question before we wrap up. How is the U. S. Constitution involved in this? I have a theory as a constitutional law professor that the way that the United States has dealt with food in a way that creates racially disparate outcomes violates both the 13th amendment and the 14th amendment. So, let me explain. The 13th Amendment says that anything that comes out of slavery as a vestige, or a badge or a marker of slavery is not allowed. And that means that policies that began back then, that continued today with discriminatory harm are prohibited under the13th Amendment. I talked a little bit about how during slavery food was used to oppress and subordinate. And that caused health problems. Very racially disparate health problems where enslaved people suffered from illnesses and conditions and deaths associated with food and malnutrition at much higher rates than white people. That was explained away by constitution and genetics, but that was all lies. In the present, we still have those disparities and they're still due to deliberate policies that create this oppression, the food oppression that I talked about in the beginning. The 13th amendment should not allow that kind of food discrimination in the same way that it doesn't allow housing discrimination. Now, under the 14th amendment, all people should be treated equally by the government. But what we have is food policy that treats people differently based on their race. In the case of the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), that's quite clear. In some other cases, like public school lunches, you have to kind of take a step back to understand how there are racially disparate effects. But the same commodities that the USDA is responsible for getting rid of, that they do through the Indian reservation program are being sent to schools. And these are public schools where in many districts, there are many more Black, Latina, indigenous students than white students. For example, where I am in LA, that's 94 percent of the public-school population. And the government is using that program to get rid of very unhealthy food that is making kids who go to public schools sick. And that is unequal treatment under the law. It should violate the 14th Amendment. You know, I'm not an expert on constitutional law, but this is the first time I've heard this argument made and it's really an interesting one. Do you think there would be a day when we would see legal action based on this theory? I think it's possible. I don't think that legal action would be successful in our present moment of jurisprudence. But I think that framing is really important for people to think about and to understand what is happening. And I think that sometimes thinking about things as unconstitutional can provoke social action. Social movement. It can allow people to think about injustice in a certain way that creates resistance. So, I think it's important, even if we can't bring a case today, on that basis. BIO Andrea Freeman is a law professor at Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles. She is a national and international expert on the intersections between critical race theory and food policy, health, and consumer credit. She is the author of Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, from the Trail of Tears to School Lunch (Metropolitan 2024) and Skimmed: Breastfeeding, Race, and Injustice (Stanford University Press 2019), in addition to book chapters, law review articles, and op-eds. Skimmed is currently in development for a documentary with Topic Pictures. Her work has been featured in publications including the Washington Post, New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Huffington Post, USA Today, The Root, Yahoo! News, The Atlantic, NPR Shots Blog, Pacific Standard, The Conversation, Medium, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and National Library of Medicine, and she has done interviews with news outlets and programs including CBS News, PBS News Hour, The Takeaway, Here & Now, Point of Origin, Newstalk Irish National Radio, Heritage Radio Network, The Electorette, Hawaii Public Radio. She studied food inequality in the UK as the 2020-21 Fulbright King's College London U.S. Scholar. 

Empowering Women in AgriFood Tech: A Conversation with Amy Wu of From Farms to Incubators - In this episode of the Leading Voices in Food podcast, host Norbert Wilson speaks with Amy Wu, the creator and content director of From Farms to Incubators. Amy shares her inspiring journey in highlighting and supporting women, particularly women of color, in the agri-food tech industry. Learn about the origins of her groundbreaking documentary and book, her vision for a vibrant community of women innovators, and the crucial role of education, mentorship, and policy in advancing women's roles in this sector. Interview Summary I have a great set of questions for you. So, the first thing, could you just tell our listeners a little bit more about From Farms to Incubators? Sure. From Farms to Incubators is a special initiative and project that tells the stories of women in this fast-growing field known as ag tech, sometimes interchangeably used as Agri food tech as well. The mission of it is really to get more women involved in ag tech through storytelling, through resources, and also through education and training. I also would describe it as a multimedia content platform. I actually came to this as a journalist and as a storyteller that uses storytelling to amplify the voices of women leaders and entrepreneurs in this field. It's also a documentary and a book and also a website where we archive their stories and their biographies as well. Thanks for that overview, and you just talked about the book and the documentary From Farms to Incubators: women innovators revolutionizing how our food is grown, which uses storytelling to highlight women innovators and how women innovators in the Agri food tech are doing their best. But there's also a movement and the community and this multimedia platform. Why did you expand from the book and documentary into this larger network? That's a really good question. Briefly, as some context, I kind of fell into this project. It was a bit of serendipity. I was a reporter in Salinas, California, which is the vegetable salad bowl of the world. Ag is a huge industry, a 10 billion industry. And I was covering government and agriculture. And I observed that there were not a lot of women at the helm of the table, whether it be at farms or also in this growing field of ag tech as well. So it started off as a documentary. I got a grant from the International Center for Journalists, and then ultimately I got another grant from the International Media Women's Foundation to do a short documentary to profile three women who are entrepreneurs in ag tech. It was great. It was at the time in 2016, which now was ages ago, I guess. It was really hard to find women in ag, in this field of ag tech, women creating the innovations to tackle some of the biggest challenges that farmers are facing, especially under climate change. So, it could have ended there because the documentary turned out to be very, very well received. It's screened at hundreds of places, and I would have panels and discussions and the women would look at each other like, 'my gosh, I didn't know there were other women doing this too. Can you connect us? We'd love to convene further.' And then educators, community leaders, agribusinesses, investors just didn't know they existed as well. So, what happened was the stories kind of multiplied and multiplied as the more that I collected them. And then I decided to put it into a book profiling about 30 women in this growing field. And to answer your question, Norbert, why is it continuing is that I saw a real need for women to have a community, women in agriculture and innovation and food systems to have a community to connect with one another, to potentially build friendship, build collaboration, build partnership, creating a collective vision sometimes and a place for them. I didn't plan on it. So, I guess the storytelling connects them. We've also have resources like a database that connects them and the goal is really so that they can have a community where they can build more. They can either build out their own startups. They can build their careers, build their professions. And then it kind of grew more legs. Now we're also extending into the area of education and training to try to get younger women, young people, youth. To see that agriculture, hey, may not be traditionally sexy. I mean, tractors and overalls are still what a lot of people think about it, but there are so many other opportunities in the food system for young people as well, especially since we all have to eat. So, how are farmers going to be producing the food for 10 billion people in 2050, right? Who's going to produce the food? How are we going to do it? Especially under the auspices of climate change, the weather's getting crazier and crazier. That's sort of why it has expanded from the stories all the way to what it is today. This is a great story and I would love to hear a little bit more about some of the women and their innovations. And if I may, I would like for you to actually even explain a little bit about what you mean by the ag food tech or Agri food tech as you're talking about these women. Broadly defined, is any kind of innovation that makes it easier, frankly, for farmers to do their work, to grow more efficiently, and to also increase [00:06:00] their yield. I can give some examples of what innovation is. Blockchain addresses food safety, really. It traces everything from the seed to all the way on the shelf, right? So if there's any safety issues, it's used to trace back, where did that seed come from? Where was it grown? What field was it in? And that really helps everybody in the food systems a lot more, right? We have sensors connected with drones. I forgot to mention robotics as well, which is a fast-growing area of ag tech. Everything from self-driving tractors to laser scarecrows to another level of robots that are picking specific kinds of fruits and vegetables that's tackling labor challenges. I don't foresee that ag tech necessarily is a replacement by the way of people. It's actually offering more opportunities because we need people who are very knowledgeable that kind of innovation. And then you also asked a bit about the stories of the women in ag tech, for example, in the film and in the book and so forth. Soil sampling is a fast-growing area of ag tech. There's the story that I have in the book and also in the movie of two young women who are Stanford PhD graduates. Who created a soil testing kit that makes it easy for farmers to just test their soil for diseases, for pests, and soil testing is traditionally, you know, very, very expensive for most farmers actually. Not easy for farmers to get access to it and to get the data, but the soil testing kit that they created makes it a lot easier for farmers, small farmers even, to access it. And why is that important is because the more knowledge, the more data that, and analytics that farmers can get, the more that they can make smart decisions about how much to fertilize, how much to irrigate. And that connects with the yield and their success. You know, another company that I can think about, another amazing woman. I just like her story, the story of AgTools and the story of Martha Montoya, who was actually an award-winning cartoonist. And she doesn't come from agriculture at all, and that's actually something that I want to highlight is a lot of these women are not farmers and don't come from agriculture. But she was a award winning cartoonist. I believe she was also a librarian and she fell into the food industry, and saw a need for having more data, offering more data and analytics to farmers. She created a system a little bit like a Bloomberg for farmers, where they can get real time data immediately on their phones, on their watches, so that they can get second by second data to make decisions on specific crops. Those are a couple of the stories that are in the book, but really what I want to highlight is that all of the innovation that they are creating addresses some of the biggest challenges that farmers are facing, whether it be labor issues,lack of water, some areas of our country are becoming more wet, others are becoming more dry, drones that are actually doing the irrigation now or drones taking photos to give more data to farmers as well on what is their land look like. You know, it could also be human resources related as well to manage staff. So mobile apps to manage staff on cattle farms. I mean, how big are the cattle farms sometimes, you know, 50,000 acres. So, it's really to save money and to create efficiency for farmers. If farmers are able to do their work more efficiently, they're able to generate greater profits, but it also allows for food prices not to rise. This has really big implications. Thank you for sharing those stories. And I love hearing about some of the individuals, but here's the question. I mean, why focus on women? What's important about what women contribute to this? And also, why are you also considering race as an important lens in this sector? Well, I would say, why not women? Because women have already been contributing to the global food system, whether in the production end or the decision makers at the head of the dinner table for thousands of thousands of years, arguably. So what I discovered is that their stories, their contributions, existing contributions were not being celebrated and were not being amplified. And I actually discovered that a lot of the women that I connected with were a bit shy about even telling their story and sharing it like kind of like, 'what is my contribution?' And I'm like, 'well, why aren't you sharing your story more?' So the goal of it really is to document and celebrate their contributions, but also to inspire. As I said, young women, next generation, all of us have daughters, nieces, granddaughters, you know, and then future generations to consider opportunities in a field where we need people. We need people who are smart and you don't have to be from a generation of farmers. You could be in science, engineering, technology, and math. You could just be passionate about it and you could be in the field. So that's the first aspect of it. And in terms of the lens of gender and race, there are not enough women in terms of just the startups in ag tech right now, only 2 percent of the billions of dollars being invested in ag tech startups. Only 2 percent are going into women led companies. It is very, very little. It is a problem that is deep rooted. And it starts with [00:12:00] funding. One problem is where is the funding coming from. Venture capitalists, traditional avenues of funding, where it is traditionally male dominated. So, there are many studies that show that investors will invest in companies where they connect with those who are leading the companies, right? So similar gender, similar backgrounds, similar stories. So, we're really looking to have a paradigm shift and move the needle of sorts and say that if there are more investors, there are more board members who are from a diversity backgrounds, then there will be more funding for women and those who are traditionally not leading agriculture, not in the leadership positions, not in the decision-making roles, right? There is a problem. There is a, what is a grass ceiling, not just glass ceiling, but grass ceiling. I hear you. I hear you. Now this is really fascinating. I know from colleagues who are in agriculture that there is this demand for more agricultural workers throughout the Agri food system. And if there is a demand, we're saying that our colleges that produce the potential workers aren't meeting those demands. One of the ways we can see that change is by having more women and more people of color join in. And so, this is a critical thing. And I would imagine also the experiences that people bring may be a critical part of coming up with new innovations. Diversity can do that. This is exciting that you're exploring this. I love what you're saying Norbert. I know I wanted to touch upon that about what you just noted is that it's also to create a pipeline, right? Education training is just so critical. And it makes me so happy to see that there are more and more programs at universities and colleges that are addressing programs in food systems, in agriculture, and increasingly in ag tech. So, whether it be courses or programs or certificates or eventually minors and majors, developing the pipeline of talent is really important and having mentors and mentees, which is something that now we're working on. This fall we'll have launched a menteeship program for women and for young people interested in ag tech and the first collaborator is the UC Merced in California. So, thanks for bringing that up. We have a couple of young people ready at the starting gates. Really excited. I will say just on a personal note, I was active in 4 H for most of my youth and that's the way I got involved in agriculture. So, touching or reaching out to folks in their youth is critical to get them excited and help them to make the connection so that they can do that work further. I'm glad to hear this work. In your view, what are some of the ongoing challenges and opportunities that women face in the ag tech sector or the Agri food sector? What are some of the things you're observing? Well, a continued challenge is having a place at the table, meaning at the leadership and decision-making level. And actually, as I noted earlier, the access to funding and not just the money, but the access to resources, meaning could be legal operational. Just how to get their startups or get their ideas out there. One example that I'm seeing that's again positive is that there's a growing number of incubators and accelerators specifically in food tech or ag tech that are is actually looking for candidates who are women or who are from underrepresented communities. The first thing is that they have a great innovation, of course, but the next thing that the incubators and accelerators are looking for is to have a diversity of perspectives. And to have representation, so seeing a lot more of that, whether it be. Individual accelerators, or even once at the university, right? Universities and colleges and the governmental level. The other challenge is access to farmers and connecting them with the farmers themselves. Cause farmers are very, very busy and that's highlighted and bolded. Increasingly just dealing with this chess game that's very hard to play with the weather, but also with their own resources. It's expensive being a farmer, equipment, labor. They don't often have the time, frankly, to beta test some of the innovations coming out. So how best to connect innovators with the farmers and to have them communicate with each other: like this is the innovation. This is how it's going to help your problem. Educating the farmers and allowing them to see that this is how it's going to address the problem that I have. So, the two are still kind of separate and access to each other is still, I would say, a major challenge. But right now, some of the solutions are, as I've noted, networking at conferences and convenings. Also, under the grant programs sometimes under the National Science Foundation or USDA, they are allowing more collaborative initiatives where you have educators, where you have policy, where you have the innovators, where you have the young people. Increasingly, seeing more and more of those kinds of projects and initiatives happen. So hopefully everybody will have a seat at the table and that would help women out a lot in the field as well. Awesome. Thank you for sharing those. And I love the fact that you're looking at not just identifying issues, but also trying to find ways of connecting folks to help overcome those challenges that women and women of color are facing in the marketplace. And it's the connections that are really critical. I appreciate you highlighting that. So, what is your ideal vision? Oh, one more thing I forgot to note is that in terms of connecting, there's also a database - a women in Agri food tech database, and I, and at least four or five other women in the field have been working on for at least four or five years now. We now have more than a thousand members. It's an open-source database where you can click on a form, put your name there and information takes a few minutes and then you're added to this database where the women can be connected to each other as well. So that's another resource. Yeah. And I mean, even just having peer mentors, not just mentors who are above you and they've like solved all the problems, but having people to go along with you as you're developing and as they are developing can be a critical part. I know as an academic, that's important for me and has been important for me. And I can imagine the same is true in this space as well. So, I'm so grateful to hear about this work. Yeah. What is your ideal vision for women in Agri food tech in the next, say, five years? And how will the digital network for from farms to incubators play a role in achieving that goal or those goals? So, my dream - it always starts, I think, in the dreaming phase and then connecting that with also resources along the way. But if I could wave my magic wand, I would say that. We would have a lot more women in leadership and thought decision making positions in ag tech to the point where maybe we won't even need something like From Farms to Incubators anymore because they'll be already equal. The stories will be out there. So, it might be questionable as to why we have a special subgroup or network for this now. How to get to that vision, I think is the three components of increasingly having more stories, and the women tell their stories at public outreach. You know, it could be at conferences, it could be in their own communities, sharing their story out to the community of farmers, of local government, of schools, local schools and colleges and universities, gardening clubs. The second component is education and training, building a pipeline. A vision that I have is actually having a campus. A virtual, and also in-person campus where women, especially from women in underprivileged communities will have the opportunity to have training and to be connected with mentors and the rock stars in the ag tech and Agri food tech field. Where they will also be able to have a project and initiative and test it out and have something to add to their portfolio. To have classes and people who are teaching those courses as well, ultimately. And then also to just build up a hub of resources. Like I mentioned the database. I mentioned that we'd like to extend it to having resources where folks can easily access internships, fellowships, granteeships, where they can be connected to funding. If they need help with legal, HR, just all components of everything that's needed to have a successful organization. And it doesn't have to just be their own startup. It could be a job database of where we have larger organizations and companies that are building up their own ag innovation or food innovation center as well. So that is the vision. It's a big vision. It's a big dream. So we're going to have to kind of break it down into components. But I think taking it step by step is the way to go kind of like climbing Everest or doing a long distance swim. Yes, I can see where you're trying to go in this vision and I'm interested to know what, if any role policy could play and help advance that vision. Yeah, so what role could policy play in advancing this vision? Currently, when it comes to diversity inclusion in the ag tech field or even in agriculture, there is somewhat a lack of policy in a way. But then also with individual organizations and corporations, obviously, there is the movement of diversity inclusion. But also, I think it's very much with the hiring practices with HR. I think it's up to individual organizations, whether they be small, larger ones, governmental, to look at their own hiring practices. To look at who they are, how are they crafting the language when they look for a job, when they look at their leadership team, are there ways to further diversify it and when it comes to, gender, ethnicities, people who come from a rural area, urban. I mean, we all come with, from a diversity of perspectives and stories. I think a lot of it will come down to hiring practices and advancing this vision and with the individuals who are already working at those organizations to be more thoughtful and conscious about giving those who don't have a place at the table, a place and a voice at the table, giving everybody a chance. Because we have some amazingly talented and knowledgeable people who just traditionally in agriculture don't have families and generations who come from an ag background. But they do come with so much that they could offer. I would say that those are a couple of examples of that as well. And maybe, more discussion about policy is really needed on a larger level when it comes to farmers, when it comes to government leaders, when it comes to innovation leaders as well. And when it comes to educators and schools. I think the more the merrier when it comes to bringing folks at the table to open it up for discussion on solutions. I appreciate this. And, this idea of not just welcoming people so that they get in the door, but also creating change. Environments and spaces where people are actually welcomed once they're there. That it becomes a place where folks can be themselves and bring all of who they are to the work that they're doing. This is critical. Yes, absolutely. I want to touch upon that. My own story is I don't have an agricultural background myself. But when I first , landed in a place like Salinas, very much sort of an outsider because I'm not from there anyway, but also not in agriculture and then being a woman and being, you know, a Chinese American woman too, you know, I, I did feel that there was a challenge to kind of break into certain circles and to be welcome. Even despite my passion and enthusiasm, there was a little bit like, 'what is she? Why? Why? What? She, she doesn't know anything.' But I felt like it was the people who in the beginning, it was just a couple of people who were like, 'Hey, this is somebody who really wants to tell the story of what we're doing. Give her a chance.' You know, having advocates, frontline advocates made a huge difference. So that's what I'm hoping for, more frontline advocates. Amy, I want to pick up on a personal story out of this. I did my graduate training out at UC Davis, at University of California, Davis. And I worked on dairy policy, which I do not have a dairy background. And it was great to have a mentor who actually helped me. Who introduced me to a number of folks and working through extension and the California Department of Food and Ag. Folks made space for me, and they understood that I was interested in this particular policy and trying to understand what it meant. And I actually got to learn so much. It was because people just said, okay, we'll give you a try. And I did the best I could. I'm grateful for that. Creating these spaces is not hard. It's not impossible. It can be done. I'm really appreciative of your efforts to keep furthering that story. I love that story. And indeed Norbert it's like what you said, creating the space and even, even in the beginning and just having a couple of folks just to make space. And then I think the space is going to grow from there. I fully agree. I've got one last question for you. And it's, sort of related to the vision, but just also thinking long term. What impact do you hope your work will ultimately have on society. I hope that my work will create a bit of a shift ultimately. I mean, that's a rather large goal, but it's not just myself. As this project has grown and extended and expanded. It's really a joint team effort. I mean, along this journey, I've met folks who are mission aligned. And they also see the value in this, and they believe in something similar. Whether it be that they contribute their story, whether it be that they help write the stories, whether it be that they come be a guest speaker, and they share their career, and then they end up connecting with the younger person, every person counts in this. In making a shift. And it might take generations to completely have a paradigm shift, but I think that just moving the needle a bit is ultimately the goal, certainly. And in terms of the bigger picture of things, I'm hoping that it will continue to spark a discussion and ongoing conversation about the importance and the value of bringing different voices and people who traditionally were not given a space at the table when it comes to the food systems and agriculture. But who brings so much talent, so much to the table already. How we can make greater space for them as well, and how we can incorporate their talent and create a better food system for everybody. We all eat and we're looking at 10 billion people in 2050. So, looking at the people who are making those contributions and telling their stories and especially for those who traditionally have not had their voices told, I think is really, really important. I just keep the fire going, I guess. BIO Amy Wu is an award-winning writer for the women's Ag and Agtech movement. She is the creator and chief content director of From Farms to Incubators, a multimedia platform that uses documentary, video, photography, and the written word to tell the stories of women leaders and innovators in Agtech. It has a mission of highlighting women in food, farming, and farmtech, especially women of color. From Farms to Incubators includes a documentary and a book that spotlights women leaders in Ag and Agtech. The documentary and stories have been screened and presented at SXSW and Techonomy. The initiative was awarded grants from the International Center for Journalists and International Women's Media Foundation's Howard G. Buffett Fund. Amy was named on Worth magazine's “Groundbreakers 2020 list of 50 Women Changing the World” list. Since 2018 she has served as the communications manager at the Hudson Valley Farm Hub in Hurley NY where she runs the website, digital newsletter, and social media. Prior to starting From Farms to Incubators, Amy spent over two decades as an investigative reporter at media outlets including the USA Today Network where she reported on agriculture and Agtech for The Salinas Californian. She's also worked at Time magazine, The Deal and contributed to The New York Times, The Huffington Post and The Wall Street Journal. She earned her bachelor's degree in history from New York University, and master's degree in journalism from Columbia University.  

In today's discussion, we will explore the application of debt relief to large investments in environmental sustainability, which can also support local development, including more resilient food systems. This is particularly timely, given the juxtaposition of enormous debt burdens with increasing environmental commitments by developing countries. Debt for relief swaps, such as financial forgiveness for cash strapped countries if they invest those funds to support global environmental goods, have been around since the 1980s. However, they haven't achieved their full economic or environmental potential, says Duke University Economic and Environmental Policy Professor Alex Pfaff. Smart reforms to improve debt relief programs can allow nations to help themselves and fulfill commitments to preserve the planet. Pfaff and colleagues described needed reforms in a recent analysis in a policy forum for the journal Science, also summarized in Foreign Policy magazine. His co-authors are sustainability expert Elizabeth Losos and conservation professor Stuart Pimm from Duke University. They note that global society has now learned lessons, not only from past debt for nature swaps, but also decades of evaluation of climate change of environmental and development policies. Interview Summary I have to say, having read particularly the Science piece, it is clear and it's very straightforward and accessible. But the other thing, it's hopeful. And I think in this moment of climate concerns, it's great to know that there's some ways to possibly move forward. I'd love to hear some more about this. If you don't mind, would you just describe a debt for nature swap? I gave a little bit, but I'd love to hear your consideration of it. What you said is right. And I'll just agree with you first that we're definitely in a time when doing the right things could help a lot. One of my motivations is a little bit of fear in there, which is, if we don't take the opportunity we look back later and regret it. Which is one of the reasons why we're out there trying to bother people to do what we think would be more effective. So, coming to the definition. A debt for nature swap, as you said is like it sounds. It's an agreement to forgive debt that countries owe on one condition - that they invest part of that money in some form of investment in nature. It's often been conservation. That was often thought of in terms of species or biodiversity at the time. But nowadays that would include thinking about storing carbon because of climate concerns, and then linking to your use of the term resilience in agriculture - for sure this also could be thinking about a climate adaptation. Can you give us some examples of countries that have done this? What does this look like on the ground? Yes, and the history, as you say, is that it started in the 1980s. And we really want to tip our cap to Tom Lovejoy who invented this at a time when, again, as you laid out, but it, at that time, was also true. There was huge amounts of debt and huge concerns about conservation, and it was a pretty simple idea. That it is a potential source of money to invest where the countries can help themselves, as you said, by getting rid of really quite crippling debt - tremendous amounts of interest are being paid on those debts - but also be helping the globe by investing in nature. So countries recently done, for instance, Ecuador has done a very big one recently. Belize has done one that's quite well spoken of. Those are different sized countries, different sized problems, which, as you can imagine from your own work, the institutions matter a lot. But there's been a long string and a long history of willingness to try. And I guess the last thing is that willingness started to go down when, as you summarized, it wasn't really working for the debtors who weren't really getting that much relief in their point of view for a lot of time bargaining. And it wasn't really working perhaps for nature. It wasn't having necessarily the impacts that one might have hoped. So, I think the question now is can we reform them? Because we do still have a big debt problem and we have some big nature problems. Thank you for sharing that. And it's really fascinating to know that this is not a new idea. It's been around since the 80s. And this hope that I mentioned earlier suggests that there can be ways to make this debt for nature swap work better. I would love to understand what you want readers to take away from the reforms that you all suggest in the article. Yes, and the punch line at the high level is it makes sense. It hasn't worked as done to first order. Of course, some things have worked. But simple reforms based on things that we have learned over the last few decades could make them work a lot better. So that's the high level. To get a little more detail the four things we say in those articles are the following. You gotta raise the scale. It has to be consequential relative to the scale of debt. Otherwise, it's not worth it for those countries. I think, and we think, and I'll give you the third condition in a moment, but I think for those countries also you have to emphasize local choice and sovereignty. Because there's a real sense of, geez, why are these conservation NGOs coming in telling us what to do in our country? I think there's clear gains to be had from letting local actors decide how to achieve global goals. Now, the next thing you say is why if they are choosing, well how are they going to be oriented towards achieving global goals? So that's our third condition. You actually have clear measures of outcomes, and you only give relief conditional on measured improvements. That's a huge difference. That really has been more of a process bargain in the past. You will allocate some money to protected areas. Okay, that's fine, but there's actually a very famous fund which allocated money to Brazil. People have shown that Brazil just pulled the money out and spent it on other things that they were spending and just replaced it with the external money. So, then funding [for nature conservation] didn't go up. Or you could say, draw many new protected area circles on a map. Okay, but drawing things on a map doesn't really necessarily get you anything at all. And even defending a place that wasn't going to disappear doesn't get you anything because it wasn't going to disappear. So, there are many stories that in evaluations like I do of environment and development policy, we've seen a lot of things that sound sensible but don't really do that much in the end. Great, fine, here's a nice combination. We're going to measure the outcomes. But then you can do whatever you want, right? You can do whatever you want. If for you, you want to expand energy access, but you want to invest in renewable energy, great. A different country wants to stop using agriculture in a particular area and move it to another area, right? Another country wants to intensify agriculture and raise productivity even while leaving space for forests, and the knowledge, the preferences and the right to choose that I think and we think are naturally left with the countries in question who 1) has more information, and 2) are probably the right source of priorities for what matters locally, and if they don't find it interesting. These deals aren't going to happen again. You might then say, why are we just doing what they want? Because you're only giving relief when you measure actual global goals. Once you do that, once you switch to measuring outcomes, you should let people choose what's sensible for them. Last thing, once you're measuring, as I've mentioned, there's a bunch of different goals you could imagine, right? If I get two NGOs, they don't even have the same goals for species. Forget climate change, forget climate adaptation. There are all these things that people would like to be helpful with. So take, for instance, a project that might save old forests. That probably helps with water quality downstream. It probably provides habitat for species, it definitely stores carbon, and when blocking rainfall that comes torrentially with climate change, it probably helps resilience and washing out of soil for agriculture. What's our last point? When you're counting outcomes, add together all the good ones, because then a project like forest gets points for all four of those. And you do this stuff that's efficient on multiple fronts instead of going left hand, right hand in an uncoordinated fashion. So those are our four suggestions. That's really helpful. And having spent time with international trade and issues on regulations, one of the things that I've learned is permitting or allowing sovereignty and allowing nations to make decisions, one is politically important, but on the sort of economic side of it, there is something critical about countries knowing their own costs and own, if you will, demands. And allowing them to make those determinations is critical for an efficient and actually politically feasible approach. Is that a fair assessment? I agree completely. You know agriculture much better than I do. But that description to me fits perfectly. You can come in and say you've got all sorts of good ideas. And even things that are good ideas won't go across because you came in and said them in an annoying way. And then, as you said, [local] folks have better information on what their costs are, better information on local benefits, they could probably design a locally incentive compatible version of what you thought you knew was good. It might have been kind of good but with the local information and interest, it becomes better and then thus more likely to happen. And that's better for the globe as well. I completely agree. This is great. You've mentioned agriculture a couple of times, and I'd like to hear a little bit more about how you think debt for nature swaps can affect the food and agricultural systems in a country. Especially given the agricultural practices have some significant impacts on the environment and or can be affected by the environment, and particularly climate change. Completely. Yes, I think it's because of that. Exactly. So, if I had to think of why this environmental resource paper is a fit in agriculture, it's because of what you said. That agriculture bumps up against the environment, so to speak, makes use of nutrients in the soil, sometimes involves the clearing of the land, and bumps up against the public. As climate changes, it really changes the ability to do agriculture in terms of temperature, rainfall, all those things. So, I think just for instance, if we go across all the World Bank labeled low-income countries of the world, the priority on climate adaptation under rainfall shifts versus climate expansion into forests, which could be replaced by climate intensification through more fertilizing and more pesticide use, so that agriculture takes less room but has higher yield. Those priorities are going to vary massively. I think agriculture is a fantastic sector, and it's not been a surprise that you said the things you did to think about the value of measuring the global goal and allowing the local choice. In some places over fertilization is a huge problem. Not only do you not get more productivity, but you waste money, and you ruin water supply. Some places, pesticide use is an issue and is drifting across and killing plants and other fields. Some places, it's not. And who's the expert on that? Probably the local agricultural extension agents, right? And the local ag agency. So, to me, agriculture is a fantastic, illustrative sector. Not the only one, but an important one. Where the kind of things you said about the value of local information and choice come through in making a big financial swap like this potentially work for everybody. Thanks for this example. It is great to hear this piece that did have a clear environmental focus, recognize that there is a place for the food system to be a part of that conversation. So, thank you for sharing that. You know, the debt for nature swap is a useful financial tool to support environmental causes, as I just said. And as an environmental economist, how do you use a market-based approach to address environmental challenges? And what, if any, drawbacks do you see to this approach? In a way this is a form of market-based approach. I agree with you. It's certainly about prices and incentives. And looking around the world, I'm not sure if this is why I'm an economist, but I certainly do think people respond to incentives and that's important. That said and you said drawback. First, I'll just go with alternative to start. Prices are not the only thing people respond to, right? Institutions matter a huge deal. Even the set of opportunities that are available tend to be constructed in ways that are not price or market driven. You know, prices are wonderful. If you have a hundred identical firms and you're trying to figure out who has the lowest marginal cost of reducing carbon emissions. Fab, let them figure it out. Market will do well. Maybe not as fabulous in thinking about the distribution of rights locally between indigenous groups, small farmers, and large multinational corporations, right? Maybe that's not really a market price thing. And we might even get around to values. There are times when people don't really want to operate in a price space. And they're going to have to deal with incentives. But think about preexisting values on conservation, and when those are achieving the same goals as a price would, you don't have to try to wander in with a new market. I think that's fair as well. I think of incentives as one super important tool. Far from the only one and somewhat in the spirit of our discussion of local knowledge. The right tool blend is an important part of the story as well. Alex, I have to say, you've ventured in some spaces I'm really happy to hear you talk about. This idea of incorporating values and recognizing that the local knowledge matters - this is not something that we, as economists in our modeling world alone can solve the problem. It is going to take talking to people and learning their needs and learning even the bits about their culture to say what works for them in this moment. So, thank you for sharing that. You're welcome for that. In your analysis, in the team's analysis, you all argue for key reforms for debt for nature swaps. What other approaches would you consider to address these large environmental concerns? I think ‘other' but also complimentary. I'm in the sense that these are very high-level transfers, right? Here's a bunch of money. Please do something right. And as I said earlier, if we tell them what to do, we don't have a great track record. So, now we're going to maybe measure, right? One of our suggestions is to measure the outcomes. How are they going to get to those outcomes, right? So, there's a whole bunch of tools on the environment and the development policy side, which are also part of the source of learning over the last three or four decades. There's been a real push in a lot of fields, not necessarily to only be like medicine and do randomized control trials, etc., but there is some of that. But also just collect some data on what happened. Please try to figure out if when you do a policy, it actually achieves something. Besides values, my meta story these days is we have to allow that learning is a good thing. There's a lot of people who seem to not want to even want to ask whether what they did worked because somehow, it's embarrassing. And I feel like we have to move as a world to the humility of learning by doing. And that's just what everybody does. And that means when I did something, half of them worked and half of them didn't. It's a really good idea to learn as fast as you can which ones didn't. So that's a super general speech, not quite to what you asked, but it applies to every tool I've ever known. So, regarding protected areas - do they always have impact? No. I have a lot of work on that. Can we start to, over 30 years point, to where they have impact? Yes. Could we have measured outcomes? We could have, but we didn't back then. So, could we still use traditional tools like use a protected area, but look at past studies of when they had impact and start to see that it makes sense when they did and when they didn't? Yes. Same thing for payments for ecosystem services and any number of other tools. BIO Alexander Pfaff is a Professor of Public Policy, Economics and the Environment at Duke University. He studies how economic development interacts with natural resources and the environment. His focus is designing environment and development policies to support choices by individuals and groups that protect nature, reduce damaging environmental exposures, and improve livelihoods.  

We've recorded a series of podcasts on the microbiome and its wide ranging impacts. But boy is this a field that moves rapidly. As soon as you think you've covered much of the territory, along comes some new and exciting findings, and this is the case today. We're going to describe research done by our guest, Dr. Ibrahim Javed. He has done innovative work on links between the gut microbiome and the brain, particularly focused on Alzheimer's disease. Dr. Javed is an Enterprise Fellow and National Health and Medicine Research Council Emerging Leadership Fellow in Clinical and Health Sciences at the University of South Australia. Interview Transcript So let's begin, if you wouldn't mind, with an explanation from you about what the gut brain axis is and tell us how it's important. Yep. Now we see a lot of, a lot of researchers around the globe building on investigations around the gut brain axis. But if we, if we investigate what this gut brain axis actually is, It's kind of like a bi-directional communication between two organs in our body, the gut and the brain. And when we particularly talk about gut, we have our stomach and our different portions of the intestine. What we're actually interested in is the microbiome and all those small little things living inside the gut. There are around 100 trillion microbes in the gut, which is three times more than the number of cells in our body. So, we are kind of like more microbes than, than human cells. And they communicate with different organs in our body and how they communicate with the brain that we can describe it as a, as a gut brain axis. And then this whole gut brain axis thing was somehow kind of invisible to us. We were just looking at it as a fecal material or waste coming out of our body. But now we see a lot of importance to these gut microbes. They help us in a lot of daily things that we do. They shape our behavior, our response to stress, our immune system, and then how we respond to different medicines, and how we do our daily tasks. So, they have a lot of roles in that. They help us digest food, that's their main obvious function. But now we are more. getting more and more information about them, that how they are integrated with a lot of different things in our body. So, kind of like they are partners in our life. That's a very, very nice explanation. Can you tell us about the importance of microbial diversity? Yep. So microbial diversity, we can, we can refer to, to as a composition of all those bacteria, viruses, and fungi to some extent that, that live in, in our body. Digestive track and, and in a lot of other animals as well. And this diversity is very crucial in maintaining the gut health and on overall well-being of, of humans. And, and this microbiome whole thing is like, it is obviously associated with a lot of health benefits and, and how we develop disease, but it's also right from the beginning of life they help us in developing our brains. They help us mature the brain system and the immune system. Obviously, they help us in digesting food. So, generally, we can actually divide them in two portions. One, we can call them a good gut bacterium. They help us with all these things. And then they are bad gut bacteria, which are kind of like kept within a within a bay. They are kept under control by this good gut bacteria with the help of the rest of our body. And in somehow in some conditions with the age or with the dietary habits or environmental factor or lifestyle, if they overcome and, and they take over the control in the gut, that's where the thing starts going haywire. When I was growing up, microbes were a bad thing. You didn't want to have microbes. And now, now we hear that there are good microbes and now you're talking about the balance. There are still bad ones, but good ones. And the balance of those two was a really important thing. Let's talk about how bad bacteria find their way to the brain. How do they get access? So, as we discussed, they are kept within the bay or kept under control by good bacteria and also by other different immune systems in the body. We have different checkpoints, like we have different barriers or three different compartments, the gut and the blood and the brain. And we have barriers that separate out these compartments and these barriers are very tightly controlled, very good health cells tightly integrated with each other and they police that whole things what need to go across and what does not need to go across what we need to stop it within that compartment. If we have adverse environmental factors, or poor dietary habits and these bad gut bacteria overcome, they produce a lot of different molecules to communicate with each other. And they produce a lot of different molecules to take over the good bacteria. And these molecules, they can get across those barriers, and specifically if they can get into the brain (that's what we are researching), they can do a lot of different bad things in the brain. They can do that by hijacking this gut brain axis. And this compartmental thing is one pathway that they can get from gut to the blood and then from the blood to the brain. But there is also a direct highway that connects gut to the brain and that's our enteric nervous system. These are specific nerves or neurons, for example, vagus nerve, they're quite famous. It's a direct link between the gut and brain. This nerve system helps us in a lot of different daily tasks without us even knowing about it, like digestion and heart rate and respiration, and emptying the stomach. And these are kind of like a pathway for bidirectional communication. So, a lot of molecules go up and down across these highways and the bad gut bacteria can actually hijack it and they can put their stuff into this highway and they can send it across the brain. It's a very, very nice explanation you have of a very complicated process, and I find it absolutely fascinating. So, you've spoken about how bad bacteria can be opportunistic pathogens and can trigger problems or enhance the progression of existing problems. How does all that work? So, we are investigating bad gut bacteria in connection with dementia and Alzheimer disease. We are specifically working on Pseudomonas aeruginosa and E. coli and they are quite common, like a lot of school kids. They know about these bacteria. They are quite commonly studied in high school microbiology. So, these bacteria produce some molecules which help to make biofilms around them. They kind of build a castle around them to protect their colonies and for their own survival and they keep surviving then until they get an opportunity to expand their castles and build more biofilms. These molecules are quite similar in terms of their structure and in terms of how they communicate. With some proteins which are not related to bacteria anyhow, they are produced in the brain to do some normal stuff in the brain, but they also aggregate in Alzheimer disease using the same mechanism as the nature that these bacteria use for these proteins to make their biofilms. Based on this common similarity, if they can somehow see each other, or if those gut bacteria can send those proteins or aggregate of those proteins across the brain through using those highways. They can induce the aggregation of those normal, naive, working, innocent proteins, which we have in our brain that have nothing to do with the bacteria. But if they can be accessed by those bacterial proteins, they go haywire and, and they trigger the onset of the disease, or if there is already going on, that they can actually accelerate that whole process. And this is a concept, actually, we have seen that concept before in prion disease, whereby eating infected food that have those prion particles, they can actually go from gut to the brain, and they can induce the normal prion protein in the brain to start making aggregates in a similar way. Are there interventions that can stop the pathogenic bacteria from in the gut that might in turn affect the brain? We should focus more on preventive measures. We can focus on maintaining a good diversity within the gut of having or supporting those good bacteria in that fight and keeping them healthy and alive as we age. Because as we age over the period of life, we keep losing those good bacteria. If we can have all those good things of exercise, balanced sleep, and more importantly, good food and a balanced variety of food. Then we have a lot of different varieties to support that variety of gut bacteria in the gut. So that's, I think, the most important preventive measure to keep that balance intact. But of course, in the future as a therapeutic intervention, we are moving towards developing microbiome therapies where we can modulate those compositions. If that composition is not in a very good situation, we can actually modulate that by using probiotics and prebiotic dietary factors or some microbial compositions like yogurt and a lot of other foods. We can modulate that to inoculate those bacteria which are missing in the gut and, and try to achieve that balance and, and that balance will accelerate the effectiveness of the medicine which we are taking for any other disease. The advice we've heard from some of our other guests is to eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. You know, consume things, you mentioned yogurt, kefir, kombucha, sauerkraut, and things like that. Sound like they're very good for enhancing the health of the microbiome. Is there anything else beyond that that might be relevant for the brain in particular? For brain health, there are some antioxidant foods. For example, we have Curcumin, and some senolytic compounds. We cannot call them drugs because they are kind of like a food supplements. They are available in any pharmacy and super stores by a lot of different names. Mostly these are polyphenolic compounds. They are usually available in green tea and in green tea extracts. They are quite well known for their healthy and antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. Research around the globe has shown that there are good effects directly on the brain by these polyphenolic compounds. So, these are green tea extracts, quercetin and, and some other galectin compounds. BIO Dr Ibrahim Javed is currently an Enterprise Fellow (Senior Lecturer) and NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow at the Clinical and Health Sciences, University of South Australia. He is also an adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN), The University of Queensland. He completed his doctoral studies at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences in 2020 and postdoctoral research at AIBN, The University of Queensland. He joined the University of South Australia in 2023 where he is now directing the laboratory of Gut-Brain Axis, Aging and Therapeutics. Research in Javed's lab focuses on the gut-brain axis and its implications for aging and Dementia. His research team is working to unfold the specific role of bad/pathogenic gut bacteria in the aging paradigms and Dementia associated with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. His team has discovered and published the molecular details of how bad bacteria in the gut can trigger a younger onset (aged under 65) and accelerate Dementia and how the brain can develop Dementia when fighting with microbial biofilms in the gut – the infectious etiology of Dementia. With this research trajectory, his vision is to develop a multifaceted therapeutic intervention for aging-associated diseases and Dementia. 

Food companies market their products in a great many ways. Connecting their brands and products to sports and major sporting events is one such way and is drawing a lot of attention now. The reason is that the Summer Olympics are underway, which trains attention on the relationship between the International Olympic Committee and its longest running sponsor. Coca Cola has been a sponsor of every Olympics since 1928. So, it's intuitively obvious why sponsorships would be important to the Olympics because They get lots of money in the door and it's reliable. It's been happening since 1928. But let's talk about why this relationship is so important to companies, Coca Cola in particular, and what the public health impact of that might be. Today's guest, Dr. Marie Bragg, has contributed some of the key studies on this topic. She is Assistant professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, where she also serves as director of diversity initiatives. She holds an affiliate faculty appointment in the marketing department at the NYU Stern School of business; directs the NYU food environment and policy research coalition; and she's also a Food Leaders Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Interview Summary It's really nice to talk to you about this because it's an important issue and not a lot of science has been done on this over the years and you've contributed a lot of it. Let's talk about the issue of sports marketing and can you tell us a little bit more about what that is broadly and what's, what are some of the forms it takes? You just mentioned one of the main areas of sports marketing with sports sponsorships. And so that's where a company like Coca Cola partners with an organization like the Olympics. And really is paying for the rights to have that famous Coca Cola logo or its products to appear at sporting events or in commercials that are involving the Olympics. In terms of how much of it there is we know, for example, the world cup is one of the most watched sporting events in the world, along with things like the Olympics. The world cup, for example, has 5 million viewers. And so that's a lot of exposure for these brands, but it's not Sports sponsorship partnerships like that, there's athlete endorsements, and those dates back as far as to 1934, as one example, when baseball player Lou Gehrig first appeared on the box of Wheaties cereals. There's a special place that athletes have always had in our society, and I think it comes through with these sorts of partnerships. But if we fast forward to today, our lab has even seen these kinds of partnerships appear in video games. And so, Nintendo had M&M's a race car game a few years back, and NFL Madden, which is a popular video game even has things like the Snickers player of the game appear within the video game, just like real NFL games. What this means is that these pictures of brands and products are peppered throughout kids experiences when they're playing video games. And then finally, if, and probably for anyone who's, been in a supermarket, when there's a major sporting event going on, like the Super Bowl or March Madness, it appears on products too in supermarkets. It's peppered throughout our everyday experience in ways we might not always see or appreciate if we're not paying attention. Marie, I like to do sports trivia with some friends of mine, and you've just given me a great question about Lou Gehrig and the Wheaties box in the 1930s. So that's a nice benefit of this podcast. So aside from that, why sports? I mean, companies could attach themselves to lots of different things, but why did they choose sports and why is that such a valuable connection for them? One factor ties back into what we were saying about visibility. If there are millions of people watching a sport event, it means that there's a lot of time for brands to be able to have high visibility for whatever they're endorsing or sponsoring in that moment. On another level, I think on a deeper level, our society has a special relationship with sports and professional athletes. Professional athletes are their own sort of unique category of celebrities that people love to follow and admire. That means that when a brand associates themselves with a sports organization like the Olympics or a professional athlete, they're buying into a special idea of what it means to be cool, to be fun, and to feel good about to feel good about the brand because when people are watching sports, they're excited. If we think of other categories of life where there are maybe a high number of viewers to a specific televised event, like a presidential debate, that we don't see a lot of sponsorships around that. And maybe it doesn't evoke the same feelings that a sporting event does. I'm expecting that this kind of relationship or attachments or symbolism of the sponsorship of sports might be especially powerful for children. I know if you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, a lot of them will say they want to be a baseball player or basketball player, football player, something like that. Does that make sense? I remember reading an article once that said, a dad was playing catch with his kid, and had spent all these hours with his kid working on pitching. And the dad made the point in the article, my kid doesn't want to grow up and be me as a baseball player. He wants to grow up and be ARod. And so, this idea that we can spend all the time that we want with our kids and they still hold these celebrity athletes on such a pedestal is something that I think ties into why this is valuable for companies. It's kids who are engaged in sports or attending sporting events who are the next generation of consumers for these products. If they can get the attention and the brand loyalty of these children early on in these positive, exciting environments, it helps them secure the next generation of purchasers. We'll talk about how important brand loyalty is in a minute, but let's talk about how valuable these connections are to the company. I guess one indication of that is how much a company like Coca Cola is willing to pay to be a sponsor of something like the Olympics. What kind of numbers do you know about in that context? The companies don't usually disclose the exact numbers, but in 2008, NPR published an article that estimated that Coca Cola spent about 70 million to sponsor the Beijing Olympics. If we think about it, that's stunning given sponsoring an event is just one part of their massive advertising machine. More recently the Wall Street Journal estimated that Coca-Cola and a really large dairy company in China partnered and spent a combined, estimated $2 billion with a B, $2 billion for a 12-year Olympic sponsorship deal that will run through 2032. It's really incredible to think about that as just one slice of what they're doing, but with such a massive amount of money attached to it. It really sort of begs the question what they are get out of it and what do they see as the value. I know there are branding opportunities, and again, we'll come back to that in a minute, but there's also sort of this goodwill part of it, isn't there. The Olympics are a great thing. No reason to question that. The fact that a company like Coca Cola would sponsor a good thing probably gives them a good company glow, doesn't it? My colleague Bridget Kelly in Australia did a study on this topic of sort of the glow that sponsorship produces. In her study, she showed that about 68 percent of kids in the sample could remember the sports sponsor and thought the sponsors were cool and generous. And they wanted to sort of pay back the favor by purchasing the products of that sponsor. There is something really special to to that relationship in the minds of kids. Wow. That's an impressive finding. So, speaking of findings, you've done some research on these sports sponsorships yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about what you've done and what you found? Some of our work in this area has documented how food and beverage companies associate themselves with sports on the sponsorship side. Athletes and supermarkets with product partnerships. And in one of our studies that tied into sports sponsorships, we looked at the 10 major sports organizations that had a lot of viewers. So, things like the NFL, the NBA, and then we wanted to categorize what kinds of groupings, the sponsors belonged to an automotive brand. Ford motors was one of the largest categories. But food wasn't very far behind. We saw about 19 percent of sponsors were associated with food and beverage brands, and it was for mostly unhealthy items. In the sports sponsorships, we're not. Seeing a lot of water being featured. It's a lot of sugary beverages you know, chips and things like that. We're not seeing much fresh fruit. And then when we did the same thing with athlete endorsements, one of the things that stood out about that study, which looked at a hundred athletes to get a sense of what are they endorsing and how healthy is this stuff and how much are people seeing it. The most striking finding for me from that study was that 93 percent of the beverages that were endorsed by professional athletes were sugary drinks. And we know that athletes need to drink a lot of water to sort of fuel themselves. And maybe sometimes they do need some sort of sports drinks for long workout days, but we saw a lot of sodas in the mix too and the other thing is that most kids don't need lots of sports drinks in their diet, but that's what is sort of being promoted through these through these endorsements, and so that really stood out to me about that study. We also in a couple of these studies found that young people are often seeing more ads for this than adults. It's not even though it may be sort of targeting general audiences. A lot of times young people are really seeing a lot of these, including the forms of ads that pop up on YouTube because we know kids are really into social media. It's really across the board of all of our research. We find mostly unhealthy products being promoted through these partnerships with sports. I remember back over the years that this issue comes up in the press occasionally and athletes get called out, specific athletes will sometimes get called out for promoting these kinds of foods. And, and I remember there being a couple of cases, although I don't remember the names of the athletes involved, where they've refused to do this kind of thing and they've made public statements about that. What's your recollection about that? We were really excited one time with our athlete endorsement study that came out a couple of years later. Brita water filters issued a press release and I remember getting a lot of messages about it telling me to go and look at what was posted online. Brita had cited our study that most beverages promoted by athletes are sugary beverages. And that's why we're so excited to partner with Steph Curry to promote Brita water filters. I framed that press release and shared it with all our team members who worked on those projects because it was an example of choosing a healthy beverage over some of these sugary drinks that are so commonly promoted. So maybe there will come a day when LeBron James or athletes like that start advertising cucumbers or radishes or something. And I wish cucumber producers had the same budgets as these sugary drink brands because it's really hard for some of the healthy stuff to compete with some of these major fast food and sugary drink companies. For sure. Let's talk about the issue of branding, why a company like Coca Cola wants its brand image, that famous Coke logo out there in front of as many eyes as possible. Give me just a minute if you will. And I'd like to describe something that I've heard. Sort of observed over the years. It's my anecdotal impression that if you ask random people, are you a Coke or a Pepsi person? You'll get an immediate and definitive response. People know whether they're a Coke or a Pepsi person. But if you do research, you find that people can't very often tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi. And, going back as, as long as 1949, there are scientists who have done these kinds of studies on whether consumers can distinguish those two beverages, doing blind taste tests. A typical finding is that people aren't any more accurate than chance. And there was a fascinating brain scan study done much more recently, of course. When Coke and Pepsi were given to people and they didn't know which they were receiving, the brain scan showed similar brain activity for the two beverages, again, suggesting that people can't distinguish the difference. But when people knew they were drinking either Coke or Pepsi, there was a brain activity advantage. For Coca Cola, which of course is all about more marketing, bigger company, that kind of thing, I'm assuming. So based on this, it looked like Coke hadn't won the taste war, but the branding war. So why in the heck would people feel so strongly that they can tell the difference between these beverages when they probably can't? Now my own two-bit theory on this is that no one wants to feel like they're a pawn of marketing. So, it'd be hard to admit that they favor one brand over another because then they would feel manipulated. They must believe in their own minds there's an objective difference. My theorizing aside, tell us about the power of a brand as opposed to a product and how the Olympics is such a golden opportunity for the Coca Cola brand. When we think about a brand, it's really a combination of feelings, ideas, and the emotions that we tie into what it means to be part of that brand. And as people, and especially as young people, for let's say teenagers, they're in an identity development stage where it's important for them to be adopting brands that are important to them, in part to distinguish themselves from their parents, to fit in with peers, and to start to have a sense of who they are as a person. And one of the ways to do that is to associate with what you like for music, but another piece is brand. So, are you a Coca Cola or a Pepsi person? A Nike or Adidas person. That comes with all sorts of adjectives about what it means to be on one side or the other. When we think about Coca Cola as a brand linking up with the Olympics, it's an opportunity to potentially borrow, not only get their brand out there, but potentially borrow from the brand of the Olympics as well. In our field, there's something called brand image transfer. This is the idea that when two companies or organizations partner together, the brand feelings we have about one might bleed over into the other and vice versa. It's one of the things that's always fascinated me about this topic, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it too, is this idea that the sports may have a sort of health piece to their brand identity. So, the Olympics have people at the peak of their, their sport. And my question has always been, what does that do to the way people feel about Coke in terms of its healthfulness? And is there some brand image transfer that's happening back and forth that's particularly beneficial for Coca Cola because of the health component? You reminded me of something. Tell me if you think this is an interesting parallel. When I was a boy in public high school growing up in Indiana, I don't think there were any soft drink machines in my school, maybe one in the teacher's lounge or something that I never saw, of course, but there wasn't much. And then when my son, many decades later, was a student in a school, public high school in Connecticut, he and I walked around the school and counted the number of soft drink machines, and he was of course embarrassed to be walking around the school with his dad. But aside from that, I think we found something like 13 or 14 or 15 machines. I don't remember the exact number, but it was striking. And I've heard people speculate that the companies don't care that much about what's being sold in those machines because. It's not a huge profit center for them and they must split the profits with the school somehow, but it's all about the branding. And even the students who aren't buying anything from the machines walk past them probably many times a day. So, what's getting imprinted doesn't have much to do potentially with. A specific type of product, but it's just that company's main image. Does that make sense? And why those school sponsorships have been so important? It does, and it's really, there's really an emphasis on wanting a sort of 360 level of involvement in young people's lives because if a brand can get themselves in front of kids at school, at a sporting event, in a movie, in a video game, on social media, they're immersing themselves in a way that allows the brand to keep itself top of mind. And that's what starts to get people to be aware of it, build brand loyalty, reach for the product because it's, they, with so many ads, the ads are all competing for attention but being immersed in schools is just one aspect of that idea of having involvement in as many areas of kids' lives as possible. I think in addition to all the machines, there were tables outside that had. Coca Cola umbrellas, and then the football stadium had a scoreboard that had Coca Cola that featured prominently on it. It was like complete corporate capture. It was amazing how many exposures the typical student in that high school in Brantford, Connecticut would have had. And that's just in school. I mean, think about all the other things added to that. That's amazing, isn't it? One of the things that interested me about this work was because when I played soccer and ran cross country and track as a kid, everything. There were so many instances where everything was sponsored. There were so many instances where unhealthy food products were linked with sport. So, we were the Snicker state champions of the state of Florida for soccer. I was a Wendy's high school nominee, not a winner. Let's be clear. And every brand. I have so many patches at home with fast food or sugary drink logos on them, right alongside. And then probably not coincidentally, I remember when I was a young kid, and we were painting a piece of wood in the backyard. And I drew the Coca Cola logo with a soccer ball and a basketball next to it. Looking back, first, what an odd kid I must have been to draw Coca Cola's logo, but to your point, I was really immersed in it and Coke was top of mind. The kind of sports sponsorships that you talked about being exposed to when you were young. That kind of thing's happening outside the U.S. a lot too, isn't it? It is. So, the sports sponsorship outside the U.S. – one of the big ones that comes to mind if McDonald's sponsorship of the World Cup. We see a lot of international presence with brands, whether it's through social media, and the way they sort of take local culture and tailor it to sports marketing. I remember being on a trip to Trinidad with my family. My mom's family is from Trinidad. And there was a Coca Cola bottling plant, I think it was. And alongside the perimeter was a painted fence and it had the Coca Cola logo and the Trinny flag and then a painting of a soccer ball and steel drums. So, there was this infusion of the culture alongside the Coca Cola logo. And that really, I think, accelerated my interest in understanding how these brands are capitalizing on the good feelings that people have towards their own culture. It can be challenging to do anything about this and challenging, especially you regulate advertising in the U.S. because of protections provided for commercial speech through the first amendment. What can be done about the ads promoted through these unhealthy sports sponsorships? One of the things I think we need more research on is the extent to which these kinds of ads might be contributing to a sort of misunderstanding about the health profiles of products. And so, I think that would help us better understand for kids, do they start to really think that some of these sugary drink products are healthier than water, for example. That's just a random example but I think that will help us understand what's at stake when it comes to the impression that it's making on young people. And there's a little bit of work in this area, but more is needed. And then I think too about how as a society, there's policy regulations to it too, but that's very hard to do because of commercial speech protections. I will say one of our colleagues Nick Freudenberg has talked about how we should have an open mind with whether there's a possibility to move the needle on commercial speech protections. And so that's something I'd love to keep exploring with people on what that could look like it, and if it was possible to any extent. And then the other thing that's always been on my mind is the idea that for some products being associated with and became a public relations liability. If we think about the way professional athletes used to endorse tobacco products and would be standing in their uniform with a cigarette in their mouth. Then that sort of became uncool. Not good for their brand. Not good for their look, and they moved away from it. Will the same thing happen to sugary drinks and junk food partnerships. And I think sometimes we see glimmers of that. There was the famous video, years ago after a soccer game, when one of the world's most famous soccer players pushed away a sugary beverage and said agua in response. And it affected the market shares at that moment. I think there are instances like that, that we can think about in terms of getting some momentum behind the way athletes themselves identify with these products. In that context, do you think parents could be an important advocacy voice? Let's just say that parents rose up and said to the local high school, we don't want Coca Cola stuff blasted all over our school. And they're pushing that. Coca Cola retains the right, because of the First Amendment to market its products, but local schools would have the right not to sign contracts and therefore deprive the company of those kind of marketing opportunities. Do you think parents might ever feel mobilized enough incensed enough to do something like that? I think parents are a key factor in this issue of sports marketing to kids because companies care a lot about what parents think. Even though kids have a ton of pester power, where they nag their parents to purchase things, parents are also in many cases, especially for young kids, the gatekeepers of all these purchases. Companies know not to make parents too angry about something because of the risk of not purchasing their products. I think if parents got vocal about it, whether it's on social media or by getting involved in petitions that might be going around that's one way to get companies to start paying attention to these things because I think it getting them out of schools, for example, seems to me to be a common sense start to it and but many parents might not be thinking of this in the way, that how deeply it might be affecting their diet, their kids diets. Bio Dr. Marie Bragg is an Assistant Professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine where she also serves as the Director of Diversity Initiatives. She holds an affiliate faculty appointment in the Marketing Department at the NYU Stern School of Business, and directs the NYU Food Environment and Policy Research Coalition, which includes 56 faculty who study food and sustainability across 14 departments in 8 schools at NYU. Dr. Bragg's research examines unhealthy food marketing practices that target youth and communities of color. Her current NIH-funded grants assess how advertising on social media affects the preferences and food choices of adolescents. Dr. Bragg is a Food Leaders Fellow at the Aspen Institute, and has testified on three public policies in New York City that aimed to create a healthier food environment. Since 2008, she has mentored more than 100 students, postdoctoral fellows, and junior faculty members. Dr. Bragg earned her PhD in clinical psychology from Yale University.

Today we're talking about who has access to full-service supermarkets in America's cities, suburbs, small towns and rural communities. According to The Reinvestment Fund's "2023 Limited Supermarket Access Analysis Report," 8.5% of people in the US live in areas with limited access to full-service supermarkets. This means that families must travel further to get fresh foods, and it creates a barrier to adequate nutrition. This is the 10th year The Reinvestment Fund has published the "Supermarket Access Report," which provides data and context about grocery store access across the country. Here to discuss the latest figures is policy and analyst Michael Norton.   Interview Summary   This is a really interesting and kind of nuanced topic, so I'm happy we can talk about it in some detail. Why don't we just start off with kind of a broad question. What do we know now about areas of limited supermarket access in the US? Kelly, I think the big thing to take away at the very beginning is that the share of people living in places that would be considered low access is roughly the same as it's been over the past 10 years. We have about 8.5% of the population living in low-access areas across the country. That's pretty consistent to what it's been for over a decade. But what's important is that how low-access areas are distributed across the country varies quite a bit. And where they exist, the density of the populations where they exist, really informs the kinds of interventions that are available for addressing these needs. These vary considerably in different parts of the country and at different geographic scales. And what I mean by that is suburban areas, rural areas, and then some of the most remote areas across the country. So we do have a sort of consistent number or share of people. The actual number has gone up a little bit because the population has continued to increase. They become distributed in different ways that follow different kinds of development patterns, on the one hand. But then also places where you end up getting patterns of residential and racial segregation in more developed parts of the country.   It's so interesting. So, given that the average has stayed essentially the same over the 10 years you've been doing the reports, have there been pressures pulling in either direction that might have changed over the years? So, for example, are there pressures that are making access to full-service supermarkets less likely? Are they pulling out of some places, for example? And might that offset by some positive developments in other areas? So, while the average stays the same, the contours look different? I think the way to think about that is that we see a lot of expansion of low-access areas in the big metro areas that are expanding the fastest. So, the biggest increases in populations living with limited access are in big state in the South and out west in places like Arizona, Nevada, Texas, where you have these large metros that are growing at a really rapid rate. And the reason for that is that oftentimes residential development will show up before commercial development. So, in those kinds of places, food retail is trailing behind residential development. And probably those places are going to be well served by the time we update this analysis again in four or five years because of what those development patterns look like, right? So, when you're building more houses in more urban and remote areas, there's still folks who are first in buying out in those places. They're still going to have to go a long way to get their groceries for a few years until supermarket identifies this as a place where there's going to be enough demand for us to put one of our Krogers or Targets or Walmarts or what have you. But we've also seen, and this is more common in urban places, is the expansion of these low-access areas that have smaller populations, right? And so these are places with between 1,000 and 5,000 residents where folks are still having to go disproportionately far to get access to a full-service grocery store. Sometimes this is because stores have pulled out in these places because of limited demand, historically. And that limited demand is mostly because folks don't have as much income to spend on their groceries, right? And we see these little areas popping up within metro areas and even in some close-in suburbs and places across the country. And so you have sort of these bigger LSA areas, which have at least 5,000 residents on the outer edges of a lot of metros and in some within the cities, but mostly within the cities. It's these smaller, limited access, low population areas. And this differentiation of the type of low-access area is something that we introduced in this update to our analysis that previously wasn't available. It provided a really nice nuance to understanding what limited access to supermarkets looks like going forward, both within urban places, suburban places, and in some of these really remote parts of the country. So, based on this research, what does it tell us about the future of insecurity in the United States? I think what it really tells us is that it depends on where you live and what kind of community you live in and what that's going to look like. I think the ability to provide a little bit more nuance around who has access and when they have limited access, what about their community is going to inform the response to ensuring that folks are able to get what they need. In places where they are these traditional sorts of limited supermarket access areas where you have at least 5,000 people, they can become pretty good candidates for operating a full-service store, right? But when you think about urban parts of the country where you've had central business districts or neighborhoods sort of hollowing out in different places and local supermarket is closed, but there aren't enough people there living to support a full-service store, different kinds of interventions are required, right? And then in these really remote parts of the country where you don't have very many residents, but you have at least a thousand, but people are living a long way away from each other, how do you serve those places? Because some of them, these are very small towns, right? And there are people who have been living there and if the grocery store closed, then they have to drive 35-40 miles to the next town, right? That becomes a real challenge for their general way of life. I think really thinking about the future of food access and food insecurity in this country really has to have a geographic nuance to it in thinking about the appropriate responses that are going to meet the needs of people living in different parts of the country. So, how does your study inform investments do address food insecurity? Reinvestment Fund has a very active retail portfolio, both on our lending side, and Reinvestment Fund is also the national fund manager for USDA's Healthy Food Finance Initiative. These two avenues through which we make loans to increase access to fresh food and through USDA's HFFI program are opportunities to innovate. The USDA's Healthy Food Finance Initiative is both a grant-making and a lending program that is designed to identify innovative responses to access to fresh food in these different types of areas. So, we're able to use the results of these analyses to identify places where you can align the kinds of programs that people are proposing. Whether that's a small format store in a city where their primary supermarket has closed, whether it's a mobile market that is serving folks who live very far distances from their nearest food retailer, or whether it's setting up a aggregation site that is not just food retail but sometimes is attached to a healthcare center or a hospital where people are also making regular trips. These become opportunities for us to support innovative approaches and also try out different things. Once you start to get some information from successful programs that are coming out of the grant program, as they become investible and scalable at a store level when you become ready to take on debt to expand your operation or open a store in a place that typical operators aren't willing to go. So, let me ask you a question about the Healthy Food Financing Initiative. With politics being so partisan these days, is this a partisan issue as well, or is there bipartisan support for things like this? This is the good news part of access to fresh food. It really is a bipartisan issue. Healthy Food Finance Initiative was created under the Obama Administration, was expanded under the Trump Administration and has been expanded even more under the Biden Administration. Each subsequent farm bill has expanded the capital available for the Healthy Food Finance Initiative, with the goal to try and figure out how do we meet the food access needs of everybody in this country in a way that provides a signal to private market operators that they can be successful in these places. That really is a bit of good news, and I'm really happy to hear that. But I also wanted to ask you, are there options aside from full-service supermarkets to help address some of these matters you're discussing? Absolutely, absolutely. And these are things like smaller format stores, almost like a corner store but that operates like a healthy food market. And these are really appropriate in places where there are limited access, low population, and sort of filling in pockets inside urban communities and close-in suburbs. There are mobile market options that are popping up in different places. Food aggregation hubs that will be cited within the center of a low-access area where people can come to a central location and having purchased food online that shows up and then people can come and pick it up. There's expanding delivery options to more remote parts of the country. So, there is a wide diversity of models that are proliferating beyond just bricks and mortar traditional grocery stores. It's really the job of HFFI to seed these initiatives, identify the ones that are doing really well, and then work with the folks who created them and then others to scale them down the road into places that are not served by food retailers. I think you've helped answer the next question I was going to ask, which is how does this research help policy makers and practitioners think about addressing food insecurity in their community? There's a fair amount of tailoring that could go on where you're trying to meet the needs of a specific community. That's right. And I think one of the things that's important to keep in mind is the role that financial institutions like Reinvestment Fund play in making this possible. So, Reinvestment Fund is a community development financial institution, which is best understood as like a nonprofit bank. And these exist across the country and are more or less active in different markets, but they're really focused on working in a very deliberate, hands-on way with our borrowers to create access to fresh food in places where it's not going to be easy, right? Because if it was easy, all the big food retailers would be there, right? So, we have to be patient. You have to find someone who's willing to take a chance operating the store, to help them develop their business plan, help them identify all of the ins and outs that go with standing up a food retail business, and then work with them throughout the process of them sort of getting access to capital and making their business work. And that work is a lot more work than what is required to finance a new grocery store that is run by Target or run by Walmart, Krogers or something like that. This is a critical role that the CDFI industry is playing and increasingly recognized at the federal level as a resource for deploying public subsidies through the private market into the hands of operators who are going to make it work in places where traditional food retailers and capital just won't go. Let me ask a big-picture question. and this is a little complicated in my own mind. So, we're sort of defaulting in a way to the idea that full-service supermarkets providing access to such things for more people is a good outcome. And from a social justice point of view, it's unquestionably true that people who live in different sets of financial circumstances should still have access to things that people in better financial circumstances have. But in terms of nutritional outcome, having access to a full-service supermarket brings a lot more than just the healthy foods. And in today's modern full-service supermarket, the highly processed, less healthy options must outnumber the healthy ones 10 to 1, 20 to 1, 50 to 1? I have no idea what the number is, but it's enormous. And so, providing government support and financial incentives for a big store to come in is providing access to a lot more than healthy foods may have adverse nutritional outcomes rather than positive ones, unless you're just sort of agnostic about the type of food that people are getting access to, that any food is better than nothing if you have food insecurity. But I wonder how one might address that. And whether one could think about providing resources that were structured differently to encourage smaller stores, for example, that focus on more healthy options and fewer of the less healthy ones. And then you might get the social justice part addressed at the same time you're having a better nutritional outcome. Kelly, that's such a good question, and one that we wrangle with all the time. Because there is actually fairly limited evidence to suggest that access to fresh food is going to lead people to make healthier choices about what they consume. One of the sort of operating assumptions is that in the absence of access, you're not going to make healthy choices. And once there is at least access, the possibility for making healthier choices increases from, zero to something, whatever it is that is going to be motivating individuals how they go about making choices for the foods that they consume. And it is a very tricky relationship that folks in the food industry grapple with all the time as well in the medical profession. I think from a grant-making standpoint and a financing standpoint, Reinvestment Fund's position is always that whoever is receiving support through our programs or from our lending capital is offering a selection that meets what you would consider healthy food retail options, right? That there is an assortment of fresh fruits and vegetables, fresh produce, fresh meats and dairy, in that also with the understanding that almost all food retailers are also going to offer less healthy options. That is a constant tension within the field. And figuring out how to encourage behavioral change by consumers is sort of beyond the ability of HFFI to move. What we can do is ensure that the organizations and the individuals who we support are offering a variety of healthy options for the patrons that are coming into their locations.   BIO   Michael Norton, Ph.D., serves as Chief Policy Analyst at Reinvestment Fund, and supports all research related to Reinvestment Fund's organizational goals and mission. In this role Dr. Norton works closely with a range partners, including small non-profit organizations, local and national philanthropies, private companies, colleges and universities, school districts, federal, state, and city governments and agencies. His work leverages nearly a decade of experience as researcher and project director to develop data driven solutions – solutions that meet the unique needs of Reinvestment Fund and our key stakeholders in the public and private sectors. Dr. Norton completed his doctoral studies in the Sociology Department at Temple University, where his research examined the relationship between secondary mortgage market activity and neighborhood change in the Philadelphia region at the turn of the 21st century. Prior to joining Reinvestment Fund in 2015, Dr. Norton served as a Senior Research Associate at Research for Action in Philadelphia. In this role, he led and co-led a range of mixed-methods evaluations of educational reform initiatives and policies at the local and state levels.

Nonprofit organizations can play a very important role in building healthy communities by providing services that contribute to community stability, social mobility, public policy, and decision-making. Today we're speaking with Kathy Higgins, CEO of the Alliance for Healthier Generation. The Alliance is a nonprofit organization, a well-known one at that, that promotes healthy environments so that young people can achieve lifelong good health. Interview Summary   Kathy, it's really wonderful to reconnect that you and I interacted some when you were in North Carolina and head of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation, and then you got called upon to be the CEO of the Alliance, a really interesting position. It's really wonderful to be able to talk to you again. Let's start maybe with a little bit of the history of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. Can you tell us a bit about how it got started and over the years, how it's evolved? We've existed for almost 19 years now. We celebrate our 20-year anniversary next year. And we were started by two vital public health forces: the Clinton Foundation and President Clinton and also the American Heart Association. They came together 20 years ago and began discussing childhood obesity and what could a leading public health organization do to really work in systems change across the country at a local level. It is those two organizations that we look to as our founders and who helped us advance our work. It's a time flies story because it seems like just yesterday that the Alliance was created. There was a lot of excitement at the time for it, and over the work. It's done some really interesting things. So, in today's iteration of the Alliance, what are some of the main areas of focus? As I mentioned, we are a systems change organization. What we do is take a continuous improvement approach to advancing children's health. So, we are working typically in schools or after school time and certainly in communities to work on policy and practice change that are about promoting physical activity and healthy eating. And then addressing critical child health and adolescent health issues, which as we know, were exacerbated with the pandemic. Things like food access and social connectedness are just so important. Quality sleep, which our children are not getting enough of, or other things like vaping and tobacco sensation and on time vaccinations. Another thing that we know is that the pandemic had a dramatic impact on families and children on time vaccinations. So, this is the work that we do and working with the policy and practice change so that there there can be opportunity for healthy environments for the children. I think most everybody would probably agree that the targets that you're working on, healthy diet, physical activity, smoking, vaping habits and things like that are really important. But people might be a little less familiar with what you mean by addressing systems. Could you give some examples of what you mean by that? Right. What we know is that in United States, in fact, every public school must have a wellness policy and areas that need to be addressed. But what we'll do is work with the school in making sure that those policies are best suited for the families, the community, and the school, and what they want to do to support the health of children from a collaborative and supportive role. What we know is that we can create great change when that occurs. We work with more than 56,000 schools across the United States, and one of the things that we know is that our approach is really reflected in the America's Healthiest Schools recognition program each year. It's interesting to hear you talk about schools as an example of system change. And boy, working with 56,000 schools is pretty darn impressive. And it allows for out-sized influence of an organization like yours because if you can affect things like these school wellness policies and that gets multiplied across a ton of schools, it can really affect a lot of children. Exactly. We will work school to school, but we also work in districts and that allows us then to make even a bigger impact in the number of schools that we're reaching with these changes. It also brings the community together because then they're all operating under the same principles or the same focus areas of the work that they're committed to doing. What we do see is that we're able to assist them in implementing what are typically best practices in all sorts of topic areas. Whether it's strengthening the social emotional health and learning environment for the children, but also focusing on staff wellness. The whole notion, Kelly, of putting your oxygen mask on first before assisting others is something that has been incredibly important to us. We've certainly been very supported to do that work from a variety of funders. The other area that we've been able to make great strides in is this increasing of family and community engagement, which has been really significant for us. We've been honored to have Kohl's as a major supporter of our work. Their investment and then reinvestment and then once again, another reinvestment, really helped us engage with strategies that focused on increasing family wellbeing. So really then our three-legged stool becomes the school environment, the family environment, and the community environment, which we find is just really effective. So can we talk a little bit more about the community engagement and why is it important and how do you go about making it happen and what sort of impacts do you see it having? I think I may have mentioned already that we do use a continuous improvement model that we find is just really effective for when we're working in the school or school district level. It allows us to serve in a role of being a convener and bringing people together. What we know now is certainly after COVID that schools are no longer for walls of learning. They have a central role to the health of the community because of the services that they're providing or the services that families need them to provide. So, when we're working with a school, we're able to convene the right people that are in their community. They may be in the same zip code, they may be down the street, they may be across town. But they haven't come together around the same table to start to address issues that they may have prioritized that are impacting a host of things. It could be impacting attendance rates, it could be impacting academic achievement. And we're really able to work with them to dismantle the barriers to what would lead to success. To give a couple examples in North Carolina, in fact, we work in both Bertie and Roberson County and on vaccination adherence, and also making sure that the children that may have deferred their well-child visits or their age-appropriate vaccinations during COVID that we've worked with convening just as mentioned, the right players, the right people in the community to come together. And in both those counties we've been able to have nearly 250 students that are healthy back to school and fully vaccinated as they should be and that they deserve to be and as their families wanted them to be, but the time the resources just wasn't there or convenient enough to do. And so, this really has allowed the community to have a great win. It's a great example of just the importance of sitting down together, looking at the data and thinking about how we can all make a difference. Kathy, what you've reminded me of as you've been talking about this is that there's sort of a sweet spot that you've attained. If all you paid attention to were best practices, you'd say, well, okay, everything that works in these other places is going to work in your place, which of course might only be partially true. But if you only work locally, then you'd miss the opportunity to be learning what's happening elsewhere that might help you. And you're kind of at the intersection of these things, aren't you? Thank you for saying that. That's exactly where we sit - at that intersection. Sometimes we feel in a continuous improvement model that there's a no wrong door, so to speak. And so, when we're engaging with a school, school community, a community, or even a school district, that we're able to sit with them in proximity and talk through what are the issues that they're facing, where their children are most at risk, and what is it that they are working to prioritize. Because we also know that if we can move them through a process and achieve success and really answer the question, is anyone better off? So to really be outcomes focused. Then, what we know is that there are other opportunities for improvement that we can continue that work. Part of the success here is just pausing and celebrating what good work this community is doing together. This school is doing together. Tell us if you will, a little bit about how the work of the Alliance is funded, because I know you draw support from a number of quarters. You mentioned Kohl's, but overall how is the work funded? Thanks for asking. You know, one of the things I did mention to start with is the Clinton Foundation and President Clinton, specifically with his leadership supporting the health of children and families and the Heart Association. But the significant financial supporter and strategic supporter at the time was the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They really put significant resources behind the creation of Healthier Generation. But the other thing that they did is put their brightest minds and public health leadership behind the creation of why we would exist and what would be the pillars of our organization that would serve well to make a difference. So having a technology backbone, which allows us to have an action center. Meaning that any school, any teacher, any administrator, any parent can access our training and our tools for free. Through our website, we have marketing and communication that follow best practices for how to create change and how to communicate change to the audiences that we're reaching out to our subject matter expertise and then measurement and evaluation. And it's this ability that really attracted funders like Kaiser Permanente. While schools have been central to our work, this digital platform really allowed our action center to help and support this access of no cost assessment tools, trainings, resources. Kaiser Permanente has been a key supporter of our work since 2013. I mentioned Kohl's as well, as such a significant supporter allowing us to reach 10 million families since the inception of our work together with them. Del Monte Foods is another significant supportive of ours. They allow us to implement the America's Healthiest School Awards program. I would be lost if I didn't mention Mackenzie Scott. She wanted to invest in whole child health equity and we were identified as an organization that was worthy of her funding and definitely was the largest single gift from a philanthropist that we've ever received. So, we were so grateful for that, that call called. That's wonderful affirmation. No question. It's nice to hear you have such a broad base of funding because that's a sign that people are thinking you're doing things right. I'm not sure I'm in a the best position to be completely objective about this because over the years I've received funding from through Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for a number of projects. But it's amazing how often their imprint comes up when you talk about organizations that are doing creative work and you go back to the beginnings and Robert Wood Johnson was often there doing these things when nobody else was. And it's really wonderful to see the long-term consequence of that investment that they made. Well, let's talk about some new work you're doing in the schools. I know that a relatively new effort of the Alliance involves the expansion of resources in terms of a playbook in the schools. Can you explain what that's all about? Oh yes. This was really born out of the pandemic environment and our need and the schools need to know better guidance on the work that we can do to create healthier environments when so many demands are being put on us. We all know what happened to the food service staff of any school. They became the food service staff of the community during the COVID years. Kohl's wanted us to partner with selected communities across the country to implement what would be really a new family engagement strategy to support children's health and developing. What we call and refer to as our Healthy at Home playbook for schools to forge stronger relationships with families. We know that when schools and the families are working together and schools are understanding what families need, and families are able to be in a position to be heard and communicate what their needs are, that together they can really make a difference. We've been pretty excited the collection of resources. They're both in English and in Spanish on topics such as nutrition, staying active, mental wellbeing, social emotional health and stress and we've been pretty excited to have that implemented. I could see how you'd be excited about that. So, let me ask a final question. The word policy has come up several times. Is it part of the purview of the alliance to argue for policy changes? You mentioned schools. So, for example, would the Alliance be in a position to argue for tighter nutrition standards in schools or even something beyond the schools, like something dealing with food marketing directed at kids or front of package labeling or really anything like that? We stay out of the advocacy and lobbying lane, but we do focus on the small P policy change in schools so that we're helping schools manage their policies. But the area where we've had success is in creating a difference. We had a great partnership many years ago with McDonald's and worked with them on changes that they were committed to making in their healthy meals. And what we know is when McDonald's makes a big shift, so goes the market. Our body of work was the removing of sugary sodas from the menu board so that you would have to opt for that versus low fat milk or water and adding the sliced apples. I think that might be one of our hallmarks of the work that we've done over the years: sliced apples, carrot sticks, the GO-GURT that was being offered. And then removing either the higher sodium or higher fat items from the leaderboards so that they have to ask for them in order to have them as part of the Happy Meal. That was some significant work that we were able to do. And the other work we did in our early years was getting the three soda manufacturers, whether Pepsi and Coke and Dr. Pepper to agree to come together and remove sugar sodas from our public schools and replace it with a better price point of water. And it's something I know President Clinton is very proud of because I think a 90% of schools were on board with that work after about a three-year period. I think it really made a difference. Bio Kathy Higgins, chief executive officer (CEO) of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, is a national expert on health care and philanthropy, having previously served as the president and CEO of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation. Higgins leads Healthier Generation's team of nearly 100 professional staff across the nation working to make the healthy choice the easy choice for all children. Prior to taking on the role of Healthier Generation CEO in January 2019, Higgins spent more than 30 years at Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, where her roles span leading public health engagement, corporate communications, community relations, and corporate affairs. In 2000, Higgins led the launch of the Blue Cross NC Foundation. As president and CEO of the Blue Cross NC Foundation, Higgins led unprecedented growth, including the strategic investment of more than $150 million into North Carolina communities through more than 1,000 grants to improve the health of vulnerable populations, support physical activity and nutrition programs, and help nonprofit groups improve their organizational capacity. Higgins was also a significant advocate in Blue Cross NC's early adoption of Healthier Generation's decade-long innovative insurance benefit program, designed to encourage clinicians to extend weight management and obesity prevention services to kids and families. Higgins holds a bachelor's degree in education from West Virginia Wesleyan College and completed her master's work in community health education from Virginia Tech. She currently resides in Raleigh, North Carolina and is the mother to twin boys.

Is it possible to decarbonize agriculture and make the food system more resilient to climate change? Today, I'm speaking with agricultural policy expert Peter Lehner about his climate neutral agriculture ideas and the science, law and policy needed to achieve these ambitious goals. Lehner is an environmental lawyer at Earthjustice and directs the organization's Sustainable Food and Farming Program. Transcript How does agriculture impact the climate? And I guess as important as that question is why don't more people know about this? It's unfortunate that more people don't know about it because Congress and other policy makers only really respond to public pressure. And there isn't enough public pressure now to address agriculture's contribution to climate change. Where does it come from? Most people think about climate change as a result of burning fossil fuels, coal and oil, and the release of carbon dioxide. And there's some of that in agriculture. Think about tractors and ventilation fans and electricity used for pumps for irrigation. But most of agriculture's contribution to climate change comes from other processes that are not in the fossil fuel or the power sector. Where are those? The first is nitrous oxide. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas about 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. And it comes because most farmers around the world and in the U.S. put about twice as much nitrogen fertilizer on their crops, on the land, as the plants can absorb. That extra nitrogen goes somewhere. Some of it goes off into the water. I'm sure your listeners have heard about harmful algae outbreaks or eutrophication of areas like the Chesapeake Bay and other bays where you just get too many nutrients and too much algae and very sick ecosystem. A lot of that nitrogen, though, also goes into the atmosphere as nitrous oxide. About 80% of nitrous oxide emissions in the U.S. come from agriculture. Excess fertilization of our hundreds of millions of acres of crop land. Quick question. Why would, because the farmers have to pay money for this, why do they apply twice as much as the plants can absorb? Great question. It's because of several different factors. Partly it is essentially technical or mechanical. A farmer may want to have the fertilizer on the land right at the spring when the crops are growing but the land may be a little muddy then. So they may have put it on in the fall, which is unfortunate because in the United States, in our temperate area, no plants are taking up fertilizers in the fall. Also, a plant is like you or me. They want to eat continually but a farmer may not want to apply fertilizer continuous. Every time you apply it, it takes tractor time and effort and it is more difficult. So they'll put a ton of fertilizer on at one point and then hope it lasts for a while, knowing that some of it will run off, but hopeful that some will remain to satisfy the plant. There's a lot of effort now to try to improve fertilizer application. To make sure it's applied in ways just the right amount at the right time. And perhaps with these what's called extended release fertilizers where you put it on and it will continue to release the nutrients to the plant over the next couple of weeks and not run off. But we have a long way to go. Okay, thanks. I appreciate that discussion and I'm sorry I diverted you from the track you were on talking about the overall impact of agriculture on the climate. I think what's so exciting about this area is that everyone cares about our food. We eat it three times a day or more and yet we know very little about where it comes from and its impacts on the world around us. It's wonderful to be talking about this. The second major source of climate change impact in agriculture is methane. Methane is another greenhouse gas much more powerful than carbon dioxide. About 30 times more powerful over a hundred years and about 85 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over 20 years. Which is I think the policy relevant time period that we're looking at because we're all trying to achieve climate stability by 2050. And where does methane come from? A little bit comes from rice, but the vast majority of it comes from cows and from manure. Cows are different than you and me. They can eat grass, and their stomachs are different, and release methane. Every time they breathe out, they are essentially breathing out this potent greenhouse gas methane. This is called enteric methane and it's the largest single source of methane in the United States. Bigger than the gas industry or the oil industry. The other major source of methane is manure. Our animals are raised in what are called concentrated animal feeding operations. They're not grazing bucolically on the pasture, they are crammed into buildings where there may be thousands, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of these animals. Those hundreds of thousands of animals produce a vast amount of manure, whether it be say pigs in North Carolina or dairies in many States, or cattle or chicken. All our meat nowadays is grown in these concentrated areas where you get concentrated manure and that is often stored in these lagoons. These big pits of poop basically. And that, as it decomposes in this liquid environment, what's called anaerobically , releases a tremendous amount of methane. That's the second largest source of methane in the country after the cows belching. So you have nitrous oxide and you have methane. And then the third way agriculture contributes to climate change, which is different say than the fossil fuel sector, is by changing the land itself. Agriculture uses a tremendous amount of land. Think about it. When you go around, what do you see? You see agriculture uses about 62% of the contiguous United States; 800 million acres of land for grazing; or almost 400 million acres of land for cropland. Healthy land before it's been used for agriculture has a tremendous amount of carbon in the soil and in the plants. Just think about a forest with all the rich soil and the rich vegetation. When that is cleared to be a cornfield, all that carbon is lost and essentially it goes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. And that soil after that can't absorb any more carbon. Healthy soil is absorbing carbon all the time and most agricultural soils are not. So that release of carbon when you convert land to agriculture and that continuing inability to sequester carbon is another major way that agriculture contributes to climate change. So these three ways: nitrous oxide, methane and carbon from soil are all important contributors to climate change that don't really fit most people's model of what drives climate change - burning coal or oil and releasing carbon dioxide. But the bottom line is if we don't address agriculture's contribution to climate change, no matter how successful we are in reducing our fossil fuel use, we are very likely to face catastrophic climate change. Agriculture's contribution to climate change is so significant. Far more than the indicated by many figures. We can't achieve climate stability without addressing agriculture as well. Agriculture drives about a quarter or a third total green climate change. Given how important this is, why don't people know more about it? And does industry play a role in that? Industry plays a big role, as does politics. Industry - and by industry we mean the food industry. And you've covered this before. It's very concentrated industry where usually two or three or four firms control the market, whether it be for seeds or retail or beef or chicken or pesticides. It's a very, very concentrated industry with tremendous political power. They have done their best to ensure, first of all, the agriculture industry doesn't even have to report their greenhouse gas emissions. Every other industry has to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The big polluters have to report. On the other hand, agriculture was able to obtain a rider in Congress. That's an extra provision on a budget bill starting about a decade ago that prohibits EPA from requiring agricultural facilities to report greenhouse gas emissions. So unlike most areas, agriculture doesn't even have to report their emissions and industry certainly wants to keep it that way. Also, as I was explaining, agriculture contributes to climate change in a way that is different than what we normally think about. I think that added complexity has just meant it is harder for people to understand. And third, there's a tremendous amount of mythology in agriculture. People think or would like to think that their food comes from this nice family farm with a few animals and a few diversified crops on the hillside. And that in some sense was the reality 50 or 100 years ago, but now it's not the reality. While there's still lots of small farms like that by number, those produce very little of our food. Most of our food is produced in these gigantic animal factories that I mentioned earlier or in gigantic monoculture chemical-dependent agricultural operations. So, we have this disconnect between what is the mythology of agriculture and where our food comes from and the reality of it. People really don't want their myths disrupted. Given the importance of these issues, what are some of the main ways that the impact of agriculture on climate can be changed? That's another exciting part of this. That there's a lot of things that can be done to reduce the impact of agriculture's contribution to climate change. And we know this because there are a lot of producers who have piloted these programs, who've implemented these programs and these practices on their own operations to reduce the climate impact. And they've been successful. So these can be, for example, rotating crops instead of having the same crop year after year after year, which really depletes the soil. You can have different crops in different years and each crop puts a little different in the soil and takes a little different from the soil. As a result, very often you end up needing less artificial pesticide and fertilizer, both of which contribute to climate change. You can manage your animals different. You can manage your manure differently. For example, if manure is treated and handled dry, as opposed to in these wet manure lagoons, it produces very, very little methane. Instead of producing tremendous amounts of methane, it produces almost none. So, if we manage manure differently, we can significantly reduce methane emissions. And of course, there's what we think of as the demand side. In the same way that we think about LED light bulbs or more efficient cars as part of our energy transformation, we can use our land and food more efficiently. We waste a tremendous amount of food. Maybe 30-40% of the food we produce is wasted. That's crazy. It's all the effort and the greenhouse gases from producing the food are wasted if the food is wasted. Even worse, the food is dumped into a landfill for the most part where it releases more methane. And it's inefficient. We have a system that very heavily subsidizes meat production, but meat uses, particularly beef, a tremendous amount of land because cows need a lot of land the way their biology requires land and time. So we have almost 800 million or 700 million acres of land devoted to cattle grazing that could be storing carbon. Then it takes about 15 pounds of grain to get a pound of beef where people can eat the grain directly much more efficiently. So there's a lot of practices that we can do at every stage of the process to reduce the climate impact of agriculture. The challenge is that it's only on a couple percent of American cropland or very little portion of our food is produced that way. So Peter, let me ask you a question about that very point you're on. We've recorded a series of podcasts on regenerative agriculture. Some of the most interesting podcasts we've done from my point of view. And they've included scientists who've studied it, policy people who look into it, but also farmers who have done this. I'm thinking particularly, well, three names pop into mind, but there are more. So Nancy Ranney, who ran a ranch in New Mexico for cattle, Gabe Brown, a regenerative farmer in North Dakota, and Will Harris from Georgia were all people we spoke to. I got the sense in each of those cases that these people were converting to this new model of farming because of what they cared about. It was their own passions that led them to do this and belief that a different system of agriculture was going to be important for the future. They were doing it for that reason, rather than any incentives from the government or policies that were encouraging, things like that. So there will be a small number of such people who would do it because they're passionate about it. I'm assuming that number will grow, but never fast enough to really do anything to scale like we really need it. So I'm ultimately you're going to need policies in place to ensure these things happen in more and more farms. Are there particular policies that are oriented this way that you think might be especially helpful? Kelly, you are spot on. I know Nancy and Gabe and Will, and they're terrific. They are pioneers and they are showing that we know this works. We're not looking at ideas that might work. We are looking at practices that we know work because of what they and others like them have done. As you said, they're doing it because they believe it's the right thing. We'll get some farmers that way, but we need policy to move from 2% of American crop land to 92% of American crop land. So, how do we do that? One is the current farm bill is very important. The farm bill is the most important environmental law nobody's ever heard of. It dates back to the depression. It's renewed every five years. Congress is debating it right now. It was supposed to be renewed last year, but they couldn't get their act together. So they may or may not be able to reauthorize it this year. But the farm bill in one section provides a tremendous amount of money for nutrition assistance. And you've probably talked about that, what we call the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. In another part of it, it provides tremendous amounts of subsidies to farmers, about $20 billion a year of subsidies to farmers. Right now, those subsidies really are not designed to encourage farmers to adopt the practices that you talked to Nancy or Gabe or Will about. These practices that I was talking about earlier and that sometimes are called regenerative, sometimes agroecological, organic farming is often a part of that. These $20 billion of subsidies though, could be redirected, reshaped somewhat and not necessarily radically, but reshaped and focused on encouraging farmers to adopt these practices that can help mitigate climate change. And importantly, the same practices, and as I'm sure the folks you've talked to said, also help them be more resilient to climate change. They can better help the producer better withstand floods and droughts and temperature extremes. So there is a tremendous upside from this. We are already spending $20 billion a year on farm subsidies. Let's start spending it more intelligently in a way that really addresses our needs. Do you see signs that things are moving in that direction? I wish I did. There are some signs that we're moving in the right direction. The Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed a couple of years ago, was the first time Congress ever linked agriculture and climate change. In the 2018 Farm Bill, there's no mention of climate change. And when we were working on that with members on the Hill, there was really no overt conversations about climate change. Fortunately, things have changed. So, a step forward is that we're talking about climate change. And in the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress provided $20 billion to go to programs that are established under the Farm Bill. So, 20 extra billion dollars to these Farm Bill conservation programs and required that that money be spent on practices that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, essentially help us mitigate climate change. And that, again, was the first time Congress linked agriculture and climate change. Super important. Part of what's going on now on the Hill is a fight to ensure that money that the Inflation Reduction Act provided stays. There are those in Congress that would like to raid those funds and put them to other purposes, which we think would be a big step backwards. So that was really great opportunity. As to the Farm Bill money itself, there's definitely some conversations, particularly among the Democrats, to ensure that all of the Farm Bill programs are a bit more climate-focused. But we're far from consensus on that. So, we're making a bit of progress, but right now Congress is, I think it's fair to say, not at its most functional. And so the type of policy discussions we need, and an honest discussion of how can we help American farmers shift to practices that are better for them, for the communities, upwind and downwind and around them, better for climate change resilience and climate change mitigation. We're really not yet having that conversation as robustly as we need. Hopefully we'll be able to get to a place where the politics will allow us to have that. And frankly, this podcast and other conversations are really important to educating people so we can have that conversation. When you're trying to make policy advances, having public support for it can be a real asset. Do you see signs that the public is becoming more aware of this, that they're urging their political leaders to move on this front? For sure. The public is very much concerned about climate change. Every poll shows that. And people are concerned about it both as citizens and as consumers. So, if you follow the food marketing world, what you see is that many surveys show that consumers are very interested in the climate impact of their food choices. And far more than was the case a couple of years ago. And they want to know how can I buy food? How can I eat food that is climate friendly, that helps us stabilize the climate? And industry is responding to that. Now, some industry is responding to that by deceptive advertising. You may have seen that the New York Attorney General recently sued JBS, the world's largest beef company, for misleading statements about the climate-friendliness of their beef. So some companies are talking more than they're doing, but others are trying to respond to consumers' interest in more climate-friendly food. You see a growth in plant-based foods, plant-based milks, because plant-based foods have a much, much lower climate impact than meats, particularly beef. And so consumers are interested in that, and that market is responding. And I think you'll see more of that in governmental procurement as well. Governments that are trying to think about how can we, say New York City, reduce our climate footprint while a big part of a city's climate footprint is the food it purchases, say for New York City schools. And a city can take action by trying to buy lower climate impact foods. And that would be foods produced in a way that you've talked about with regenerative practices and also lower climate impact, such as more plant based. So, I think we're seeing a lot of progress on that for sure. So Peter, related to this, what would you think about some kind of labeling system on food products that gives an environmental score, let's say? I personally like the idea of labels. I'm not an expert by any stretch. I do remember that not too long ago, New York City required restaurants to label or have on the menus the calorie content of food. And that provision was later adopted by the Affordable Care Act and now is required of chain restaurants. And Trump tried to roll that back. So we litigated to try to preserve that and get that requirement reinstated in the Affordable Care Act successfully. And during that, I learned that labels really make a difference. Calorie labeling on menus does in fact help people make more informed choices and often better choices. And there's no question, again, I'm not an expert. You probably know much more, but for example, the added sugar labels make a difference and others. So I think as a whole, labels can make a big difference. Now, environmental footprint is a complicated multifaceted issue because something may create harm to water. It may create harm through toxic, say pesticide residue, or it may have a big climate footprint. How do you put all of that into a simple label? It's a complicated question. But I do think there's interest in having particularly climate, the climate impact food be identified on the label. And perhaps we will move in that direction.   Bio Based in New York, Peter Lehner is the managing attorney of Earthjustice's Sustainable Food & Farming Program, developing litigation, administrative, and legislative strategies to promote a more just and environmentally sound agricultural system and to reduce health, environmental, and climate harms from production of our food. Peter is one of the leading experts on the impact of agriculture on climate change and is the author of Farming for Our Future; the Science, Law, and Policy of Climate-Neutral Agriculture. From 2007–2015, Peter was the executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the NRDC Action Fund. Among other new initiatives, Peter shaped a clean food program with food waste, antibiotic-free meat, regional food, and climate mitigation projects. From 1999–2006, Peter served as chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General's office. He supervised all environmental litigation by and against the state. He developed innovative multi-state strategies targeting global warming and air pollution emissions from the nation's largest electric utilities, spearheaded novel watershed enforcement programs, and led cases addressing invasive species, wildlife protection, and public health. Peter previously served at NRDC for five years directing the clean water program where he brought important attention to stormwater pollution. Before that, he created and led the environmental prosecution unit for New York City. Peter holds an AB in philosophy and mathematics from Harvard College and is an honors graduate of Columbia University Law School. Peter is on the boards of the Rainforest Alliance and Environmental Advocates of New York and a member of the American College of Environmental Lawyers. He helps manage two mid-sized farms and teaches a course on agriculture and environmental law at Columbia Law School.

The first nutrition labels mandated by the Food and Drug Administration appeared on food packages in 1994. A key update occurred in 2016, informed by new science on the link between diet and chronic disease. Along the way, things like trans fats and added sugars were required, but all along, the labels have been laden with numbers and appear on the back or side of packages. There has long been interest in more succinct and consumer-friendly labeling systems that might appear on the front of packages. Such systems exist outside the US, but for political reasons and lobbying by the food industry, have been blocked in the United States. There's new hope, however, described in a recent opinion piece by Christina Roberto, Alyssa Moran, and Kelly Brownell in the Washington Post. Today, we welcome Dr. Christina Roberto, lead author of that piece. She is the Mitchell J. Blutt and Margot Krody Blutt Presidential Associate Professor of Health Policy in the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Interview Summary This is a really important topic, and if the nation gets this right, it really could make a difference in the way people make product decisions as they're in the supermarket. So, let's talk first about the importance of labeling on the front of the package. Why is that important when all the information is somewhere else, namely on the side or the back? I think there's a couple of key reasons why it's good to do front of packaging food labeling specifically. So, as you mentioned, it was a huge deal in 1994 to get this information mandated to be on food packaging to begin with, right? All of a sudden, there was much more transparency about what's in our food supply, but that being said, when you think about the nutrition facts label, it's pretty dense. There's a lot of percentages, there's a lot of numbers, there's a lot of information to process. And when people are actually in the supermarket shopping, they're making these split-second decisions, right? So, it's not to say that some consumers are turning it around and inspecting that packaging, but the reality is, for most people, it's a very habitual behavior. And so, we want to be in a place where that information is prominent, it's easily accessible, and it's easy to understand so that when you're making those snap judgements, they can be informed judgments. So, you're not talking about taking what's on the back and just moving it to the front. You're talking about a different set of information and symbols that might be available? That's right. Yeah. What front of package labeling is designed to do is just take some of the key bits of information that we know from science is going to be most important for consumers to base their nutritional decisions on. That's things like saturated fat, sodium, added sugars, right? And moving that to the front of the package and communicating about it in a very simple, clear way. So, no numbers, no percentages, just very straightforward language. And ideally some sort of icon, like an exclamation point, that would draw attention to that symbol and just quickly let consumers know that this product is high in those nutrients that you need to be concerned about and you need to try to limit. Why is it an important time to be thinking about this issue in the US? It's an important and it's an exciting time because the FDA right now is highly interested in actually moving forward on a policy that would require these types of front of package labels. And that hasn't been true, as you noted, for about a decade. But last year, the White House convened a very significant conference that hadn't happened in 50 years about nutrition, health, and hunger. And front of package labeling actually made it into their report in that conference as a key objective for this country in terms of a food policy that, under the Biden administration, they want to achieve. What we're seeing the FDA do now is actually undertake a series of research studies to try to understand what should this label look like, and how should it be designed to be consumer friendly. With the hope that actually we'll get a proposed rule on this potentially by June, and even if not by June. There's clear momentum that it looks like this is going to be happening in the near future. In a few minutes, I'd like to ask you about what's taken place in other countries, but what's been the history of this in the US? Front of package labeling really came to a head back in 2009. And it's actually quite a delight to share this with you, Kelly, because you and I were doing some research around it at the time. So, what played out then is a labeling system was introduced called Smart Choices. At its face, it seemed to make sense, right? It was going to be a check mark that was going to be put on products that were deemed to be healthy as a smart choice. So, a consumer could look at that and select something they wanted to eat that was relatively healthy. The reality is when that labeling system came out, it was on Fudgesicles and it was on Cookie Crisp cereal, and there was a lot of kind of concern about whether this type of labeling system was systematically problematic and was going to mislead consumers. And at that time, Kelly, I was a grad student at the Rudd Center and you really taught me quite a bit about how to make things happen and how to have a public health impact. Because we were quite concerned about that system, we actually did a study where we randomly sampled 100 products from Smart Choices and we applied an objective nutrition standard - an algorithm to score those products. What we found is that 64% of those Smart Choices products would not meet healthy by this objective nutrition standard. And so, you had the vision to reach out to the New York Times and alert the media to this. And we started to see a lot of kind of concerning reports in the media, like Smart Choices, what's going on? This doesn't seem very smart. We had done this little bit of science, and then at the Rudd Center, you had reached out to the attorney general of Connecticut at the time, Dick Blumenthal, who was quite interested in consumer protection issues and worked a lot on tobacco. And he took this up as a real public health champion to say this is concerning, we have some of this science, and he came out and threatened legal investigation into that program. What was so remarkable to see in that story, particularly for me as a grad student, was wow you can get these different actors coming together, right? Some of that media attention, science playing the role it needs to play, a public health champion who can really make a difference in the attorney general, and all of that can come together and this program literally halted, they stopped it. And I should say, that was a great public health victory. But immediately after that, the Institute of Medicine, so now the National Academy of Medicine, was charged with writing two reports on front of package labeling. And they came out with one that was focused on the nutrition criteria that should underlie a system like that, and one about the design of the label. And they had some great recommendations, very consistent with what you and I have seen in the science, right? It needs to be accessible, simple, easy to understand. Well, what ended up happening is not much. The industry at that point then released their voluntary labeling system that they call Facts Up Front, which is what we have to this day. And as you might imagine, it has percentages and it has grams and milligrams and it's confusing, and they can also highlight positive nutrients on there. So you can have a Cookie Crisp cereal that's also touting the amount of fiber, the amount of protein. And so that's really what we've been stuck with. It's now only over a decade later that we are at this moment where we're finally seeing this progress, and we're at a place where we might get a labeling system that does a really good job of communicating this information to the consumer. I guess one sort of ironic form of evidence that such a system is likely to really help consumers make decisions is how hard the industry has fought against having such a system. And not to mention the science that exists suggesting that these things might be helpful. A lot of activity has occurred outside the US. Can you describe some of that? Over 40 countries have front of package labeling systems. Now, some are mandatory, some are voluntary. The mandatory ones, as you might imagine, produce better effects. They range. And many of them are designed really well. So, let's take some of the best examples. Chile, for example, has warning labels that alert consumers to whether products are high in saturated fat, sugars, sodium, and calories, and those symbols are designed in a very intuitive way. They're stop sign shaped, so they really leverage the automatic associations consumers have. They're prominent, they're black, they stand out from the packaging. And these well-designed labels, we now have evidence from scientific evaluations that they're producing effects, right? They're leading consumers to purchase less of these unhealthy nutrients. They're also leading to some reformulation. And by that, I mean the industry is trying to figure out, 'well, can we lower the sodium, so we don't get one of those labels?' The other thing that I think is often overlooked with labeling but is so important is once you decide to label the food supply and you have an agreed upon system, that can support other policies. And that's what we see in Chile as well. Now all of a sudden, you can't market foods with these warning labels to kids, right? And you can't sell those foods with these warning labels to kids in schools. So, it really has even a broader impact than just the behavior change you see from the labeling, and so many other countries have followed suit. Mexico has a very similar labeling system. One thing that they've learned from Chile is, and this is a concern, that as the industry brings down the levels of sugar, for example, in foods in response to labeling, they're increasing the levels of non-sugar sweeteners, right? Things like Sucralose or Stevia or monk fruit, and so that's a worry. Mexico has, in addition, also labeled those non-sugar sweeteners on the food packaging. And then you see other examples. France has a really nice system. It's called Nutri-Score. Very intuitive. There are letter grades. I myself had the chance to go to France. I was trying to buy some turkey for my son. I don't speak a bit of French, and I'm standing in the supermarket and I just see the letter grade A and I think, oh, okay, I'll pick that one.   Great, great example. Yes, very intuitive systems around the world. So, are there studies showing which of these systems work and what sort of effects they have? And I know you've done additional work beyond what you mentioned earlier. Absolutely, and there are a whole range of studies, whether they're randomized controlled trials, lab studies, or online experiments. And then the more compelling, convincing evidence, which comes from natural experiments that are done around the globe, or even research we have from stores that have voluntary implemented these labels and we can look at changes in sales data. And what all that boils down to is labeling will produce behavioral effects. They will get people to purchase healthier foods, they will get people to purchase less of the unhealthy foods. Labels inform consumers, which I think is kind of the first order goal, right? Like let's just make sure people understand what's in the food supply, and then we see this reformulation. And that's been true, even if you look back to trans fat labeling, like requiring trans fat on the labels was also associated with trans fat coming out of the food supply. So, I think we can feel really good and solid that labeling can help people make healthier choices. And as anyone who's worked on issues related to chronic diseases, we're going to need a suite of policies, right? Labels are never going to be the silver bullet. They're not designed to be, but it's a policy that makes a lot of sense. It's a very cost effective policy. It's not very expensive to do labeling, and it can help support many other policies that might produce bigger effects. So, given the different options, the different kind of systems that have been proposed or are out there in use, do you have a sense of what ultimately might be the best system? I think the FDA has some good options in front of them. Now, if I were to wave a magic wand, I would do warning labels. I would make them more similar to what's done in Chile, just because we have good evidence that warnings in particular, and these kinds of symbols like a stop sign, are probably going to be more effective at educating consumers and shaping behavior. Now, that being said, we have some unique legal challenges in the US for getting a system like that. The FDA is proposing, I think, a totally reasonable, science-based label that essentially would have what it's high in and then indicate whether it's high in added sugar or saturated fat or sodium. I would love to see that label also have some sort of icons, some eye-catching exclamation point or something like that, but that label is great, it's a great option. Let's compare it now to what the industry is pushing for, which is basically what we have now, facts upfront. And as I said earlier, this is a label that has percent daily values, that has grams, that has milligrams, that can highlight positive nutrients that are going to appear on unhealthy foods. I think when you look at those two options, it's just a no-brainer to go with this very simple, very straightforward, high-end label that lists the nutrients and let's put some sort of icon on it. So are you optimistic about where things might go? Well, I'm a glass half full kind of person. I would say yes, I try to be very optimistic, but I think there's reason to be. I think we have some good options on the table, FDA is moving forward, research is being done, scientists and others are highly engaged in this process and giving feedback to FDA. And so many other countries have done this. So yes, I am feeling optimistic. So at the end of the day, a lot of this will come down to how much the FDA can resist pressure from the food industry. Right, so many things in food policy do come down to that. That's really true. So true. It's interesting, one of the things that you highlighted, but I'd like to even bring a little more attention to is the issue of the industry reformulating its products so that they don't have to show these negative labels. That's such a potentially powerful public health consequence of this, that it needs to be focused on even more. I'm hoping the valuations are being done of the impact of that on public health. Because you can make an argument, couldn't you, that if these labels don't affect the purchasing behavior of a single individual, they still could have enormous public health benefit just because of the reformulation, do you agree? Oh, 100%. Yes, absolutely. I would even argue that we have very few mechanisms to hold industry accountable, and to me is just a fundamental right of consumers. Like they have the right to know, there needs to be transparency, and great that they are likely to produce behavior change and great that they are likely to make the industry reformulate, but I just feel like that there's so many reasons to do labeling that it just feels like an obvious policy to pursue. Hopefully, any system that comes into place can be nimble as much as they can be in these government regulations to take into account new science that occurs. Like at some point, maybe a symbol that notes whether a product is ultra processed would be in order, or as you said, in France, I think it was, where they've labeled the addition of the artificial sweeteners. Was it France or was it another place? Mexico. Yes. That's right. Okay. Yeah, thanks for clearing that up. Something like that might enter the system, so having a system that can adjust to the science as it goes forward would be really important too. Kelly, it's such an important point. I think part of any labeling strategy needs to be monitoring and evaluation, and particularly with the non-sugar substitutes. Like right now, we don't know, it's a very hard thing to track. It's only on the ingredient list. We can't quantify how much is in the food supply. And so I would love to see coupled with labeling some way that that gets disclosed so we can really monitor and ensure how that might be changing in the food supply over time and evaluate, to your point, what's happening in terms of reformulation. As an aside, we've done a cluster of podcasts on the influence of these artificial sweeteners and the sugar substitutes and the available science on this, on what goes on in the brain, what happens to the microbiome, the impact of health overall is really concerning, so I totally agree with you that having that information disclosed could be really helpful. Yes, 100%.     BIO Christina A. Roberto, PhD is the Mitchell J. Blutt and Margo Krody Blutt Presidential Associate Professor of Health Policy at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also an Associate Director of the Center for Health Incentives and Behavioral Economics (CHIBE) at Penn. Dr. Roberto is a psychologist and epidemiologist who studies policies and interventions to promote healthy eating habits and help create a more equitable and just food system. In her work, she draws upon the fields of psychology, behavioral economics, epidemiology, and public health to answer research questions that provide policymakers and institutions with science-based guidance. Dr. Roberto earned a joint-PhD at Yale University in Clinical psychology and Chronic Disease Epidemiology. Dr. Roberto completed her clinical internship at the Yale School of Medicine and was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Traditional clinical weight loss interventions can be costly, time consuming, and inaccessible to low-income populations and people without adequate health insurance. Today's guest, Dr. Gary Bennett, has developed an Interactive Obesity Treatment Approach, or iOTA for short, that represents a real advance in this area. Dr. Bennett is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Medicine and Global Health at Duke University, where he is also Dean of Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. Interview Summary You know, in this time when people are talking about more expensive, and kind of more intrusive interventions, like the big weight loss drugs, it's nice to know that there may be alternatives that could be accessible to more people. Could we start off with you telling our listeners what the iOTA approach is and how it works? Sure. This is an approach for weight management. It's useful for weight loss or preventing weight gain or maintaining one's weight after you've lost weight. The idea here is that it's a technology that's designed to be highly accessible, and useful for a range of different types of populations. So, as you described, we have developed and tested this primarily for folks who are medically vulnerable, who are low income, who are racial, ethnic minority, who live in rural communities, and where we have traditionally had real difficulty reaching populations with effective weight loss tools. So, iOTA is a fully digital approach. It uses technologies smartphone apps, but it can also use text messaging, interactive voice response, those are like robocalls, automated telephone calls, websites. We've tested this on a wide range of different types of technology platforms, and we've tested it in a range of different types of populations all over the country and indeed even in other countries. So, give us some examples of what kind of information people might be receiving through these various forms of media. The underlying kind of technology, the underlying approach, I should say, for iOTA is actually reasonably simple. It operates from the perspective that creating weight loss is really about making an energy deficit. That is to say, helping people to consume fewer calories than they are expending. The realization we had years ago is that you can get there, you can create that calorie deficit in a whole host of different ways. Some people diet, some people try to get more active, there are limitations around that kind of approach. But fundamentally, you can also just get there by asking people to do some reasonably straightforward behaviors. Like not consuming sugary beverages, or consuming fewer chips, cookies and candies. Or changing the amount of red meat that they put on the plate. And, if you frame those things out as goals, then you can prescribe those goals to people in ways that make sense to them personally. The trick though is actually in the idea of personalizing those goals to the given individual. And that's where technology comes in and gets very helpful. The case is, if you have a large library of these goals, you'd want to try to provide these in a highly personalized way. That really are aligned with what people's needs are and noting that those needs may change over time. So, what we do with iOTA is deliver a very short survey. That survey then helps us to be able to look into our library of goals and pick the ones that are most useful for our users. We prescribe those goals, and then we ask folks to self-monitor those goals. Self-monitoring or tracking is an extraordinarily powerful part of behavior change science. And so, we ask them to track using one of our technologies: the chat bot or the text message or interactive voice response or the smartphone app. Every time that we receive data from one of our users, we give them highly personalized feedback that is designed around principles of behavior change science. And then over time we also give them support. We do support sometimes from a coach or sometimes from a layperson, sometimes it's even from a physician. And over time what we find is that this kind of an iOTA approach helps people to lose weight, prevent weight gain, have weight loss maintenance, but it also has a cascade of other types of effects, some of which we didn't really even anticipate producing. This reminds me of something that I've fought for years, that nutrition and weight control can get incredibly complicated and down on the weeds in a fascinating way from a academic point of view. But that you can get to the goal line with just a few simple things. You might be 80% to the goal line just by eating less junk food and eating more fruits and vegetables and getting mired in that last 20% becomes confusing. It sounds like that's exactly what you're doing. That you kind of picked some of the big things that people can do, establish goals around them, and then provide a behavioral path for getting to those goals. That's precisely our thinking. And the thing I'd add to that is part of the challenge in weight control is making those types of changes for long amount period of time that it takes to produce and sustain weight losses. One of the things we know is that any kind of behavior change, but particularly behavior change for weight control purposes just requires an extraordinary amount of engagement over a very, very long time. So, I'm fond of saying to our teams and to others I'm really much less concerned with strategies that produce weight changes at a month or two months. Because the real question for us is how do we create technologies that can support users as they enter the 10th month or the 12th month? Fundamentally, what we're really after here. It's not really weight loss, but it's really the changes in a whole range of health parameters. So cardiometabolic function, the indicators of the development of various cancers, diabetes parameters, those kinds of things. And it takes time and effort to produce those changes via the weight control, changes that we're hoping to produce with these technologies. What kind of results are you getting from this and does the iOTA program in fact make it easier for people to stay on track with their health goals? Yes, it's a really interesting set of findings over more than a half dozen trials in the last bunch of years. If I were to summarize, I'd say we get pretty modest weight losses relative to say, what you might get with a very intensive weight loss intervention or with a drug or certainly with surgery. But what's different is that those weight changes do tend to be sustained over time. So, they're modest, but they last. And the really interesting finding for us is that people stay very engaged with these technologies. On average, people tend to use new apps pretty feverishly in the first month after they downloaded, or they put it on their phone one way or another. And then most people, about 70% of the time, people move away from those apps, they disengage. When we look back about a year after people started using iOTA, it's very, very common for people to be engaged with our technologies 80-85% of the time. That is to say, they're still tracking their goals at about 80% fidelity after a year. That's really terrific. and it's one of the reasons I think that we're able to see sustained losses, even though those losses aren't very large. And again, my goal here is much less - this is a public health approach - I'm much less interested here in trying to produce large weight losses for cosmetic reasons and those kinds of things. This is really an effort to try to create a very highly disseminatable, inexpensive treatment that is accessible to large numbers of folks. In trials, we certainly have seen changes in blood pressure and various cardiometabolic parameters like lipids. Those changes tend to be larger in certain populations. When we tested this in China, we saw very, very large dips in lipids. And those too also do tend to be sustained. The biggest surprise for us over the years has been a relatively consistent set of findings that suggest that people have improved wellbeing on the backend of participating in one of these kinds of treatments. They tend to feel less stressed, have more energy, and have better quality of life. In fact, we've seen very, very large reductions in depressive symptoms in study after study. I'll just add tangentially that's notable for us in the populations in which we work, because these are not populations for whom weight is very closely tied with one's emotional state. That is to say, the patient populations in which we work tend to have more tolerance for heavier body weights compared to other populations. So, when we see weight loss in our trials, we don't often expect to see that accompanied by improvements in depressive symptoms. But we see it in study after study after study. So, we've been really pleased with this broad array of impacts that this technology seems to produce. It's nice to hear the positive results. And I also like your aspirations because a smaller weight loss, better maintained is a much better outcome than a larger weight loss regain, which is typically the case. And the fact that you're getting these corollary effects in other areas of life, like mental health and things like that is very impressive. Are there other stories you could tell from people that have been on the program that might be illustrative? Oh yes. What happens most often in our studies is that at some point one of our patients approaches me and says, "You know, I've tried everything. I've tried dieting, tried this app and that app and this is just so easy. I've been able to stick with it for a long time." That happens a lot. And it always, always pleases me greatly because at the end of the day we're really trying to create these technologies for real people to use over a very, very long period of time. I find that exciting. We've had a number of people over the years who have gotten off their hypertension medications or have had seen changes in their diabetes, their A1Cs as a measure of diabetes. And it's just really exciting because then it's one of the things that I think gets us up in the mornings to do this work. That is exciting. How has it been especially influential among people who otherwise have limited access to care? We really started this work because of a series of observations that I made early in my career when I started working in community health centers. Community health centers are often primary care units in many major metropolitan areas, and often in rural settings as well. Their primary intention is to serve patients who are medically vulnerable, and often patients who are poor. On those settings, the providers in those settings are just doing extraordinary work. And I started to spend time there and was trying to understand how we might think about situating this kind of technology and these kinds of public health style interventions within those care settings. And the observation I made over and over and over again was that, even in these care settings that are really designed to serve patients who have low income or come from limited income backgrounds, weight control and behavior change in general was just not the highest priority. These physicians are dealing with all manner of acute and chronic health crises. And they just didn't feel that managing a patient's weight was the best use of their limited clinical time and attention with patients. The challenge of that, of course, is that, for patients who have obesity, that can be a primary cause of many of the acute and chronic conditions that my physician colleagues were treating. And so what I began to observe was that patients who have the greatest need for comprehensive obesity care are often the least likely to receive it. And this is borne out by national data, which suggests that if you're a person from a medically vulnerable background and you have obesity, you're dramatically less likely to receive high quality care from the health system. And then there are a whole range of financial constraints that limit your ability to be able to acquire that care in the commercial market. And so there are really many, many people, really, tens of millions of folks out there without options. So, that's really why we started developing these tools. And I'm very pleased to say that the underlying approach that we develop with iOTA has been leveraged in a variety of weight control interventions that are being used in other places. The next frontier for us is to really think about how to disseminate this in a more widely accessible way. We've begun having conversations with metropolitan areas. Cities where health departments are thinking about doing these kinds of things. Some of these technologies have found their way into other systems. And increasingly as we have begun to test these approaches in clinical care settings, we certainly have seen ongoing use of these technologies in the community health centers where we originally came up with some of these ideas. So, much more work there to be done but I'm hopeful. Do you see a role for this approach in conjunction with or as a companion to the weight loss medications that are getting so much attention now? Yes, I do. One of the things that's notable about this generation of weight loss medications is that they do not have an indication that they should be accompanied with a behavior change intervention. So, the other way to say that is that most weight loss drugs that we've seen in years past have received FDA approval, contingent on their combination, their use, alongside a behavior change intervention. And the GLPs, the ones that are most recently emerged, don't have that indication. Nevertheless, we know a couple of things. One is that these are medications that are designed to be used for very long time in order for fat, weight loss to be sustained. And there are a number of people who increasingly are interested in transitioning off of these medications and beginning to engage weight control on their own. So, my sense is that technologies like iOTA can be very useful in helping people make those transitions off of drug. I think the technologies we've created can be very, very useful as an adjunct to try to help to maintain motivation for weight loss. And to think about addressing some of the related behaviors that can help people to experience an overall improvement in their health. So, becoming more physically active and making changes in stress and wellbeing as an adjunct to the weight loss that's being produced by the drugs. I have to tell you, I'm very, very concerned about the cost of these medications. I'm very pleased by their efficacy, but I'm extraordinarily concerned about their cost and their limited accessibility. I expect that will change. But during this period of time, I'm very concerned about the creation of additional disparities, patient's ability to seek really high-quality care. I'm glad you raised that point. So, where do you see the work going next with IOTA? Well, I see it going in two directions. One, we are thinking about dissemination. Where can you embed this kind of approach inexpensively in ways that allow the greatest number of users. The emergence of artificial intelligence technologies, notably the large language models, really help in that regard because they allow us to deliver that kind of core iOTA special sauce more flexibly in a range of different technologies. And even more inexpensively than we can do right now. iOTA is extremely cost effective and with AI delivery it could be even more so. And then the other path I see is really what you asked before. And it's how do we think about using these technologies as an adjunct to medication treatment, which I think will become even more common over the next couple of years. I hope that it becomes a more common approach that's used to treat the patients who have the highest risk of obesity and all of the chronic health conditions that travel along with it. Bio Gary Bennett, a professor in the department of Psychology & Neuroscience who also holds appointments in Global Health, Medicine and Nursing, is the founding director of the Duke Digital Health Science Center. For 20 years, he has been studying how incorporating digital strategies into clinical treatment of obesity can improve health outcomes. His development of the Interactive Obesity Treatment Approach (iOTA) has been supported by over $20 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Fast food is part of American life. As much a part of our background as the sky and the clouds. But it wasn't always that way, and over the decades, the fast food landscape has changed in quite profound ways. Race is a key part of that picture. A landmark exploration of this has been published by today's guest, Dr. Naa Oyo Kwate. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University. Her book, recently published, is entitled White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food From Black Exclusion to Exploitation. The book has been received very positively by the field. And was recently named the best book in the field of urban affairs by the Urban Affairs Association.   Interview Summary I was so happy to see your book because people have talked about the issue of race off and on in the field, but to see this kind of scholarly treatment of it like you provided has been really a welcome addition. Let me start with a general question. Let's begin with the fast food situation today and then rewind to where it began. Are there patterns to where fast food restaurants are located and who fast food is marketed to? Absolutely. There's quite a bit of research, and you just alluded to the work that's been done in the field. There's a lot of research that shows fast food is most dense in African American communities. Not every study has the same finding, but overall that's what the accumulated evidence shows. On the one hand you have the fact that Black communities are disproportionately saturated with these outlets. Then there's also the case that apart from the physical locations of the restaurants, fast food is strongly racialized as Black in terms of how it's portrayed to the public. It [Fast Food] relies on images of Blackness and Black cultural productions such as Black music for its marketing. These sometimes these veer into racial caricature as well. One of the things I talked about in the book briefly is the TV commercial character Annie who Popeye's introduced in 2009. They basically created this Black woman that Adweek at the time was calling "feisty," but it's really just this stereotypical idea of the sassy Black woman and she's in the kitchen frying up the chicken for Popeye's. And actually, some of the language that was used in those commercials really evokes the copy on late 19th century and Aunt Jemima pancake mix packaging. It's a really strong departure from fast food's early days, the way that fast food is now relying on Blackness as part of its core marketing constructs. I'm assuming that it follows from what you've been saying that the African American community has disproportionately been targeted with the marketing of these foods. Is that true of children within that community? Research shows that in terms of fast food marketing at the point of purchase. There's more - display advertising for example at restaurants that are in Black communities. And then there's also been research to show, not in terms of the outlets themselves, but in terms of TV programming that there tends to be more commercials for fast food and other unhealthy foods during shows that are targeting Black youth. How much of the patterning of the fast food restaurants is due to income or due to the amount of fast food consumption in these areas with many restaurants? Almost none of it really. It's not income and it's not the amount of fast food that people are consuming. In fact, one of the main studies that led me to start researching this book, because I was coming to it from public health where there was a lot of research around the disproportionality of fast food restaurants. We actually did a study in New York City, some colleagues and we published it in 2009, where we looked at how fast food was distributed across New York City's five boroughs. And restaurant density, we found, was due almost entirely to racial demographics. There's very little contribution from income. So, the percentage of Black residents was what was driving it. That was the biggest predictor of where fast food was located. It wasn't income, income made very little contribution and if you compared Black neighborhoods that were higher in income to those that were lower in income, they basically had about as much fast food exposure. Then if you compare them to white neighborhoods matched in income, Black neighborhoods still had more. So, it wasn't income, it was race. There are other areas that were high in fast food density like Midtown and downtown Manhattan where you have commercial and business districts, transportation hubs, tourist destinations. So, you expect fast food to be in these really dense and kind of busy commercial areas, but the only residential space that had comparable density were Black and brown neighborhoods. The assumption that many people have is that, okay, well if it's not income, then it's probably demand. So probably fast food is just dense in those neighborhoods because Black people eat so much fast food. But again, the data do not bear that out, not just in our study, but in others. And in fact, apart from the study we did specifically on fast food, we did another study where we looked at retail redlining for a number of different kinds of retail sectors. And again, demand is not what situates, you know, where stores are or are not. And then when I got to this project, just digging through the archives, you find that until the industry really went in on targeted advertising to increase the numbers of visits that Black people were making to fast food restaurants and the average check size that they were spending, Black consumers were mostly using fast food as a quick snack, it wasn't a primary place for meals. So it's really the case that the restaurants proceeded the demand and not the inverse. It is an absolutely fascinating picture. My guess is that what you've just said will probably come as a surprise to some people who are listening to this, not that fast food isn't dense in particular neighborhoods, but that it's particularly dense in neighborhoods by race just because people generally think that fast food is popular everywhere. So, let's talk about why this occurred and dive a little more deeply into what your book does and that's to provide a historical view on how and why this evolved. So, what did the early history look like and then what happened? So, the book traces what's basically a national story, but I focus particularly on certain cities like Chicago, New York and DC. But it's tracing how fast food changed racially and spatially from the early 1900's to the present. I break out that early history into what I call first and second-generation chains. So, they opened in urban and suburban areas respectively. The birth of the first generation fast food restaurants took place in what is termed the Nader of race relations in the US from the end of the Civil War to the 1930s. So, this is a time during which you see Plessy versus Ferguson, for example, ushering in legal segregation. Lynchings are at their worst. You have the destruction of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. That's taking place and other notable incidents and forces that were undermining Black life at the time. It's during that context that the first generation restaurants are born. And so, these are burger chains like White Castle, that was the first actually big burger chain. People often assume it's McDonald's, but it's actually White Castle in 1921. And then there are knockoffs of White Castle, like White Tower and Little Tavern, which was an East coast brand. And then there were also other restaurants that were not burger chains, but more like hot shops was more of a sit-down restaurant. And then you had Horn and Hardart, the outlets where they had auto mats. So, you know, this was kind of high tech at the time, but you would go in and the food was behind little glass compartments and you would put in your requisite number of nickels and then take out your little plate of food. These were all the restaurants that I'm calling first generation restaurants. So, you had quite a bit of diversity in terms of what they were serving, but they were all in urban centers. They were not franchised. They were corporate owned outlets and most importantly everything about them was white, whether figuratively in terms of who dined and worked there or literally in the architecture and the design and the name like White Castle. That veneer of whiteness was doing two things. On the one hand, trying to offer the promise of pristine sanitary conditions because this is a time when food production was rife with concerns. And then also it's trying to promise a kind of unsullied social whiteness in the dining experience. So, first generation then leads to second generation fast food, which begins in the suburbs instead of the urban centers. Second generation fast food starts to grow in the early 1950s. These are the brand names that are most synonymous with fast food today: KFC, Burger King, McDonald's. So, for example, Ray Crock launches McDonald's as a franchise in the all white suburb of Des Plaines outside Chicago near O'Hare airport. And he set to fly over prospective sites looking for church steeples and schools, which to him were an indication of a middle class and stable community, but of course, racializing that as white. Because you could have Black neighborhoods with church steeples, but that was not where the restaurants were going. So, what ends up happening with second generation fast food is that it takes this theme of purity and shifts so that it's not just the purity of simple kind of fuel for the working man, but instead the purity of white domestic space. And where first-generation restaurants targeted working adults, the second went after families and children. Fast food then becomes more than just food - it's about fun. Those are the two key ways to think about the early history. One could obviously find many, many, many examples of different racial groups being excluded from the economic mainstream of the country. For example, areas of employment, and my guess is that being excluded from the marketing applied to consumer goods and lots of other things. But do you think there's something special about food in this context? Oh, that's a good question. It's interesting because fast food. It's food, but it's more than that the way that fast food initially excluded Black people. One of the things I talk about in the early part of the book is James Baldwin going to a restaurant and trying to order a burger and being rejected and facing discrimination. And the idea that it's not just that you can't get a burger, it's not the same thing as if you try to buy, I don't know, a ham sandwich or something. But like what burger means something more than that, right? It's bigger than a burger is Ella Baker said. Fast food is kind of like the closest thing we have to a national meal. It sort of occupies a special place in the heart of America and is symbolic of this quintessential all-American meal. And the notions of a good and simple life that we purportedly have in this country. So, it means more I think the way that fast food was positioned as something that was totally wrapped up in this exclusionary whiteness. Your book traces the long pathway that fast food traveled going from exclusion in the beginning and then later exploitation. Can you describe a couple of the key turning points? Well I would say that it wasn't like a light sort of got switched on that caused fast food to shift abruptly from utterly excluding Black people to then pursuing them full throttle the next day. It was quite a long and bumpy pathway and really American retailers in general have continually had to discover Black consumers and the fact that they exist over and over. And then sort of trying to think like, oh, how do we reach them? We don't understand them, like they're this enigma kind of thing. Fast food was doing the same kind of thing. There was both what the industry was doing and then there were also pull factors that were causing fast food to be drawn into Black communities as well. There are a lot of turning points, but I would say if you start fairly early in the history, a key one was after second generation fast food got going. Where suburban fast food right, is trying to position itself as this white utopia. But almost immediately that notion was fraught and unstable because concerns quickly arose around teenagers. They were money makers but they were also rowdy. Their behavior, hot rodding and goofing off in the parking lot and so on, was off-putting to the adult diners. So, it became this difficult kind of needle to thread of like how are we going to track this consumer segment that's foundational to the enterprise but do so under conditions that would keep them in line and not mess up the other potential revenue that we have going. As the kind of nuisance of fast foods became more pitched, municipalities began introducing ordinances to control fast food or even ban it. And that made the suburbs harder to get into or to maintain a foothold in. Corporations then start looking more at the cities that they were avoiding in the first place and the Black communities there that they had excluded. So that happens fairly early and then some other key turning points occur throughout the 1960s. Here we have urban renewal, you have urban rebellions taking place and during the late 1960s when these rebellions and uprisings were taking place, this is the time period when you get the first Black franchisees. Into the 1970s you have oil crises, then you have the burger and chicken wars as the industry called them in the 1980s. And this was referring to corporations battling each other for market share. So, all throughout the history there were different turning points that either accelerated the proliferation of fast food or sort of change the way the industry was looking at Black consumers and so on. Now in some discussions I've heard of this issue off and on over the years from people who have looked at the issue of targeted marketing who have talked about how there was a period of time and you made this clear, when Blacks were excluded from the marketing and they just weren't part of the overall picture of these restaurants. Then there was a movement for Blacks to be included more in the mainstream of American culture so that it was almost seen as an advance when they became included in the marketing. Black individuals were shown in the marketing and part of the iconic part of these restaurants. So that was seen as somewhat of a victory. What do you think of that? It's true and not true. I mean when fast food decided to finally start actually representing Black people in its marketing, I think that is important. I do think that the fact that they were finally making ads and conceiving of campaigns that saw Black people as part of the actual consumer base at which they were, yes, that that is important. But it's also the case that corporations are never doing anything for altruism. It's because they wanted to shore up their bottom line. So, for example, Burrell Advertising is the biggest African American ad shop based in Chicago. They get the McDonald's account and so they're the first ones to have a fast food restaurant account. They begin their campaign in 1971 and at that time, their advertising actually positioned Black families as regular people doing everything everybody else does and going to the restaurant and enjoying time together as a family and so on. And I think those kinds of images were important that they were creating them, but again, at the same time it was only the context in which Burrell got that account. The reasons why McDonald's was reaching out to Black consumers was because, again, in the early 1970s white suburbs were becoming more saturated, and McDonald's needing to expand. Then you have the oil crisis in which people are not driving as much, and Black people because of racism are centered in urban centers and not in the suburbs. So that makes a logical place for them to go and so on. So, it's not without its vexed context that those new advertising images and opportunities were taking place. Okay, thanks. I know that's a complicated topic, so I appreciate you addressing that. You know, something you mentioned just a few moments ago was that when Blacks started to become owners of franchises, can you expand on that a little bit and say what was the significance? Yes. First of all, cities were changing at that time. White residents were moving to the suburbs, multiple public and private policies were keeping the suburbs white and white residents were moving to white suburbs. So, Central City was changing, right? The neighborhoods that had been white before were now changing to become predominantly Black. And so, the fast food outlets that were located in those neighborhoods found their client base changing around them. And many of those operators, and indeed their corporate superiors, were uninterested in and uninformed about a Black consumer base at best and outwardly hostile at worst. You end up with as neighborhood racial transitions are taking place, white operators are now in communities they never meant to serve. Som as urban uprisings rack one city after another, Black franchisees are brought on kind of as a public face in these changing urban areas. The primary goal was to really have Black franchisees manage the racial risks that corporate was finding untenable. They realized that it wouldn't do to have white managers or franchise owners in these neighborhoods. So, they bring in Black franchisees to start making that transition. And then after fast food becomes more interested in trying to deliberately capture more Black spending, Black franchisees become even more important in that regard. For their part, the Black franchisees were seeking out fast food outlets as a financial instrument, right? This was a way to contest and break down unfair and pervasive exclusion from the country's resources. So, it was never about how much fast food we can possibly eat, right? Again, with the demand issue. So, Black franchisees are basically trying to get their part of the pie and then the federal government is heavily involved at this point because they start creating these different minority enterprise initiatives to grow Black small business. And so, it wasn't only the Black franchisees, but also Black franchisors who were starting their own chains. So, for example, former NFL Player Brady Keys started All Pro Chicken, as just one example. So, this idea of expanding fast food franchising to Black entrepreneurs who had been shut out on its face, seems like a laudable initiative. But again, it's like this is not just altruism and also the way that franchises were positioned in this kind of like you can get into business and do so in a way that's low risk because you know you don't have to start from scratch. You're buying into a thriving concern with name recognition and corporate support and all that. And all of that sounds good except you realize that in fact the franchisees are the ones who have to bear all the risk, not corporate. That's what the government was doing in terms of trying to put in all this money into franchising is really. It's like that's the response to the real life and death failures, for example, around policing, which was always at the heart of these uprisings. You have these real life and death concerns and then the government's responding with giving people access to fried chicken and burger outlets, which nobody was asking for really. Not only was the method problematic, but the execution as well. Just because Black people had more access to the franchises doesn't mean that the rest of the racism that was present, suddenly disappeared, right? The theoretical safety of a franchise didn't bear out in practice. Because of course they still couldn't get access to credit from lending institutions to launch their restaurants because they still didn't get support they needed from corporate, which in fact there are still lawsuits to this day by Black franchisees because the communities in which they're operating were still contending with deep inequality. All of that meant that that whole project was not likely to work very well. And you know, it's no surprise that it didn't. You mentioned chicken several times. In fact, there's a chapter in your book entitled Criminal Chickens. Can you tell us more? Yes, Criminal chicken is towards the end of the book. So, the book is organized in three parts. Part one is white utopias, part two is racial turnover, and part three is Black catastrophe. In each of those you see how Blackness is problematic, but in different ways. So Criminal Chicken is really dealing with the fact that by the 1990s, fast food had become pervasive in Black space and was thoroughly racialized as Black. And so, since fast food has saturated these neighborhoods, of course Black residents began to consume it more. With that, a program reigns down from the dominant society over Black people's alleged failure to control themselves and an assumed deviant predilection for unhealthy dietary behaviors, whether fast food, but also the same kind of discourse circulated around soul food. And the tenor of the discourse really raises W.E.B. DuBois's age-old question, which is how does it feel to be a problem? That was really the tenor of the conversation around fast food at that time. The chapters about the ways in which Black people's consumption was frequently characterized as deviant and interrogating the paradoxes around the symbolic meanings of fast food. Because like what we talked about earlier, Black people are basically being criticized for eating something that's supposedly at the heart of Americana. It's a kind of a no-win situation. On the one hand, certainly overseas, fast food continues to enjoy this kind of iconic status of America and American Burger and so on. Even within the country's borders it still retains some of that allure as something emblematic of American culture. But it's also now more fraught because, you know, we're in a moment where local and organic foods and so on are held in high esteem and fast food is the antithesis of that and it's industrial and mass produced and homogenized and has all these nutritional liabilities. So, basically, it's looking at the changing ideas around fast food and race and how that intersected with Black consumption. That's so interesting. I'd like to wrap up with a question, but I'd like to lead into that by reading two quotes from your book that I think are especially interesting. Here's the first. It is painfully logical that Black communities would first be excluded from a neighborhood resource when it was desirable and then become a repository once it was shunned. And then the second quote is this. The story of fast foods relationship to Black folks is a story about America itself. So, here's the question, are there ways that you can think of that fast food and food systems could be reconceptualized to help address issues of justice and equity? I would say that addressing justice inequity in food systems of which fast food is a part, is really about dealing with the other systems that govern our daily lives. Meaning, it's not an issue of trying to fix fast food, right? So, that is a discreet industry it behaves more equitably with communities because what it has done over the history that I trace in the book is it's not so unique in its practices and it also can't have taken the trajectory it did without intersecting with other institutional concerns. So, for example, housing is instructive because you know, of course you can't exploitatively target Black consumers unless residential segregation exists to concentrate them in space. And to do that, obviously you need a lot of different institutional policies and practices at play to produce that. And in a similar way, housing went from exclusion in the form of rank discrimination, resource hoarding, redlining, the denial of mortgages, all of that, to exploitation in the form of subprime lending. And Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor talks about predatory inclusion and I type that in the book because I think it's also a useful way to think about fast food as well. So, if you're thinking about equity in food systems, then you have to think about why is it that resources including food, but also beyond food, in this country are distributed the way that they are. And I think you can't get at the issues of justice that play out for fast food or injustice without addressing the key issues that reverberate through it. And so that's false scarcities that are created by capitalism, the racism that undergirds urban policies around land use, around segregation, deeply ingrained ideas in the American psyche about race and but also about other things. So, for me really, reconceptualizing fast food is really reconceptualizing how we live in America.   Bio   Naa Oyo A. Kwate is Associate Professor, jointly appointed in the Department of Africana Studies and the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers. A psychologist by training, she has wide ranging interests in racial inequality and African American health. Her research has centered primarily on the ways in which urban built environments reflect racial inequalities in the United States, and how racism directly and indirectly affects African American health. Kwate's research has been funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and by fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, among others. Prior to her first major book, White Burgers, Black Cash: Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation, she published the short work Burgers in Blackface: Anti-Black Restaurants Then and Now, which examines restaurants that deploy unapologetically racist logos, themes, and architecture; and edited The Street: A Photographic Field Guide to American Inequality, a visual taxonomy of inequality using Camden, NJ as a case study. Kwate has been a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at the Newberry Library, and has received fellowships from the Smithsonian Institution, the European Institutes for Advanced Studies, and elsewhere. She is currently writing a book investigating the impact of corner liquor stores in Black communities from 1950 to date.  

A growing number of research studies show that the cognitive and brain development of low-income children differs from that of children in higher income families. For any family, that is a concerning statement. Today's podcast features a project called Baby's First Years, a multi-year effort to test the connections between poverty reduction and brain development among very young children. Here to talk about what the study has revealed so far is Dr. Lisa Gennetian from Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, and Dr. Sarah Halpern-Meekin from the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Transcript Sarah, let's start with you. What is the Baby's First Years study?  Sarah - So the Baby's First Years study is a study of how having additional income matters for children's development and for family life in families that had incomes around the federal poverty line when they had a child. And so, it includes two main components. The first is a randomized control trial that tests the effects of families receiving either a large or a small monthly cash gift each month, families get either $333 or $20 each month on a debit card from the time their child was born until just after the child's sixth birthday. Lisa and our colleagues, Katherine Magnuson, Kimberly Noble, Greg Duncan, Hiro Yoshikawa, and Nathan Fox lead this part of the study. They've been following mothers and children from a thousand families over the past six years. The other part of the study is a qualitative study in which we do in-depth interviews with a subset of those families because we want to learn more about how they think, about making financial decisions, the values and dreams for their children that guide their parenting and how they think about their money they're getting from Baby's First Years each month. This study is complex and would require time to observe change. Can you tell me about the length of time your team has been doing this intervention? Sarah - So the first families started the study in 2018. Lisa - One thing that's unique about this intervention is its length. As Sarah mentioned, it's starts at the time of birth and it's monthly. And families will be receiving this cash for 76 months. So, they'll be receiving it through the first six years of their child's life. Thank you for that detail. Lisa, what is the landscape for food programs and assistance in the United States, particularly for families with infants and young children? Lisa - There are two major programs that are federally funded in the US that are particularly targeted for families with infants and children. One of them is called the Women, Infant, and Children's Program, or WIC for short. The WIC program, let's see, in 2022, served about 6.3 million participants, but it provides a mix of core nutritional needs, breastfeeding support, information and referrals. And the second big safety net program in the US around food is called SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This one's broader and has served over 40 million people in 2022. And together both these programs have been pretty core to providing food and nutritional support to families, including those with young children. Thanks for that context. So now, how does the cash gift intervention differ from, or fit with other food assistance programs that these families may participate in? Lisa - The thing that cash can add above and beyond that, so thinking about how this Baby's First Year study might help supplement resources is in two ways. One is thinking about how money that might have been spent on the foods that are provided by these programs are now being taken care of through these food subsidies. One direct way that the BFY cash money can help is by increasing those net resources available for other types of food or for other things in the household. It's a real compliment to these what we call in kind or conditioned kind of food subsidy programs. The second is that there are no conditions. And so, what WIC and SNAP provide, which is really formative and really important for a lot of families, is also has some real parameters on what could be purchased. And so having extra cash means sort more flexibility around direct food resources. And that's actually something we start to see a little bit in the Baby's First Year study. Wow, Lisa, thank you for that. Given that these are means-tested programs, the cash infusion from Baby's First Year's project could influence participants' eligibility for other programs, right? How did you deal with that? Lisa - Oh yes, it's a really great question. Thanks for asking that. For the purposes of this study, we, for several years, worked closely with all layers of government, federal, state, and local to think hard about how to protect the families receiving this cash gift from losing eligibility for these other programs because as you say, right, we're increasing their income implicitly through this cash gift. And so, we did that through some administrative rulings, meaning states agreed that the families would be exempt and to the states, we had legislation passed to protect these families from their eligibility being affected by receipt of the cash gift. We did that as comprehensively as possible. There are some exceptions, but we think that it's been pretty effective kind of strategy we use to ensure that families, when they get this cash gift, that they're not mechanically losing eligibility for these other programs. So, the way to think about this cash and supplementing people's lives and supplementing and accompanying everything else, is also helping how families might think about access to these other programs and choices around that in ways that they might not have had before. That sounds like a large undertaking, and it took extensive planning to get to that point. I imagine you wouldn't want families to lose their benefits because they participated in this study. Sarah, I want to come back to you. What are families' experiences with Baby's First Year and with government-provided food assistance programs in the United States? Sarah - So families in both gift groups are appreciative of having extra money every month. That's even more so the case for those in the high gift group mothers not surprisingly, some mothers in Baby's First Year struggle to make ends meet, for others, even if they can cover their bills every month, having just that little bit extra breathing room is pretty welcome. Like Lisa was talking about across the country, in Baby's First Years, the vast majority of families have experience with food assistance programs, either currently or in the past. It's pretty rare for them not to, relatively speaking, while families often receive WIC, that's the Women, Infants and Children program that Lisa mentioned, when they have babies, many stop getting WIC after their babies turn one, despite the fact that they remain income eligible for that. Most families also receive some benefits from SNAP. And in some qualitative work that I did with my colleagues, Carolyn Barnes and Jill Hoiding, we heard from families about how they thought about engaging with the WIC program. They thought about the value of the benefits they could get from doing so, but also the costs of doing that, like how hard it is to make it to appointments, to fill out the paperwork to use those benefits once you're at the grocery store. And they weighed those costs and benefits as their children grew up when they were thinking about whether or not to pursue those benefits. So Lisa, what are you learning from the Baby's First Year study about where and how families and children are getting food? Lisa - So Sarah has talked about the richness of speaking to moms directly at holistic types of interviews. Alongside that, we've annually been going back and speaking to mothers and collecting information about them and their children. And part of our, so these are our annual surveys, they are in or near the children's birthdate, and we ask them a bunch of questions about how life is going, about their spending, what's happening with income and employment and childcare, their own health, their mental health. One of the areas that we focus on is around food. And one of those food items is called a food security scale. This is a six item, a USDA-approved scale. It asks questions like not having enough money to buy food, questions about hunger, questions about eating balanced meals. It includes a set of items that we would call pretty subjective. For example, the question on balanced meals, but also less subjective. Is there literally enough money to buy enough food for the household? And so, we're learning some really interesting things. First, we're learning that there is very high connection to this food safety net that we were just talking about. So, far majority of the families are connected either to WIC or the food assistance program called SNAP. And that's pretty consistent. Sarah just talked about a little bit of the drop off of WIC, but we certainly see consistent connections to SNAP, all the way through the first three years of the child's life. We see that generally as sort of a kind of good news story. So, these are families who are eligible for these programs, their family's drawn from four very different dates and sites. They're very diverse in their racial ethnic composition and whether they've been born or not in the US in terms of the moms. The fact that there is very high connection to a food safety net system while raising young children, we think is a really positive signal of the food safety net system potentially working pretty well. And then we're not seeing big differences between the high cash gift group and the low cash gift group on this food security measure. In fact, we're seeing pretty high food security amongst these families with very young children on the scale. That doesn't mean that any one of these items, we're not seeing high reports of things like scarcity. So even though the families are very low in food insecurity, we do see that about a third of them are reporting some kind of food scarcity. So, 31% report that the food they bought did not last and they sometimes often didn't have money to get more. For example, we're also hearing from families, they're relying on free meals from non-federal sources. We haven't talked yet about the importance of the faith-based kind of system and support and informal networks in providing food. We ask families this when their children were about three years old, and roughly 10% report some receipt of free meals from other sources. We are inevitably also seeing, as you might expect, some variation across these sites. So that's sort of a hint on what we're seeing around food security and connections to the safety net. We also ask about spending, and we're not seeing overall differences in how much money is being spent on food with one very interesting exception. That's on money, on food spent eating out. We don't ask a whole bunch of information about nutrition, but when the children were toddlers, moms do report, who are receiving the high cash gift, they do report higher consumption of fruits and vegetables among their toddlers. It is a very sort of unique and narrow question, but positive, so more fruits and vegetables and not more of other things like salty treats, flavored drinks, sodas, sugary sweets. And we're looking forward to continuing to follow up on items of nutrition when the children are four. This is fascinating, and I'm so grateful that your team is paying attention to these families' experiences and engagement with the social safety net and the charitable food sector. Sarah, we often understand food, particularly healthy food, as a way to deliver nutrition that promotes health and development. Of course, food provides much more than nutrition. What, if anything, are you learning from the study about the social meaning of food and what it represents to families? Sarah - I really appreciate this question because it's something we've been looking at and thinking about a lot in our research, in the research other people have done before, and in our own study we really hear a lot about the role that food plays in families, beyond nutrition. In so many cultures, food plays a really core role in social time and in family time. This can be things like turning family movie night into something a little more special by microwaving popcorn. It can be having special mom and me time with mom taking a child out to go get a cake pop at a coffee shop. It can be eating a meal at a sit-down restaurant to celebrate a special occasion, a child's middle school graduation, for some of these purchases, you can't use food assistance. And so having cash on hand is really essential to engaging in these kinds of special rituals and family time. Like your question implies, it turns our attention to the role that food plays in family bonding and in socializing. We really want to think about the multiple roles that food serves in our lives and how having this kind of extra income on hand for families who are often income constrained, can change these opportunities for those special family times around food.   Bios   Dr. Lisa Gennetian is an applied economist, Professor of Public Policy, and the Pritzker Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. Drawing on perspectives from the behavioral sciences, psychology, and child development, her research focuses on the economics of child development, specifically child poverty, parent engagement and decision making, and policy and social investment considerations. Dr. Sarah Halpern-Meekin is Vaughn Bascom Professor of Children, Family, and Community in the School of Human Ecology and the La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also an affiliate of the Institute for Research on Poverty. She is a sociologist whose research focuses on family, adolescence, social policy and the welfare state, class and inequality, and qualitative methods. Her current research includes examining the role of parents' churning (on-again/off-again) relationships in family life, exploring the experiences and financial decision-making of mothers who are receiving monthly unconditional cash gifts, and understanding how rural men make ends meet, spend their time, and make meaning while disconnected from the formal labor force.

Today's podcast is a story of one man's personal journey to making a difference by building communities. Zach Wyatt grew up caretaking an old 300-acre farm in Virginia. He went to college and ended up working in mortgage lending. And then something changed for Zack, and that's where the story gets interesting. He now leads the Carolina Farm Trust, working to strengthen local food systems in the Carolinas. The trust cultivates urban farm networks, farm apprenticeships, supports local farmers in purchasing equipment or land, making informed-decisions, and more. Interview Summary I'd like to understand a little bit more, why did you want to start the Carolina Farm Trust? Well, with a lot of things, it was just kind of by accident and circumstance. And I would say subconsciously I had agriculture in my bones, ever since I was a kid growing up in agriculture in Northern Virginia. It just kind of seeps in. We [The Family] still have that little arm reached out to being a part the DC metro area. Growing up in an urban-rural environment kind of planted, I think, a lot of the seeds in the work that was going to transpire so many decades later. But it really just kind of came down to a life event. I had a partnership that just ended in one day, which was a huge blow to us financially. We had to get on EBT and Snap and went through that process. And I was really soul searching and figuring out what were the next steps for me. Looking back on it, I think I was really grasping on to how do I do anything, to kind of just do something. I got back into reading about our food system and farms and started meeting some farmers. And once you start talking to farmers in a real way and understanding what our food system truly is, it's horrifying. It kind of came down to seeing this visual metaphor of a meteorite heading toward us every day, and either sticking your head in the sand or doing something. Circumstance just led to this next event and next event, and the next event. And eight years later, here we are. What I hear from you is this story of resiliency and it seems like that's something you also see in the food system or a need for that is that a fair assessment?   Absolutely. We just take food in agriculture for granted. And over the last 80 to 90 years, we've really given our entire means of survival pretty much away. Most people don't really look at food and agriculture and how it spins every major decision on Earth. Every social problem we typically have, every health issue we have, if you follow it all the way down to where that problem started, you go all the way back to the dirt. So, to kind of look at resilience and what do we mean by that and more importantly, building regional resilience in a global economy: I think getting supply chains a whole lot shorter, focusing on soil health and nutrition density and our farming community, is where we really have to start. I'm starting to get a sense of the big picture of the farm trust. What is the driving mission of your work? I think you're hitting on some of that, but I'd like to hear more. I'd say the vision is very clearly about building regional resilience and then using food and agriculture as a primary driver. The four main pillars we have are health and nutrition, upward mobility and equity, sustainability, and climate change. Our four action-on-the-ground pillars are first, building an urban farm network and to get people to understand where our food comes from. Why is that important? We do really need to push urban centers to be more responsible for where our food comes from and playing a role in that. Second, our farm apprentice program, workforce development. You know, the average age of our farming community right now is a little over 60. Where is this next generation of farmers coming from? Where is the land coming from? So, it is not only kind of a labor force for us, you know, but how do we make sure every community garden, every school garden is thriving? How do we create teams that can go help our rural farming community with different projects or step in when someone gets sick or an emergency? Third, when we think of food as health, what does that really mean? If we're talking about food as medicine, in my opinion, we've already missed the boat. We got to talk about food as health, we got to talk about prevention. How do community health workers get out in communities covering geographic locations, really understanding what those needs are and how do we create systems to go meet them where they are. And then our fourth pillar is our distribution platform, which is really there to give a profitable revenue stream to our farming community. How do we use economics to really push them to start their regenerative farming journey? And then how internally to create supply chains that not only can work with consumers, you know, up and down the socioeconomic ladder, but how do we make sure we can build supply chains for larger institutions to be able to participate in a local food economy because the infrastructure is just not there. I was struck by your earlier comment of if you get down to the, if you will, root cause of any problem, and forgive the pun, it seems like it's in the dirt. Right? And I'd like to hear you explain a little bit more about what you believe is what's wrong with the food system as it is today. And I got a sense it's about the lack of being local, but I want to hear it in your words and how does this guide your actions now?   Well, it's just evolution. I mean we always try to get better. We wanted to make food cheaper, so we went from hundreds of farms and rapid consolidation over the years. We have processed and now ultra-processed food, and we have to deal with slavery and reconstruction and everything that kind of came with it with such as sharecropping from a social standpoint. We're looking at nutrition density and in average produce and protein sources we're almost 30 to 6% less than what it was 100 years ago. We're looking at climate change, sustainability. Where does that come from? Look at the carbon footprint, our agriculture industry puts on the planet, look at the massive consolidation of looking at if the world gets 40% of its grain from Ukraine, and then having different political and social issues come up. I include inflation spikes. We're looking at carbon sequestration, we're looking at no-till, we're looking at all these big environmental and all these sustainability and allergies and cancers. And so, where does all that come from? It comes from our environment. Looking through all of this, you can very much see parallels of how our food system started to consolidate and get more aggregated with all the other problems I just mentioned. And if you look at 1930, 1940, and then going from there, you can very much see kind of a parallel with a lot of the challenges that we face. So, I think we really spent a lot of time trying to kind of cherry pick among all these really big problems. We're trying to cherry pick smaller problems because they seem a little bit more manageable, but we really have to go rethink the system as a whole. And that's really, really hard to do. What we're really trying to push forward is how do we just look at a region, because I really feel like you have to do this from a regional perspective. How do we get a regional model to work, really go rebuild all that infrastructure, get, buy-in, understanding what the data's telling us, and then we can replicate that going forward to really other regions around the world. This is very helpful and I appreciate the way you approach that question. Seeing that there are these large global issues and there are structural challenges when we talk about agriculture - and you're working in the region, my understanding, you're out of West Charlotte - and there's a distribution center. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you're doing in West Charlotte, especially through this distribution center? It became very clear that our farming community needed a market. Farmer's markets are tough. As consumers, some of us love them, some of us don't pay attention to them. But for our farming community, farmer's markets are really hard. And from a wholesale standpoint, it's very hard for Carolina farmers to compete with Mexico, California, Florida. How do you compete regionally on a global market? So, we had a distribution model planned for a while and in my head, I wanted it to be in West Charlotte and it needed to be near I-85. We wanted it to be in a community because this kind of distribution facility would be an employment place and we would have a real retail concept. We wanted a meat processing butchery component. So, it was kind of putting a lot of pie in the sky visions into one parcel. But one of our strategic advisors in 2021 was at coffee, talking to a friend about Carolina Farm Trust and kind of what our needs were. One of them said, "Oh, my family has this warehouse," So we took a look at it, and it met every criterion we could have dreamed of. The only thing that was different was that I was thinking in my head we would want like 100,000, 200,000 square feet and this one was 25,000 square feet. But the moment I looked at it, I realized this is the exact size or the range that we need because of the community impact. We want more of these not one or two, you know, that are gathered around. This being in the community was such a key factor to it. So, with our wholesale operation, our commercial kitchen, the retail, the event space, the meat processing butchery component of it all, we really could start to see this framework of getting kind of an independent food system together. So, we're working on phase one, which is our wholesale operation and our 3000 square foot commercial which should come online, you know, in the next six weeks. And then we're just waiting on permitting for phase two and fundraising on phase two to get that activated. It's a really cool project and we're really excited to see it to come to fruition here in the next few weeks. This is really fascinating. You know, I haven't asked this, but I'm intrigued. Tell me a little bit about the farmers that you work with. What kinds of produce or crops are they or animals are they producing? I mean, how are you developing those relationships?   Over the course of the years we've met a lot of different farmers and we grow everything that we can grow here in the Carolinas. We're talking greens and obviously tomatoes and melons and corn. We're working with our grain farmers who are growing wheat for us and grinding flour that we're actually getting into a hotel right now in Uptown Charlotte, which is really exciting. Cattle, pork, lamb. And really looking to create markets for our farming community in any way that we can. So right now, Michael Bowling, our general manager of CFT Market, which is the name of our distribution facility, he and his team are going all over the state and finding arms that we've never heard of and getting recommendations and compiling our list. A big part of what we're trying to put together is how we can take the burden on some things like transportation, because it's such a margin killer, and such a challenge for our farming communities. How do we get amazing produce from the east, you know, into Charlotte and the West, into Charlotte. So, we're working on getting a fleet of vehicles right now to do that. So, it's really just trying to find all of the barriers that our farming community faces, and then how do we create the infrastructure systems. I want to end by asking sort of what are your hopes? Like what is the long game? Where do you see your work and the work of those who will follow you? Where does it lead? Well, I think you have to be very naive to think this way. And sometimes, being naive isn't a bad thing because if you do too much research, then you think your way out of doing what you should be doing. So really, the long game is trying to change the entire industry. But it's so much more than that because our food and Ag is health. It IS our health industry, you know, and obviously it's our food industry. But it's also going to play a huge role in saving not our planet for the planet's sake but saving the planet for our sake. You know, it's just critical. So, I mean, really we're wanting to really follow in Netflix footsteps. Netflix came in and changed the entire entertainment industry relatively quickly. We're looking at automotive legacy manufacturers that weren't getting electric vehicles fast enough. So, Tesla came in and disrupted that. Now suddenly, everybody's moving in that direction. So really at our core, we want to take market share and drive our industry partners to focus more on this work. That is really the long game. For us, it's how do we build the foundation? I know I'm never really going to see it, but how do we build this foundation for the next generation of leadership to really get it going on what we've been able to build in this short time. Bio   Zack Wyatt is the President/CEO of Carolina Farm Trust. Zack grew up tending to a 300-acre dairy farm in northern Virginia. After graduating from Coastal Carolina University in 2003 with a degree in Business Administration, he worked in home mortgage lending and IT. Zack's passion for bringing the community together over food, his understanding of the importance of equitable food access, and his drive to improve local food systems led him to develop Carolina Farm Trust in 2015.  

If people knew how much food they threw away each week, would they change their food-wasting ways? That's a question scientists explore in the 2023 State of Food Waste in America report. The research goal was to understand why and how households waste food, and what would motivate them to prevent food waste. In today's podcast, we'll talk with MITRE scientists Laura Leets and Grace Mika, members of a team who developed and launched the MITRE Food Waste Tracker app. This is a first of its kind app for households to log information about discarded food and learn ways to save money by reducing food waste. The Food Waste in America study team includes the Gallup Survey Company, researchers from the Ohio State University, the Harvard Law and Policy Clinic, ReFED, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the World Wildlife Fund. Interview Summary   Laura, let's begin with you. Can you give us a quick overview of why MITRE focused on measuring food waste at the household level and the behaviors? Laura - In a general sense, Norbert, we know the United States waste 30 to 40% of our food, yet we do not know how much is wasted at the household level. We know that waste occurs along the entire farm to table supply chain, like approximately 15% with farms, 15% at manufacturing, about 20% at stores and restaurants and about 50% in the household. So, given that half the waste happens at the household level, it's important to measure it. If you can measure it, you can do something about it. Up to this point, people have not had an easy way to estimate their amount of food waste. So, to address this gap, not only did we develop a new way to measure household food waste and Grace will share more about that, but we also provided a baseline measurement of American household food waste. I would like to really dig in a little bit more. How much food do American households waste, and do you have a sense of what kinds of foods people are wasting? Laura - Let me start with the amount first. We found that the average American household wastes somewhere from 3 to 4.5 pounds per week. And there's two ways to measure household food waste. The first is you can focus on the edible or uneaten food. And with this measure, American households waste about on average three pounds per week. Second, you can add inedible food. So, that's your food scraps, your eggshells. And if you take edible plus inedible food together, then the American households wastes on average about 4.5 pounds per week. Let me give your listeners a couple analogies to understand that impact of that 3 to 4.5 pounds of household food waste. So, let's say we combine our own household food waste with everyone else's. The crop waste is large enough to cover the states of California and New York. From a personal perspective, imagine before every meal you scrape off 40% of the food on your plate. If you imagine that in each meal, you're going to start to understand that the current food waste is massive, and we're all contributing to it. So that's the measurement piece. I'm going to pass it over to Grace to discuss the types of food we're wasting. Grace - Americans are wasting a wide variety of foods in their homes, but the number one wasted food type is your fresh produce. So, that would be your fruits and your vegetables. I think this is really important to keep in mind, not only because, of course, fruits and vegetables are perishable, but when we think about healthy diets, many people in the nutrition space are encouraging fresh fruits and vegetables or fruits and vegetables in general. Ao this is a really important finding, and I'm excited to know this. But it's also important for our listeners to think a little bit more about this. Grace, I would like to learn a little bit more from you. Can you tell us more about the MITRE Food Waste Tracker, the app itself? Grace - I would be happy to. The MITRE Food Waste Tracker app is meant to be a tool for households who want to understand exactly what's going uneaten in their home. If you had asked me what exactly I ate yesterday and how much of that went into my trash can, I would have a really difficult time remembering an answer to that question. And that's for just yesterday, let alone multiple days or weeks ago. Not knowing what exactly goes uneaten would make it really challenging for me to cut back on that waste. So, to solve that problem, our team designed an app which allows for food waste to be logged in real-time. So, right as you're doing your meal prep or you're clearing off the dinner dishes or emptying your leftovers out from the fridge. And the app tracks details both about the food itself, like where you got that from and the food group that it belongs to, as well as where, why, and how the food was thrown away.   And you can also track how much waste was produced, and we encourage you to use your hand as a guide to estimate the volume of that waste. So, your closed fist is about the size of a cup of food and your thumb about the size of a tablespoon. The more that you use the app to track, the more you will reveal patterns in the way that you waste. Maybe you find out that you're optimistically shopping for vegetables that your toddlers at home are just not interested in eating. Or maybe you're serving up heaping platefuls at dinner time, but then find that you're not hungry to finish that meal. So learning this will empower you to make small changes in the way that you shop for, prepare and store food to make sure that as little as possible is going to waste.   And if you're money-minded like many Americans are, you might be especially interested in an app feature which estimates the cost savings that you would experience if you cut back on your waste. So less food in the trash means more money in your wallet and the savings really add up. The average American family spends over $1,500 on wasted food each year. And tracking with the app is fast and simple. For each food that you dispose, you would simply click on the icons that best describe your waste. It would be really easy to get the whole family, even your your kids involved in tracking and thinking about the food that's going into the bin. You've already touched on a few of these key findings about sort of the top foods that we end up wasting. Are there other findings that you would like to share with us? Grace - So there are two behaviors that really stood out when it came to producing food waste. The first is simply being willing to eat your leftovers. Personally, I get really excited about leftover nights. It means I get a good home cooked meal with almost no prep work that evening. A lot of us are already doing this. About a third of Americans incorporate leftovers into new dishes and about half of us frequently eat leftovers just as a meal by themselves. Those leftovers add up. We found that households who consistently throw their leftovers away are wasting nearly four times as much as households that eat those up. We also found that households' understanding of and behavior around date labels plays a significant role in their levels of waste. A lot of us don't really understand how little date labels actually mean, and how little they're standardized. Not too long ago I was cooking with a friend, and we were making dinner together and he smelled a bag of shredded cheese and he said, "Oh, this smells kind of funky, but it's not past his date." And he added it into the dish. You should actually be doing the exact opposite of that. You should trust your senses over the date label when it seems that something is spoiling. There are some dates that are meant to be safety indications, but the majority are just a manufacturer's best guess of when food will pass its peak quality. And frequently, thrown away past date food that has no signs of spoilage so this leads to wasting over twice as much food. It can be easy to feel helpless when it comes to wasting food, but it's surprisingly simple to take control over your waste As we mentioned before, if you're curious about what sorts of behaviors are leading to waste in your own home, we have an app for that. So, our latest version of the app has new features to help you understand your waste and even get a sense of how much money you could be saving if you cut back on your waste in your home. I highly encourage you to check that out. I've got to say I have done some work on date labels and have found this is an important area of consideration. But also, one where the modification of those date labels may actually help reduce food waste. I'm so happy to hear you talk about the sort of broader set of things that consumers can do to actually mitigate food waste in the household. You got into some of my own personal family issues around what do we do about leftovers, and I will not report this conversation to my family. So, thank you for that, Grace. Laura, I want to go back to you and ask about a big picture question. Why should our listeners reduce their household food waste? Laura - Norbert, I believe I can make a compelling case for that. This is a rare opportunity when making a small change can have a large positive impact. Let me explain the amazing cascading ripple effect that happens when we reduce our household food waste. We had Grace reminding us with the app, and the first benefit is financial. An average American household can save at least $1,500 a year or $125 a month by reducing food waste. So just focus on that personal financial benefit, and then understand the resulting ripple effects. That first ripple effect is going to impact the ecology. Most of us don't realize significant resources go into producing food. The USDA reminds us that 50% of our land in America is used for food production and 80% of our water is used to produce that food. When we reduce our food waste, we're recognizing food as this precious resource, and we are supporting our food production industry. This is really important because America is one of the top food producers in the world.   The next ripple effect impacts food security. Food security is part of national security. When you reduce your household food waste, you are also supporting national security. Next is a societal impact. Reducing food waste allows us to optimize our food and feed more people. And, finally, there is a significant environmental benefit. The number one substance going into our landfills is food waste. As it decomposes, it emits greenhouse gases that cause this pollution blanket to surround the planet. That pollution blanket traps heat and warms the planet. So, when we reduce our food waste, it's one of the top three activities we can do to reduce warming temperatures and extreme weather events. We all have the ability to combat climate change through our household food waste. These small changes in our food waste - they're going to result in positive financial, societal, and environmental benefits. It's such a powerful, impactful decision to reassess your food waste and think about ways you can reduce it.   Bios Dr. Laura Leets is an accomplished researcher, teacher, and mentor. She brings 30 years of experience from academic and industry environments.  She currently serves as an innovation lead and senior principal scientist at MITRE. In this leadership capacity, she works with researchers to identify, shape and conduct important, transformative, and impactful projects for government sponsors and the nation. She also serves as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Communication, Culture, and Technology Program and previously spent a decade as a Professor of Communication at Stanford University.  She has been recognized with several top paper and teaching awards throughout her academic career.    Grace Mika, B.S., is a data scientist in MITRE's Modeling & Analysis Innovation Center, where she has worked on projects for the Center of Disease Control, Internal Revenue Service, Veterans Benefits Association, and the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Acquisitions & Sustainment. She is passionate about visualizing data in a clear, accurate, and accessible way. Grace was instrumental in the design of a first-of-its-kind Food Waste Tracker App, which allows users to track waste as it occurs within their homes. Grace holds a B.S. in Applied Math and Psychology from the College of William & Mary and is currently working towards her Masters of Analytics at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Dollar stores are the fastest growing food retailer in the United States, both by sheer number of stores and consumer food purchases. Just two corporations, Dollar General and Dollar Tree, which also owns Family Dollar, operate more than 35,000 stores across the country. However, a growing body of research reveals that dollar stores offer limited healthy food options. Dollar stores shape the food environments of communities, especially in the South and Midwest regions and communities in rural areas with substantial shares of Black and Latin people and households with limited financial resources. What do we know about the impact dollar stores have on these communities and the overall wellbeing of community members? The Center for Science in the Public Interest conducted a national survey to understand how people perceive and actually use dollar stores. Today we will talk with lead author of this study, Senior Policy Scientist Sara John. Interview Summary My first question is what do we know about dollar stores and healthy food access? There are more than 35,000-dollar stores across the country. So, to put that large number into context for people like me who have trouble processing them, that's more dollar stores than McDonald's, Starbucks and Walmarts combined. As you also mentioned, just two companies, Dollar General and Dollar Tree, control nearly all of them. Dollar stores really play a large role in food acquisitions for households. They can be especially important for households with limited incomes and those living in rural communities. These smaller store formats are much smaller than your typical grocery store or supermarket and tend to stock fewer fresh and healthy items. So, the body of evidence is still growing and we're still trying to figure out really how dollar stores interact with the food environment, whether or not they're driving out existing or potential new grocery stores or whether they're filling important food gaps in communities that otherwise lack food access. I am really blown away by the number. I must admit I did not appreciate that they have 35,000 stores across the US. I know that there is a growing body of literature, as you suggested. One of our colleagues, Sean Cash at Tufts has been working in this space along with others in various disciplines have been thinking about the role of dollar stores. I'm interested to understand why CSPI conducted a national survey of those or perceptions, and what were some of the key findings? As I mentioned, there's a lot of outstanding questions we still don't know. There have been more than 50 communities across the country that have already passed policies at the local level to ban or improve new dollar stores in their communities. But we don't understand community perceptions, usage and just I guess more plainly what people want from dollar stores. So, CSPI really wanted to take a stance to make policy, corporate, and research recommendations on this very quickly and growing retail format. But before doing so, we wanted to really make sure that we're centering our recommendations around what community members really want from dollar stores. We decided to conduct a national survey. We ended up having over 750 respondents from across the country of people with limited financial resources that lived near a dollar store. I have to say we were pretty surprised by our findings, especially given this popular sentiment that we have seen in the news media and with a lot of the local policy action. I would say that we found overall positive dollar store perceptions that people really are relying on dollar stores for food. But I would say just as many people want them to make healthy foods more available, affordable, and accessible. Could you help me understand how did people find them beneficial? What were some of the things that you discovered, in terms of the benefits? But I'd like to also hear what were the points of contention? Where did they want some difference? Community members had overall positive perceptions. I think there was about 82% of the survey respondents said that dollar stores helped their community rather than harmed it. And a lot of the key things that came up in the qualitative responses in our survey and the focus groups that we used to inform the survey was this overarching multifaceted concept of convenience. People said things like the store proximity, that they didn't have to walk a mile within the store itself to get to milk, and just an overall quick shopping trip. They also mentioned the affordability of products there. You know, not having to say no when shopping with their kids to something that's on the shelf. And then also a selection of specialty items - a lot of like different seasonal fare and things. Even using the phrase "thinking of the dollar stores as like going on a treasure hunt." You never quite know what's going to be there on the shelves. However, as you mentioned, there was also many deterrents listed for dollar stores as well. Things they could do better. So, low quality of products, the lack of predictable product availability, sometimes having bare shelves or not enough store supervision to be able to keep those shelves stocked. And also, the store appearance, both inside and out. Things like graffiti, trash, cluttered aisles. Those are all things that people that both shopped and did not shop at dollar stores noted in the survey. And all of this also kind of leads to another key theme that I mentioned at an overarching level, that people really wanted dollar stores to do more in terms of making healthy foods more accessible to them. So, 81% of our survey respondents thought dollar stores should stock more healthy items, and nearly as many thought they should do more to market and identify healthy options. We also included a list of more specific interventions of things that dollar stores could do to make healthy products more available, accessible, and affordable and one of the top responses was to provide SNAP fruit and vegetable discounts, kind of as one might see in like a Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program at dollar stores as well. I'm really intrigued by something you all did in the survey. You looked at differences, particularly between SNAP participants and those who potentially are SNAP eligible, but non-participants. Are there any key findings you want to highlight about differences between those two groups?  Yes. Many respondents generally mentioned being able to stretch their budget at the dollar store and this included more SNAP participants purchasing more food with their SNAP benefits at dollar stores. So, this was across many healthy food categories. We also saw SNAP participants felt more strongly that dollar stores should be held more accountable for the health of their communities as well. This is really fascinating. These findings are part of what leads you to some of the key policy recommendations. I'd be interested to understand a little bit more about what are the policies that you all thought should be considered or corporate response and even research action based on these findings. I'll highlight just a few. You know the first one at the federal level is strengthening SNAP retailer stocking standards. So, the vast majority of dollar stores do participate in the SNAP program and currently SNAP authorized retailers are required to stock a small number of items. So, three varieties of items across four different categories. However, if the SNAP program did have stronger stocking standards that better aligned with nutrition promoting foods like in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, then all SNAP authorized retailers including dollar stores, would be required to stock more healthy items to participate in the program. Which is of course a huge benefit to the community. But also, a really important part of the business model of SNAP authorized retailers including dollar stores. At the local level, I already mentioned that more than 50 communities across the country have passed local policies, mostly to stop the spread of dollar stores such as through dollar store density ordinances. These look like saying a new dollar store can't locate within, let's say an existing mile, of a current dollar store. However, these policies are really only getting at new dollar stores and don't really do anything to address the existing 35,000. We also see an opportunity to strengthen and improve upon these existing policies and address what we found in the survey that community members want by requiring dollar stores to stock healthier food, make it more available, such as through healthy stocking standards or healthy food overlays in the local zoning code or even exempting dollar stores from these dispersal limits if they do stock a specific variety or number of healthy staple foods. At the corporate level, we're hopeful that this survey and its results make the business case to dollar stores for stocking healthier foods, making them more widely available. We've seen already actually both Dollar General and Dollar Tree moving in this direction. Dollar General, especially. I think about 16% of their current stores now do offer fresh produce. So, they're building out their supply chain, their distribution centers, and I would say retrofitting and redesigning stores to be able to make more fresh and healthy foods available. But we think they can do more, and especially do more in terms of prioritizing fresh food expansion in areas with lower incomes and limited food access. Many of these dollar store models started by locating in rural areas. We think if they could really leverage their ubiquity and where they're currently located to spread healthy food access to those communities especially, it could make a really big difference. We also have seen dollar stores in recent years put out public environmental social governance or ESG priorities. We think that these should be expanded and really prioritize healthy food access and nutrition goals. And one more thing I'll say around corporate recommendations is the expansion of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children or WIC authorization of dollar stores. Currently, based on our scan of the current list of WIC authorized retailers, there are no corporate dollar stores that are currently WIC authorized. By participating in WIC, and by adhering to those much more rigorous healthy stocking standards, it could do a lot to make a variety of healthy product, fresh produce, whole grains, dairy, baby food, formula more accessible to moms and kids. I have to ask this question as a researcher, what are some important questions that the survey really prompted you to think more about or would like to have others come in and support research in this area? There are so many. As I mentioned, the evidence in this space is really nascent, but is growing. So, one thing I would highlight is that we really are proud of this survey and its national scope. However, the survey doesn't reflect all communities and their desires and wishes. And so we hope that this survey could be used as a model and could be replicated in local communities to inform local policy and corporate intervention. We also think there's a lot to still do to better understand the current dollar store food environment. There have been some studies that have been done at small scale in some states and localities, but we think that current instruments could be better adapted and specifically tailored to the dollar store environment to better understand them and their variation across the country. Especially as we start to see this shift in corporate practices. There is a lot of, again, variation in terms of different dollar stores and what they're offering. We also really hope that we could see dollar store corporations, and maybe this is overly ambitious, but to collaborate with researchers to better understand what corporations already know, to better lift up what challenges are associated with increasing the stock and availability of healthier foods. We know that cost space and supply chain complexities, this is not an easy solution, and so how can researchers work together with corporate dollar stores to figure this out. Also, we'd be really interested in piloting healthy food marketing interventions, thinking about how this shift in healthy product placement, price and promotion might be impacting customer purchases, customer food consumption, and ultimately health. Wow, this is a great set of ways for a variety of researchers to come in. It sounds like not only could academics do some of this work, but it sounds like there may even be space for citizen scientists to come in and look at what's going on in the food environments where they are to help inform that conversation. I think this is really fascinating. What's next for CSPI's work on dollar stores. CSPI really hopes to be able to support efforts to advance the recommendations we've made in this report. At least one I'll highlight that we've already started to work on, is we just launched a corporate campaign; Don't Discount Families, Dollar General. Really pressuring Dollar General to improve healthy food access at their stores through these WIC expansion efforts that I referenced earlier. So, making sure that dollar stores expand their healthy food offerings by adhering to those more rigorous WIC stocking standard requirements. Making those foods both available and more accessible to moms and kids participating in WIC. You know, that includes fresh, frozen, canned produce, whole grains, dairy, healthy pantry staples, baby food and formula, but also in doing so makes healthy foods more available for any customer that walks through a WIC authorized Dollar store. I would mention that in ways that you can get involved, please feel free to reach out to me if you're doing aligned work in this space. We also have a petition that consumers can sign onto, and we already have generated over 7,000 emails to Dollar General and that number is still ticking, so please join our coordinated advocacy efforts and we also working on a sign-on letter in terms of coalition building to get organizations and researchers who are supporting healthy food access through dollar stores. So, I encourage everyone to check out our resources and again, please be in contact if you have any questions. Bio   Sara John is a Senior Policy Scientist at the Center for Science in Public Interest and leads the organization's federal policy and private sector efforts to create a healthier, more equitable food retail environment. Prior to joining CSPI, Sara served as the Evaluation Director for SNAP incentive programs across New England and worked at the Partnership for a Healthier America. She has a PhD in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition from Tufts Friedman School, an MS in Education from Johns Hopkins University, and a BS in Biology and BA in Public Policy from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

How did the Nutrition Facts label come to appear on millions of food products in the U.S.? As Auburn University historian, Xaq Frohlich, reveals in his new book, "From Label to Table: Regulating Food in America in the Information Age," these seemingly innocuous strips of information reveal the high stakes politics that can help determine what we eat and why. In today's podcast, Frohlich will explore popular ideas about food, diet, and responsibility for health that have influenced what goes on the Nutrition Facts panel and who gets to decide that. Interview Summary   I'm really happy to have you on today's podcast. So, why don't we just jump right in. What would you say are the key historical moves in the food policy arena with respect to labeling?   One of the things I talk about in this book is an informational turn in food politics. And what I'm specifically referring to there is a shift since the 1970s from an older way that the Food and Drug Administration approached regulating the market to its current focus on informative labeling. So, at the beginning of my book and at the beginning of the story, in the 1930s, 1940s, the FDA was trying to handle this big market full of lots of different products, especially packaged and processed foods. And under the legislation in the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, authorized food standards. And the idea was that for any mass-produced food, they would hold hearings. People would say, "This is what we think the food should look like." They would then publish the standards, which would look kind of like a list of ingredients and ranges of the ingredients they could use, and then say, "Okay, all foods have to be the standard form of food. If not, we will either remove them from the market or call them imitation." And this was a system they used for decades, and it created a lot of problems. Then, late 1960s people started to get unhappy about this. There was this big turning point connected to the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health where Nixon administration brought together lots of nutrition scientists. And one of the conclusions that came out of that is we need to change the FDA's system. And so, in the early 70s, the Food and Drug Administration says, "We're going to pivot away from these food standards and start focusing on informative labels." This is when you get the requirement of ingredient labeling on all foods, including standard foods, and you also get the first voluntary nutrition information label. My book looks at this change in strategies away from standardizing foods towards standardizing information about foods and creating these kinds of consumer-oriented information labels.   I love the fact that you helped us understand this idea of the information age, because once you read that and think, "Oh, well you're talking about something about the internet," but it's even more foundational about how we communicate what is a product. I found it really fascinating to read in your book where you talked about what I perceive to be really laborious conversations around what exactly is peanut butter or some other product. I mean, it seems like that took up a lot of space. Do you think that was ultimately productive? Is that the reason why we see this information change? Or was there something important about that effort on its own?   So, there were advantages and disadvantages of the old food standards approach. One of the advantages is that everybody who wanted to raise an issue was invited to attend those hearings. This meant that you could have really colorful exchanges. There is one woman who ran a homemaker's association who would show up and she would get a lot of attention because she was very colorful in her criticisms of proposed standards. It could be a very democratic space in that sense. On the other hand, they could run on for years. And there were contentious hearings where you would have dozens of lawyers from different food companies. It was held like a kind of legal court proceedings, and there would be objections, and counterevidence, and counter-witnesses. One of the complaints in the 1970s is that this was another example of an overly burdensome centralized government agency and process that was expensive. And the switch towards using informative labels and moving away from food standards was seen to be a kind of lighter touch form of governance. The disadvantage is that now you have an even more backstage discussion about what goes on this label, and it means that consumers have even less access to who's making those decisions for them.   Can you talk a little bit more about that? What's in the backstage that we're not privy to?   I think one of the misconceptions about the food label is that it is this window into the food, right? Especially something like nutrition and ingredients. You look at packaged food and you don't know what you're seeing, and therefore if they require the company to print the ingredients and nutrition, then you can look at that and now you have the kind of answer. In practice, it's more complicated deciding what kind of information appears there, which nutrients do you want to do, how do you calibrate those in terms of the daily diet? Or how do you name the ingredients? Do you use the scientific name? Do you use the common name? Those questions are decided by people backstage. This could be FDA regulators. They could allow companies to make those decisions. And so, the label is actually a translation of those kinds of decisions. One of the arguments in my book is that you can't get away from the values of these expert communities in deciding what goes on that label.   Yes, and thank you for that. I am really intrigued by how you are talking about the role of FDA, and I want to come back to that in a moment, this sort of panel of experts, and something that we think is so foundational, foods that we eat. We should know what they are. We believe we know what they are. They're part of our larger history. But what I'm also hearing is actually government organizations mediate what we understand food is. I'm intrigued to learn some more. Given what you've learned about the history of food labeling, what do labels offer as a policy tool?   Often the way people see food labels is that is a kind of knowledge fix, especially with packaged foods. Because you don't know what's in them, there is this sense that there's a kind of uneven playing ground between the producer and the consumer, right? The producer knows how it was produced. They know what's in the food. They're selling this to consumers and there's concern that they might mislead the consumer. And so, this idea is that the label is a kind of technical solution to that market problem. And in many ways, it can work this way, but there's actually a kind of translation work involved in there. It's a more complicated story than just a knowledge fix. And in fact, a lot of studies that look at how people read ingredient labels, and especially nutrition labels, will talk about how they fail to understand this or that aspect of the nutrition label. Because consumers are dealing with decision fatigue, they're in this, what people call the attention economy, where they don't have a lot of time to look at labels. So often, reading the label is the least important part of food labels for policy. In fact, over and over again, in this history, I discovered that when the FDA was introducing changes to the food label, regulators and others would comment on how actually the biggest impact is that it would lead to companies changing the foods before. So, even if consumers aren't reading the label, they're affected by those changes because companies are reformulating the foods.   I'm really interested in that. I know that there is a body of literature that talks about this idea that by having to put the information out in the public, what you're saying is companies reformulate because they want their products to look better, or maybe they actually are making the products better. Is that a fair assessment?   I think this is where you get into the tricky aspect of what we mean by better. So, taking the example of the nutrition label, one of the problems that you get with the beginning of nutrition labeling in the 1970s is it really favors a particular idea of what is better. So, if better means more of certain nutrients like protein or vitamins, and less of other nutrients like fats, or certain bad fats and sugars, then companies might reprocess a food, right? They'll take out sugar. They'll take out fat in it. And maybe they'll add in other ingredients to make it taste good anyway. And they'll kind of game that profile. And for people who are concerned about nutritional health in this sort of sense of nutrition, this might be great. But if your idea of good for you is less processed, you know this older idea of wholesome, you have this idea that the food was made in a kind of traditional sense, now you have a less good food. One of the problems that nutrition labeling raises is that it's not that it's misleading consumers, but it's getting them to focus on certain attributes of the food and not thinking about other things that may be important for health.   That's really helpful. I'm doing some work on date labels, and I've been thinking about this idea of how far can these labels go, and helping people make the best choices possible, however we define best. And that these labels are, as you said, the beginning. They're definitely not the end of that decision or that process. So, this is a really a rich conversation. I want to ask you about misconceptions. What would you say is the biggest misconception about food labels from the point of view of consumers? You gave us a little bit of an idea about that, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.   One of the misconceptions about the food label is that it is this window into the food, right, especially something like nutrition and ingredients. When consumers receive this information label, they often take it at face value as sort of, "I now have this information about the food." And therefore, if they require the company to print the ingredients and nutrition, then you can look at that and now you have the kind of answer. In practice, it's more complicated. Deciding what kind of information appears there, which nutrients do you want to do, how do you calibrate those in terms of the daily diet? Or how do you name the ingredients? Do you use the scientific name? Do you use the common name? Those questions are getting decided by people backstage. This could be FDA regulators. They could allow companies to make those decisions. And so the label is actually a translation of those kinds of decisions.   One of my arguments is that you can't get away from the values of these expert communities in deciding what goes on that label for the informative label. And in my book, I really try to argue that it's not just a kind of conduit into the product. It's not like suddenly you have the information. Instead, you need to read these labels as kind of value and political discussions among people who often have to make compromises. My favorite example of this with the nutrition facts panel was a decision to use the 2,000-calorie amount for daily values for the average American consumer. I remember interviewing a guy at the FDA, and I asked him about that, and he said, "Well, actually that's not accurate." It's not like if you averaged out everyone's caloric needs. Even in the 1990s, based on what they knew then, it would've been 2,000. For men, it was much higher. It was like 2,350. For women, it was lower. But they settled on 2,000 as a kind of pragmatic decision for multiple reasons. One, they hoped that if it was rounded, consumers wouldn't think of it as like a precise tool and it would be easier to do math with. And also it was on the low end of what you should get. So, the idea was that this would discourage people from eating too much. So, they made all these kinds of compromises in it. But if consumers see this and they see it as a kind of science, then they tend to think it's more rational than it really is.   And that's the kind of thing I was most surprised about from doing this history was discovering that actually consumers aren't reading these labels as rational calculators. They're reading them emotionally. And the best example of this I got was interviewing Burkey Belser, who recently passed, and he was the head of the design firm that designed the nutrition box label. And he described it as a government brand. And he said, you know, "Seeing this thing everywhere, it's not just about how people read it. It's there in the background, kind of like brands and logos." And it's that emotional relationship to the information that I think policymakers really need to think about with labels, not just seeing them as a kind of rational decision-making device, but as something that is shaping consumers' emotional decisions about the food they eat.   You've raised an important point for me, because I was going to ask, what do you think policy makers may be misunderstanding about these labels? I'm wondering, do policy makers understand these labels as a brand, a government brand? Are they capturing or dealing with the things that you're just talking about, the emotional connection that consumers have with these products or these labels?   I think that one of the advantages of labeling, and I think this is why the FDA started looking at it more as an important tool in the 1970s, is that it's a lot easier to focus on the package as a kind of site where you can police market behavior. So, it's much easier to do that than to go into manufacturer's factories to kind of say, "This is good, that is bad." You can use it as a kind of accountability device. I think from the point of view of regulation in a big national and increasingly international market, that's one of its advantages. The limitations of this for reforming food systems in my opinion, is it also ends up being a kind of outsourcing of work onto consumers, right? Instead of saying, "We want to make sure foods are safe and nutritious. We want to avoid certain kinds of ingredients or discourage certain kinds of unhealthy foods." Governments are basically saying, "All right, we're going to put it on the label and let the consumer do that work." And I think that is one limitation of them. The other thing that I also think happens is it's not just outsourcing to the consumers, but it's also putting that in the market and using the market to solve those kinds of problems. And for mandatory labels, like the nutrition facts panel, this means that consumers who have the time and resources might end up adopting a healthier diet because of it. But many consumers who don't have those kinds of choices aren't going to be helped by this informative fix. For voluntary labels, and this is something I talk about at the end of the book. I call them lifestyle labels or risk labels, depending on what you're talking about. So organic, carbon footprint labels, concerned about the environment, these kinds of third-party certificate labels, it becomes this kind of opt out. Instead of reforming the political system, you're providing this kind of market upsell option for consumers to have those resources.   I'm intrigued to think about the FDA in its historical place. Your book provides a history of past FDA activities on food labeling, and you talked wonderfully about those already. How does it speak to current policy concerns at the FDA? And you were giving a little bit of an indicator of that with the front-of-pack labeling. I'm wondering are there other spaces about FDA concerns today?   I think if you're really committed to reforming the food system, then food labels are only ever just the start to that reform work. They can't be treated as the solution. And I think in the past you have had a lot of cases, particularly with public government, where the label is put forward as the kind of answer to a political problem. And then they don't think about the need for staff to keep the education up about the label or enforcement. And so, they don't treat it like the beginning of that reform work.   One of the things I find really exciting about what your book is doing, that you're a historian and you're talking about the development of this policy and it has important implications. What do you think history offers us in the current policy discourse? What do you bring to the table that we miss out by not talking with historians?   So, when I was doing this research, this event that I didn't know happened that turned out to be really important in this story was this White House conference in 1969. At the time, the impetus for this conference was the sort of sudden public awareness of ongoing hunger in America. In the 1960s, people who were involved in civil rights realized that if they could focus on the issue of hunger, they could get a broader attention to problems of poverty and disparity in America. In 1968, this became a big public issue because of widely watched TV documentary. Everyone was talking about hunger and its connection to poverty and inequalities in America. And when the Nixon administration created the White House conference, the language of poverty and the concern of poverty was central. Then, there was a kind of shift over the course of the conference. Initially it's talking about hunger and how that's a malnutrition issue related to poverty. But by the end of the conference, they're starting to focus on consumer education, better labels, better information. And in some sense, we haven't got away from that framing shift. I really saw this recently with the Biden administration. It held its own White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health in 2022, and nowhere in its report was there a mention or discussion of poverty. They were really focused on foods as a vehicle for health, improving labels instead of talking about poverty as the kind of root concerns. Again, the kind of overall framing is if we engineer better foods in this nutritional sense, or we give you better information labels, then we'll solve the health problems America's facing. I think that that policy focus is ignoring the broader context of how Americans eat and how they're making their decisions. So, I see my book as kind of providing a broader lens to think of the issues, not just historically, but also looking beyond sort of the field of nutrition or considerations of government, but looking at how these different institutions are all interacting with each other to shape policy. I think the two important things here are about what history can offer in present policy. One is that I actually think a lot of people working on these issues today have no idea where they came from. I've experienced this as I've given talks. I've had people in industry, or people who work on policies sort of say, "I didn't realize that that was where the standard for milk came from," when they were talking about recent changes in terms of the nomenclature for milk. Or "I didn't understand that," you know, "healthy, as it was defined in the 1990s, was in the context of one kind of health war, but today there's a kind of new public health concern about other types of foods." So, part of it is that I think that policymakers will really appreciate getting that older context. I often call it institutional memory because you lose that institutional memory. The other thing that's really striking is, at the beginning of my story in the 1930s and 1940s, nobody was using words like saturated fats or carbohydrates. It was a different era and people were really talking about food differently. So, it's useful. I think of it as like study abroad. You know, you go to this place, you see that people are talking very differently, and then you come back to your home country, you know, or the president, and you realize, "Oh," you know, "there's this aspect of food that I was taking for granted that has really changed in the last," you know, "five, six decades."   Bio   Xaq Frohlich is Associate Professor of History of Technology at Auburn University. He works on issues relating to food and risk at the intersections of science, law, and markets. His research focuses on the historical intersections of science, law, and markets, and how the three have shaped our modern, everyday understanding of food, risk, and responsibility. His work explores questions relating to consumerism and the changing relationships between the state, experts, and the public in the production of everyday knowledge: how do we “know” what we know about food and its relation to health? In what ways has our informational environment for food changed with the industrialization of food production and retailing? Frohlich earned his PhD in history, anthropology, and STS at MIT. He teaches courses on food and power, the intersections of science, technology and the law, and the history of business and capitalism.  

In 2022, Congress established Summer EBT, the first new permanent federal food assistance program in almost 50 years. The authorization of Summer EBT represents a historic investment in the nutrition and wellbeing of almost 30 million children who will qualify for the program. But states that piloted Summer EBT, or operated Pandemic EBT programs in the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic know that getting these benefits into the hands of families will involve overcoming complex challenges related to data and technology. That's why Code for America and No Kid Hungry, a campaign of Share Our Strength joined forces to create the Summer EBT Playbook, a comprehensive free resource designed to help state agencies plan for and implement a human-centered Summer EBT program. Today we will talk with Eleanor Davis, director of Government Innovation on the Safety Net team at Code for America. In her role, she helps government agencies adopt best practices for human-centered digital benefit delivery.   Interview Summary Why is Summer EBT significant? Well, I think you gave us a good intro. Summer EBT is a brand-new benefit program and it's designed to reduce childhood hunger during the summer months by providing families with a monthly grocery benefit to feed their kids when they're not receiving meals at school. So, almost 30 million kids in the US receive free or reduced-price meals at school, but during the summer many of them struggle to access nutritious food because they're not receiving those meals at school. School is out of session. Summer EBT is designed to give families $120 per child in the summer to help them buy groceries and it really has the potential to dramatically reduce childhood hunger. It's a tremendous moment because Summer EBT is the first new permanent federal food assistance program in almost 50 years. For those of us in government or in the food access space, this is really I would say, a once in a generation opportunity to shape the implementation of the program to make sure it really meets the needs of families and children. So, why did Code for America and Share Our Strength develop the Summer EBT Playbook? What was the challenge? Code for America is a 501 C3 nonprofit organization. We partner with government at all levels to make the delivery of public services more equitable, more effective, and more accessible using technology and data. And we've spent the last decade helping states deliver safety net benefit programs in more human-centered ways. The Summer EBT program, as we mentioned, has immense potential, but we also know that states are going to encounter many challenges in implementing this program in 2024 and beyond. I think standing up a brand-new benefits program is a huge undertaking generally, but Summer EBT will present some really specific challenges to states and we learned a lot about this back in 2020. So, at the start of the pandemic, Congress authorized an emergency response program called Pandemic EBT, that was very similar to Summer EBT in many ways. It was the same idea, really sort of providing families with a grocery benefit while schools are closed because of COVID-19. And so, in 2020 and 2021, Code for America worked directly with about a dozen states to help them deliver Pandemic EBT benefits. And through that process we saw very up close what made that program so hard to implement. Delivery of the program really relies on effective data and technology systems. So, really being able to find the right data in state systems and use that data to deliver benefits. And a lot of these challenges will also be true for Summer EBT, right? It's a very similar delivery process. So, states really needed help planning for Summer EBT and really designing systems and processes that will help them operationalize this brand-new program so that it can really live up to the promise spelled out in the policy. So, that's why we partnered with the No Kid Hungry Campaign. We really wanted to develop a resource that would help states design effective and human centered Summer EBT programs. And our goal was really just to sort of help as many states as possible implement this program. This is really interesting, and I would like to understand a little bit more. What challenges did states face in implementing the pandemic EBT and how do you see that showing up in the Summer EBT? I mean is it just getting the right software or is it something else? There are so many really, it's less about the software and more about the data. So fundamentally, I think some of the biggest challenges that we walk through in the playbook certainly, but that we know states are going to struggle with is really around using data to determine who is eligible for Summer EBT. So maybe just taking a step back, there are sort of two pathways for confirming who's eligible for Summer EBT. The first is called streamline certification. Basically, this means that the state uses the data that it already must determine if a family is eligible for Summer EBT and then issues those benefits automatically. So, for example, if a child is already participating in a program that should make them eligible like SNAP or in some states Medicaid, they should automatically receive Summer EBT. And similarly, if a child is in the foster system or is in a Head Start program or if a child has applied for and is therefore receiving already free and reduced-price meals at school, those children should receive Summer EBT automatically. But children who can't be certified as eligible through any of those pathways will have to apply for the Summer EBT benefits. So that's sort of the other eligibility route. States must provide a way for families to directly apply if they can't certify them through streamline certification. So, the idea is that the majority of children who are eligible for the program should actually get benefits automatically through streamline certification. And that's really fantastic, right? We should always be looking for ways to reduce the administrative burden that low-income families face when they aim to gain access to programs they're entitled to. So theoretically, if a state already has enough information to say this family is eligible for Summer EBT, they should just send that money out automatically and without the family having to do anything. That's sort of the best-case scenario. On the state side though, this is actually really complicated to do. The data that states need to use to determine that eligibility is all over the place, right? It's in Head Start programs, it's in the foster care system, it's in a state's SNAP or Medicaid eligibility system and it's in the schools, and school data presents really specific challenges for states to be able to use. So, states therefore have to identify where is all this data? What systems is it in? What agencies have this data? They then must aggregate all that data in one place that's central and usable. They have to clean and de-duplicate and match all that data across those different data sources. And then of course they have to deal with any inaccuracies or gaps in the data. So, data collection, data aggregation, data management, these are really sort of the core challenges of implementing this program. How do you collect all of this information into one place and use it to deliver benefits to families? This is really one of the core challenges that we focus on in the playbook. It's really helpful to hear how you all are helping states think through this. And I would imagine that there are some differences across states. How in the playbook have you been able to best manage the uniqueness of these different states? It's really tricky. I think we always say if you've seen one state system, you've seen one state system, no two states really look the same. And I'm using state really as a shorthand, tribal nations can implement this program, territories, US territories can also implement this program. So, there really is no one standard way that states backend infrastructure looks. And even when it comes to implementing this program, Summer EBT, different state agencies are sort of taking the lead in different states on administering this program. So, I think we're doing our best to help understand what unique challenges states are facing while also recognizing that the sort of themes, the main things, the primary challenges are going to remain the same basically across a lot of states. And so, we are really sort of in the playbook offering best practices, recommendations that we know will be universally helpful no matter really what a backend state system looks like. Can you give us a little bit of the flavor of those best practices? Absolutely. So, I want to talk about a couple here because this program gets really weedy really fast. I think the first one that we really talk about is client support. As we've been discussing, this is a really complicated program to administer. It's also brand new, right? So, families are going to need support navigating this program. They're going to have questions; they're going to be confused. Even after multiple years of Pandemic EBT, many families were still confused about why they did or did not end up receiving benefits. So, who is eligible? Can I expect these benefits? How do I get them? These are all questions that families are going to have. So, states need to be prepared to provide really consistent and clear communication to families. And they also need to have really easily accessible pathways for families to reach out and ask questions when they have them. And we can already really anticipate what a lot of those questions are going to be. One of the biggest points of confusion for families is going to be, "Do I need to apply or not?" Right? We talked earlier about the two different pathways streamline certification or filling out an application. From the state perspective it's pretty clear, but as a family, how do I know if I can expect to receive these benefits automatically or if I need to apply? And the complicated policy language here, of course you know about streamline certification, families don't understand that, right? We have to sort of really communicate clearly with families. I think one example of this is families whose children attend community eligibility provision schools or CEP schools; these are schools that serve free meals to all of their students. They're usually schools that are in low-income areas and because a certain percentage of their students are categorically eligible for free meals because they participate in other programs like SNAP or TANF, they're able to just give free meals to all of their students. So, families at CEP schools have never had to apply for school meals, their kids just get them. But because these families haven't applied for free or reduced-price meals, they're actually going to have to apply for Summer EBT. You can see how from a family perspective, this starts to get really confusing from a messaging standpoint, right? We're telling families if your income was below this level, at any point in the previous school year, you're going to be eligible for Summer EBT. But if you haven't applied to free or reduced-price meals this year, you have to apply unless you already received SNAP or TANF, in which case don't apply, you'll get benefits automatically. So, the messaging starts to get really confusing. How states communicate with families about this program and how to access it really matters. So, in the playbook we have a lot of resources on best practices for community outreach, how to talk about this program, how to leverage many methods of communication, right? Like email, text, phone calls, to really let families know about this program and give them the information they need to navigate it. Wow, that's great. And it's interesting to hear you talk about this because early on I had the impression you were really worried about the data, but you're also really concerned about how people function in the system. So, I've heard you mention this idea of human-centered design and human-centered digital benefit delivery. Can you explain a little bit more about what that really means and why it's important? Human-centered design really just means creating things that really meet people's needs and that are really easy for people to use and access. And that's really important, right? Just like the example I was just sharing with this program. It's a complicated program and if the systems aren't designed in a way that makes it easy for families to access, easy for families to interact with, they're not going to see the benefit of the program ultimately, and the program isn't going to meet its goals, which is reducing childhood hunger. So, the principles of human-centered design are really about thinking through what do families need when it comes to interacting with this program and how do we design the program in such a way that gives them those things? I think a great example of this is the application, right? We have a lot of best practices in the playbook related to the application component of the program. I mentioned that while many families will receive benefits automatically, the regulations for Summer EBT do require that many families will have to apply. So, states have to design applications and there are a lot of considerations that need to go into creating an application in a human-centered way, right? It needs to be accessible, which means it needs to be available in a lot of different languages, which can be really tough. California has 19 threshold languages that people speak. So, we need to translate this into the languages that people speak. The questions need to be written in what we call plain language, which is just conversational, the way that people actually talk so that they're really easy to understand and they need to flow in a way that makes sense to someone filling out the application. And this really matters because if the questions are hard to understand or hard to answer, it's likely that more people will answer incorrectly or submit the wrong answer. Meaning that they might not get the benefit even if they are in fact eligible. And then we also talked a lot about the importance of mobile accessibility. And this is really critical because more and more low-income families are what's called smartphone dependent, which means they don't have internet in their homes, but they do have a smartphone. So, they rely on that smartphone to do things online like fill out applications. But a lot of government websites are not built to fit the smaller screen on a mobile phone. And that makes it really hard for people to do things like fill out online applications for benefit programs. So, it's really important to make sure that the online application is designed to work on a mobile phone because that's how we know most families will be accessing it. I think the application component demonstrates a lot of the sort of thoughtful design work that's going to be required to create a program that's truly accessible for the people that need it. I'm really appreciative of this. And as I heard you talk about this, especially with mobile devices and I was thinking about younger folks, but I also know that there are grandparents or older adults who will care for young children who may be eligible. What considerations do you make for older adults or people with disabilities that may make using certain devices difficult? That's a great question. We have done a fair amount of research on this and what we found is that the sort of principles of human-centered design we really need to design for everyone. And that means designing for accessibility or ability, right? Designing for multiple languages, designing for whatever device people have access to, designing for different levels of comfort with technology. I think we really believe in the sort of principle that if you design it for the person that's going to have the most trouble accessing the program, you make it easier for everybody, right? So, we really think about the highest need population and design for that population and then really believe that we sort of make it more accessible for all populations that need to access the program. This has been really helpful for me to consider how government can work for people by using human-centered design to really move the process of applying and attaining these assets or these benefits, easier for folks. And I'm really grateful to hear the work that you all are doing with Share Our Strength. I got to ask this last question. What are your hopes for Summer EBT in 2024 and even beyond? I love this question. I have so many, I spent a lot of time so far talking about how hard this program is going to be for states to implement and it will be, I don't want to downplay the significant effort that it's going to take for states to stand up this program and deliver benefits, especially in this first year. That said, in my experience, people who work in government are incredibly resilient and resourceful and they are incredibly creative problem solvers. Pandemic EBT was really hard to implement, and states were trying to figure out how to deliver that program in the first few months of a global pandemic where everything was shut down and there was sort of historic need for benefit programs. But by the time that program ended, every single state had delivered Pandemic EBT benefits to families. So Summer EBT, especially in these first few years of its implementation, will be challenging certainly, but it won't be impossible. States have really proved that they can do this, right? States are good at this. So, I guess my greatest hope is that states are able to address many of the challenges of implementation this year in order to put benefits in the hands of families and that more states opt in, in future years, right? So that eventually all families get to benefit from this program. Ultimately a policy is only as good as its implementation, right? We have to help states design programs that are effective for them to implement, but also that work for the families that they're serving so that the Summer EBT program can live up to the promise outlined in the policy. Bio Eleanor Davis is the Program Director for Government Innovation at Code for America. In her role, she enables government agencies to adopt best practices for human-centered digital benefit delivery. She joined Code for America from Futures Without Violence, a national public health and social justice nonprofit dedicated to ending domestic and sexual violence. There she worked for 6 years on the Public Education Campaigns & Programs team, developing public-facing initiatives that support the ability of frontline providers and advocates to more effectively respond to and prevent violence and trauma. Eleanor is a graduate of the University of Chicago where she studied Sociology and Performance Studies, and received a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley. Outside of work you can often find her gardening in her backyard or singing in her family band.  

In 2022, more than 6 million people visited farmers markets across North Carolina. Today, we're talking with a team of people who are the driving force behind the North Carolina Farmers Market Network: Maggie Funkhouser, Catherine Elkins, and Nora Rodli. The goal of the North Carolina Farmers Market is to create and support a thriving network of marketplaces for the state's local food and farm products. The nonprofit network, which was recently awarded a USDA Farmers Market Promotion Capacity-building grant, will provide education, programming, and partnership development assistance to farmers market managers, including resources to support historically underserved populations. Interview Summary   I would like to take a moment to actually get to know you all a little bit better. Tell us a little bit about how you got involved in farmers markets. Catherine, let's start with you.   Catherine - Sure. I've been doing this for the longest, I suppose. I went with my mom many times to Amish markets in Pennsylvania where I grew up. She was not a very good gardener. But we could buy everything that she liked at the market. I also worked a bit at the Carrboro Farmers Market, and I then got an opportunity to work with the Morehead City Saturday Market, a one-year lifespan. And the Old Beaufort Farmers Market we started up the next year, that's now in its 10th year. That makes me proud. I liked that market a lot. Managed it for two years, and I'm still one of those devotees that go on vacation and have to look up the closest farmers market just to check out new stuff.   Maggie - Like most managers, I did not go to school to be a farmers market manager. It kind of found me, I guess you could say. I went to graduate school directly after undergrad for classical languages. Then when I moved back to the Triangle, I just sort of started getting involved more and more with local food. I worked in restaurants, I worked in coffee shops, and one time I worked in an artisan bakery; I managed a culinary garden, and I just kind of kept getting drawn into different parts of the community in our local food system in the Triangle. In 2019, I applied for and was offered a job at the Carrboro Farmers Market as the assistant manager. I worked there for about a year. Then in 2020, I took over as the manager, and I've been here ever since.   Nora - So, I actually come to farmers markets as a farmer. For the past 25 years, I've farmed in various places around the country, mostly New Mexico and Hawaii and now North Carolina. That has given me the ability to see and experience farmers markets in a lot of different manners, whether it be a small market or a large market, and urban versus rural settings. I feel like I am uniquely on board as a cheering squad for farmers markets.   Thank you. We all need a cheerleader on our side, so it's good to hear that. I really would love to ask each of you more questions about your past because there are some interesting connections that I hear. Catherine, the Marine Lab is in Beaufort, and I'm intrigued to know more about how those relationships develop. Maggie, I would love to talk more about your training as someone in the classics has influenced the way you think about this. I mean, this idea of food and agriculture is deeply within that literature, and so that's really fascinating. And, Nora, I just can't wait to learn more about Hawaii. But I can't do that right now. We have other things to focus on. However, if those answers come up in your other responses, please feel free. I'm intrigued to talk to you all a little bit more about the North Carolina Farmers Market Network. What is it and who does it serve?   Maggie - I'll kind of kick us off talking about the network a little bit, and maybe my colleagues can chime in. So, we incorporated this year as a 501 nonprofit under the name North Carolina Farmers Market Network. NCFMN, for short. That's our kind of alphabet-soup title that I might say really, really fast. But there had kind of been plans and thoughts to form a statewide network in North Carolina for a long time. We gained a lot of momentum in 2020 because in 2020 we started, with the help of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, the State Extension and RAFI, when the pandemic hit, we started having these weekly Zoom calls that were specifically for farmers market managers. The reason we started them in March 2020 was because we were all really, really unsure about what was happening and what was going to happen to the farmers market spaces. Many of our markets across the state were shut down. Many of them had a lot of additional regulations and policies and emergency protocols that were really hard to implement, especially if there were no permanent staff or volunteer staff or part-time staff. In my position, I'm lucky enough to be full-time, but many market managers are not. So, we started out as a rag-tag group of market managers that were just trying to stay open and operating in a really difficult time. We had weekly calls, and we went over different policies we had, different marketing techniques we were using to communicate to the public about our pandemic response. I really clung to it as a source of support during that time. Then over the next couple of years, we started meeting biweekly, then we started meeting monthly. We kind of realized that we had a lot to talk about and a lot to share. Our Zoom name was COVID-19 Calls for Farmers Markets. But what started out as COVID-19 Calls for Farmers Markets turned into resource sharing, professional development, learning things like grant writing, bookkeeping, managing conflicts. And last year we decided to make it official. So, we applied for our FMPP grant, our Farmers Market Promotion Program grant, through the USDA, and we were awarded it. And then we were on the path to nonprofit incorporation.   Maggie, that is really fascinating, and it's interesting to hear how a crisis of COVID-19 drew a lot of you together. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like it was beneficial in terms of the work you were doing. And it may have also had some personal benefits - just being connected to other people who were in the same field. And you all were able to talk about how you were managing things. Did that take place? Was there more than just sort of, "Here's how to manage your books," or "Here's how to manage conflict"?   Maggie - For sure. The camaraderie was just incredible. Farmers market managers, it's kind of a funny position, and maybe Nora can speak to this a little bit as a farmer who sells at a farmers market, and maybe a different perspective about what a market manager does or the role they occupy. But we do a lot of different things. On any given day we can be planning special events, applying for grants, communicating with vendors, communicating with our boards. And so, to have connections, especially for me being in the Triangle where we have a lot of farmers markets, I had never really met their managers or interacted with them. And now we're total pals. It really was an opportunity for me to share experiences with people who have very similar jobs, and those jobs are often singular in their workplace.   Nora, since she called you out, I'm interested, from a farmer's perspective, I would love to hear your thoughts, and, of course, Catherine, please feel free to join in.   Nora - Yes, I'd love to share. I feel like before meeting this network, and I've only been with them since April, I have to admit that as a farmer, I showed up at the farmers market and thought that's when the market began and didn't really think much beyond who was behind making it happen until I got there. And I've learned and been humbled by how much of an oversight that is. I definitely am guilty of not appreciating all of the work that goes into making sure that farmers markets happen. And I've spent the last six months learning about all the details of things that market managers deal with that farmers have no idea. And it's similar to farmers, maybe, in that way where we wear many hats. And so, I feel like I've learned, one, to appreciate them, but, two, there's not a lot of collective appreciation by anybody that goes on for farmers markets managers. And so, I think that by them grouping together every month because it can be such a siloed experience, it just seems like this really beautiful connection where, when you do your job well as a market manager, there's nothing, like no one says a thing. No complaints mean success. And so, here's a group that can give you compliments, you can empathize with one another, and know that you have each other's back. It's just a beautiful network.   Catherine - I think also what we noticed was that many times the overlap and potentially collaborative nature amongst managers is really great. These are not competitive people. They have secrets to share about what their special events might be, and not everybody has to hold Tomato Day on the same day. Or they may know people at City Hall that are the right people for this kind of permit or may as well share these things. They're all on our same perspective. And plus, that, we found that there were many other states that had networks or associations. So, we could follow them, especially during a period of crisis and near panic as COVID was. Everybody's just glued to their screens looking for information. And the states that had robust networks or associations already in place seemed to be able to help their markets succeed really well.   Thank you all for sharing this. It's really fascinating to learn about the development of this farmers market network and to know that there are other farmers market networks in other states, and it's great to hear of the learnings that you all gained from each other within the state and across states. So, this is really helpful. I've got to ask this question. I mean, it sounds like what drew you all together was the pandemic and thinking about how to navigate policies. Now that, I pray, we're through the hard part of COVID, and I say that cautiously, what are things that are on your agenda now? What do you hope to see be different?   Maggie - Catherine kind of spoke to this. Even though farmers markets are separate spaces, our market is within 20 miles of four other farmers markets. But the goal is not to compete with them. The goal is to lift up farmers markets as accessible community spaces and viable spaces for our farmers to make direct sales. So, for us, we really want to strengthen that local food ethic across the state of North Carolina. Because selling at farmers markets is an extremely viable way that small-scale farmers can succeed in North Carolina. And so, if you have a market manager that is leaving after six months because they're overwhelmed or they haven't received a lot of institutionalized knowledge or training or what have you, then that's where we can step in and say, "We have training, we can give you information, we can share resources, we can provide a network to you." Our big, impactful goal that we're working for is having a statewide nutrition incentive program, and I think Virginia calls theirs Fresh Match. Many statewide organizations have Double Bucks, Fresh Bucks, Market Match, whatever you want to call it, where they provide a dollar-for-dollar match for nutrition incentive programs like SNAP EBT or the Farmers Market Nutrition Program. And as of right now, farmers markets in North Carolina, most of them are fending for themselves. There are a few regional systems like in the western part of the state, the Triangle area farmers markets, Mecklenburg County farmers markets, that are working together. But we really want to have a statewide network where farmers markets across North Carolina can offer nutrition incentives to shopping at farmers markets.   Thank you for that. I'm really happy to hear how you all are working towards addressing policy questions and thinking about who the farmers markets can better serve by using programs like Double Up Bucks or the nutrition incentive programs, and seeing that work across the state. Because there are some significant differences in economic realities across the state. So, that's wonderful to hear you all are doing that work. I'd just like to take a step back, and I'm going to go back to you, Maggie. Can you talk to us about the role of farmers markets in communities? What role do they play?   Maggie - We talk about this a lot in the farmers market space. Because from the outside, farmers markets are spaces of commerce. They're a space where farmers can get together. Maybe you don't realize there's a level of organization behind it. But, in reality, anyone who is a regular at farmers markets knows that they are not just a space of commerce, that they are a community space. They are a third space, and an opportunity to socialize, meet your local farmers. And at our market, we were founded in the late '70's, we have customers who have been coming to our market for decades. They've known some of our farms for years, they've seen them get married and have kids, they've seen their loved ones pass away, they've seen them go through hardships, and seen them go through multiple recessions at this point. It's a really unique space, especially in this kind of era where there is an increasingly globalized economy where you can order one-day shipping for everything you need. To be able to meet the person that's growing your food or baking your bread is really unique. Many farmers markets promote the sense of community, and engagement between consumer and producer. A lot of us offer different types of community programming to kind of bolster that. So, things like kids' activities, encouraging healthy nutrition and things like senior days, educational events. Catherine named Tomato Day, which happens to be a very big day for us. And we've kind of touched on Double Bucks and food access, and that's another real priority for a farmers market. And, also, I didn't mention this when we were talking about the pandemic, but we were looped under grocery stores as essential for the state of North Carolina. And so, that kind of maybe speaks to how we feel, and I hope others in our community feel about farmers markets as well.   Wow, that's really fascinating. I didn't appreciate that farmers markets were treated like grocery stores as essential workers. That's really interesting. I'm intrigued, Nora and Catherine, what about your thoughts about the role that farmers markets may play in communities?   Catherine - Well, Nora would agree with that. The farmers are their own community, and they appreciate the opportunity to meet each other across the aisle, across the tables. "How's things going on your farm?" "Let me tell you about what's happening at my place." Farming can be a really solitary profession. There's many, many hours spent as just one person on a tractor, one person planting seeds, one person weeding. To have the camaraderie and the opportunity to meet up with your peers, that's pretty powerful on a Saturday morning. It is a lot of time sometimes to give up. The better farmers markets, of course, are the ones where you're talking directly to the farmer. How did they prepare this soil, or are they certified naturally grown? What does that mean to them on their farm? You get to actually have that conversation with a client, but only in person. So, it's a big deal for the farmer.   Nora - Yes, for sure. I can speak to that. I feel like most farmers don't have a lot of neighbors close by, and we can feel isolated in our own little work bubbles. And so, a farmers market is the social event of the week for us. Many markets that I have been a part of will have a standing lunch afterwards, and it develops into friendships that are really deep. I also wanted to just mention, from the farmer perspective, the value of meeting customers who are purchasing things from me and my farm, from others and their farms. It's not just meet your farmer, but for us it's like meet your customers. And it's a chance to explain something, like why you're excited about the diversity of such and such crops, why it matters. There's only so much you can put into website descriptions and social media, and it's just two-dimensional. Having the opportunity to meet and share space, the farmers market is so essential, I think, to not only understanding our food and where it comes from and how it's produced, but increasing our value of it in this day where it seems like food is sometimes just an afterthought of convenience.   I love the idea of the farmers market being sort of like the water cooler for farmers to get together and swap stories and share in each other's joys and probably also frustrations and pains. I can imagine how that's a wonderful space for folks. I remember watching a farmers market, I was staying in a hotel, and this is how I can say it. They were there at five in the morning, and I was like, "What's all this noise?" And it was great to see all of these farmers, one, setting up, but then I could see some of those exchanges. I had a sense of like there was a real community there. So, that's wonderful. And this makes it clear that these farmers markets can be really beneficial for farmers. I'm interested to hear a little bit more on how farmers markets are supportive, if at all, to the financial wellbeing of farmers? Or is this just a labor of love? Is it just the water cooler?   Nora - I feel like they're super economically important, and I think where I would say most importantly is as new and beginning farmers who are establishing their businesses. It is an extremely unique place to be able to try out different produce offerings and pricing. It's like you're practicing everything before you're able to have a reputation to secure accounts that might be other versions of direct or indirect marketing. And so, farmers markets offer you that opportunity to gain instant feedback: "Did that sell, yes or no?" "What were the questions?" "What were the gripes?" It gives you constant feedback to be able to refine as you grow your business and make decisions for the coming years. That's not only important as a farmer independently, I was also involved with some farmer-training programs, and we really highlighted farmers markets as giving that opportunity.   That's a great insight, that it's almost like a farmer incubator. It helps farmers test out different marketing means.   Nora - 100%, yes.   I would love to hear from some of the others. Catherine, Maggie, what are your thoughts about the financial benefit of farmers markets?   Catherine - We keep talking about it, how it's so perfect for the farmer or for the producer but think of how perfect it is also for the shopper to keep coming to a place that's always trying to reinvent itself in serving better and better and better food. My local brick-and-mortar store doesn't do that. There are different priorities.   I am an economist. I am just loving this idea of price discovery in the market and the idea that each of these markets are different and they're idiosyncratic and there's something new happening. This is actually worthy of further study, but that's another conversation for another time. So, thank you for sharing.   Catherine - I think you know probably better than most that farming is not a get-rich-quick scheme by any means. There are many examples of people, friends, who are pouring their heart and soul and muscles and fingernails into growing better and better, and they have to love it. They don't usually pay themselves terribly well.   Maggie - Many of our farmers sell at multiple markets, and it's kind of funny to hear things like: "Oh, I can always sell my cucumbers at the Carrboro farmer's market, but I can never sell them at another market." It's so funny to think about how the different farmers markets are literally different economic markets, where our customer base has like their own kind of idiosyncratic interests, and maybe they love persimmons or something like that. At our farmers market, we're definitely an incubator farmers market.   I want to ask one last question. And I say it's last, and we will see how the conversation goes. Because this has been really a delight. For market managers and farmers, what does the North Carolina Farmers Market Network have to offer them? Catherine, why don't you begin?   Catherine - Just like seeing your friendly farmer neighbors in person on Saturday morning, it's also really fun and informational, educational, all those great words, to Zoom with the managers. We have a first Thursday of the month Zoom call to the managers who are members. We have a range of topics prepared. We have space for updates on legislature. We had somebody come in from Senior WIC to help us learn what they're doing for us. How to collect data from your farmers markets is really helpful for boards and municipalities and us as the network. We're going to be asking for data. How to send out a census. What's everybody doing for the kids programs that's new, haven't been tried before? So, that Thursday morning event has a good deal of value, we think. We also have a connection to Farmers Market Network, and we'll be able to offer discounts on insurances, I believe, as well as membership and access to their resource library, which is immense. We also wanted to make sure you knew that we were seeing other states like Virginia teach their managers best practices and have a market-management certificate, something we hope we can offer someday. We certainly will be hosting regional meetings to get to know the managers better. We have five regions around North Carolina. That'll be pretty educational. That'll have a program for it.   Nora - I would love to add to Catherine's description that in addition to being a place where farmers market managers come together, we're also a network that invites others who work in the food system and who are passionate about the same issues to become members. They're valuable voices to include in every conversation. For example, just the other week I sent out something, kind of a newsletter. I had some questions that market managers had been asking me about food-safety regulation issues for farmers markets, which comes up a lot. And in the responses, others who worked with NC State or Extension roles, piping in saying, "I have a good resource for that," or "Here's the answer." And I feel like the value of bringing together all these voices in the same room is huge.   Maggie - I love all of what Catherine and Nora were saying. You know, it occurs to me also that there are over 200 farmers markets in North Carolina. Supporting farmers markets is part of supporting North Carolina's agricultural fabric. It's part of supporting small-scale family farms, organic farms, spray-free farms. So, I think that if we can assist with marketing those farms and farmers markets, that feels very important and impactful to me. And then I also want to draw us back to education for larger stakeholders and maybe government organizations about some of our statewide initiatives like Double Bucks. I think that's where we can really offer a collective kind of impact, where maybe individual farmers markets don't have the capacity to work with larger stakeholders, but as a network we can come together and we can really have a much broader impact.   Bios   Maggie Funkhouser is currently serving as the interim Board Chair of the North Carolina Farmers Market Network. She is the Manager of the Carrboro Farmers' Market in Carrboro, NC, where she has worked since 2019. She was raised in North Carolina's Triangle and has worked in local food systems there for many years, including as an educator, gardener, baker, and foodservice industry worker before coming to the farmers market. She carries with her a love of writing, language, and storytelling from her classical education background, and she is drawn to foodways stories and oral histories. She is especially interested in the intersection of food access and farmers markets, as well as learning more about making farmers' markets inclusive, equitable, and accessible community spaces.  Catherine Elkins has long enjoyed the spirit and joy of farmers markets, starting in Pennsylvania visiting several Amish markets and continuing in North Carolina after moving to Chapel Hill. She volunteered for many years at the Carrboro Farmers' Market, and then after retirement, stole many of their successful strategies when designing, starting and managing the Olde Beaufort Farmers' Market. She also assists with the Carteret Local Food Network's Mobile Market which operates a red short school bus tricked out to serve many low income and senior communities in Carteret County with the freshest, most local produce and farm products from Carteret farmers. Nora Rodli is the Program Coordinator for the NC Farmers Market Network.  She brings over 25 years of agricultural experience from working as a farmer and with farmer training and education.  She also has a healthcare background as an advanced public health nurse (APHN).  Currently living and farming in Boone, NC, Nora is passionate about the primary roles that local food and increased access to local food can play in health promotion and disease prevention, resilient local food systems and vibrant inclusive communities.

It has been said many times that a picture is worth a thousand words. Our guest today is documentary photographer Sally Thomson, the creative genius behind the book "Homeground." She hopes her photos of 24 ranchers and land managers can broaden people's understanding of the impact conservation ranching has on the health of the land, the animals, and the people who live, work, and recreate in Southwestern and Rocky Mountain rangelands. Her book also includes rancher quotes and essays from land managers working to address challenges of climate change and diminishing resources and to find sustainable land management solutions. Interview Summary   I was especially interested in doing this podcast because we've had a lot of people on to talk about regenerative agriculture and there have been farmers and ranchers, some of whom we both know in common. There have been scientists who work on this, people who work with NGOs trying to promote this work, and even some policy makers, but never a photographer. It's going to be really interesting to hear from you and I look forward to what you have to say. So, we have spoken to chefs and filmmakers before who've used their arts to shape and change the food system. But as I say, you're the first photographer we've spoken to. Let's go back to the beginning. What got you interested in photography in the first place, and how can photography be used as a social or political statement?   Well, I didn't start out to become a photographer. I took a art class in college and that is really what first introduced me to photography. I was gifted a used cannon camera and a couple of lenses and I started experimenting with the camera. And I was immediately drawn to the medium. Especially watching the images kind of emerge in the dark room was just fascinating and kind of magical. But it never really occurred to me to consider photography as a career. I eventually went on to graduate school and I studied landscape architecture following my interest in environmental design and planning. I figured this would also give me the opportunity to incorporate photography into my creative process. I practiced landscape architecture for many years. But it wasn't until much later that I realized the power photography can have in storytelling, and raising awareness, and connecting me with people in places that, you know, I wouldn't have otherwise thought possible. So, up until about this point, I had used photography more for documenting my work. I had worked for a conservation organization in the Amazon Rainforest, and in order to communicate their message, I felt that photography was extremely useful in doing that. That's really what caused that shift in my thinking of turning to photography. In 2008, I created On Focus Photography, which was an effort to highlight the work of various underrepresented environmental cultural NGOs. I set about trying to learn everything I could about documentary photography at that point. That sort of led me to where I am today. What I do today is primarily divide my time between freelance assignment work, fine art and documentary photography.   Thanks for that background. It's really helpful to understand how you got to where you are now. So, let's turn to your book, "Homeground" brand new. Can you provide an overview of the book and what are some of the key things that you're hoping to convey?   Well, Homeground, of course, is a visual narrative. It explores the endangered rangelands of the American Southwest and the Rocky Mountains, and the people and the practices that are involved in restoring and sustaining these landscapes. I think one of the things that was kind of startling to me was the account of our rangelands, and I just wanted to talk about that briefly. Rangelands account for the largest share of the nation's land base. They cover more than one third of the land service in the continental US and that's according to USDA data. Unlike pastureland, rangelands consist of native vegetation, and they include a wide variety of different landscape types such as grasslands, desert shrub lands, and so on. They provide essential habitats for all kinds of living creatures, forage for livestock, and recreational opportunities. But in this country and elsewhere around the world, I learned that these lands are threatened due to land conversion, unmanaged grazing, invasive species, climate change, and things like that. The Nature Conservancy, in fact, says that grasslands represent the most threatened and least protected habitat on earth. Less than 2% worldwide and just 4% in the United States receive any kind of formal protection.   So, thinking about the Southwest and the Rocky Mountains, as you probably know, they connect vast areas of habitat and there are all kinds of organizations, federal, state, private and tribal ownership that form this mosaic of pattern on the land. But private individuals own more than half of the nation's range lands. The federal government manages about 40%, and state and local governments and tribal councils manage the remainder. I found these numbers were rather compelling, and it sort of put, for me, into perspective not only the scale and significance of these landscapes but point to the important role private land managers play in caring for this huge amount of land in our country.   There's a lot at stake, isn't there? Given how much land you're talking about and the importance of it to environment and everything else.   It is. And there's a map in the book that shows that distribution. It was based on data collected by USDA, but it was interpreted by Dave Merrill, who works for Bloomberg. It's just very insightful when you see that big square of rangeland and you realize how much landmass that really is. So, that really struck me and I wanted to make sure that people understood that.   Let's get back to the themes of your book, because I'm dying to hear about them. But tell me first, what inspired you to take on the issue of regenerative agriculture in particular?   I've always been deeply interested in the relationship between people and environment, and sort of how our actions can shape and impact the landscapes that we live in. When I moved to New Mexico in 2013, I'm originally from the East and went to school in North Carolina as a matter of fact. I got a job helping a local nonprofit organization called the Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance here in Santa Fe, SWGLA for short. I helped them to produce a short video about how some producers were beginning to manage their animals on the land by utilizing a method called Holistic Planned Grazing. This was a term first introduced by Alan Savory, decades earlier. So, for this project, I visited six ranches spread across the states of New Mexico, and Colorado and Arizona. Traveled all around interviewing these ranchers. And through that experience, I grew a deep appreciation for these people, the men and women who managed these vast and often very remote tracks of land, and their dedication to regenerating some of the most incredible degraded landscapes that I've seen. I was inspired by their dedication and their determination, and I continued to visit and photograph over the years dozens of ranches and others who worked toward improving the ecological health of our rangelands. I guess you could say that the book "Homeground" was my pandemic project because I'd always wanted to find a way to share these images and the information that I had accumulated over the years. The lockdown kind of gave me time to sit down and think about how to organize and present what I had learned. So, around 2021, I decided that I was going to create this book and it would be titled "Homeground." Home alluding to a place of belonging and identity relating to the land. This seemed appropriate for me and the way of life that I wanted to feature.   Sally, you mentioned Alan Savory and I wanted to make a note to remind our listeners that we've recorded a podcast with Alan Savory that's part of our series on regenerative agriculture. And, the person who connected the two of us, Nancy Ranney, a rancher in New Mexico, and I know somebody you know well also has been a guest for part of our podcast series, both very impressive people. So, now let's talk a little bit more about the book and some of the choices you made in producing it. Some of the book's photographs are in black and white and some are in color, that's an interesting choice you've made. Can you share some insights about the process of selecting and capturing images, why you did some in color, some in black and white, and how did these reflect the principles of regenerative ranching?   I've had a few exhibitions that revolve around this work, and most of those were all done in black and white. When I started putting the book together, I felt because you're up close and personal looking at these images, that color would be good in moving you along the story. Also, some of the images were old, some were taken back in 2013, some were taken in 2022 and 2023. So, it was sort of a way to differentiate the flow of the work. Along with the images, there are three essays in the book that are written by well-known land managers in the region. Nancy Rainey provided one of the essays on community engagement, Bob Budd, who works in Wyoming, and Tony Berg, who has also worked in Wyoming but is now in Oregon, and he's a mentor with the Savory Institute. Each of them provided insightful personal accounts of their experiences in regenerative ranching, highlighting themes of the book, which are the importance of rangeland biodiversity, healthy soils, and community engagement. Ranchers also have some quotations in the book, but I worked quite closely with various state federal agencies and local nonprofits and academic institutions, and there's a lot happening out there in terms of all these other people that are involved in helping ranchers to manage their lands more sustainably. So, some of those are like the Covera Coalition, the Western Landowners Alliance, Holistic Management International, and of course Alan Savory Institute. It's a very complex and interesting world that is evolving and growing, fortunately.   Well, that's so true. I mean, if you go back just a few years even, there's a lot less knowledge about these sorts of approaches to ranching and agriculture, and now a lot more people are talking about it, thinking about it, studying it, writing about it, and photographing it, which is really wonderful. You mentioned that the work took place over a period of 10 years. Are there any specific stories or experiences from this journey you had that you found particularly impactful or enlightening?   Every time I set foot on a ranch, it was impactful. And it's hard to separate out just one story, but one of the most interesting experiences, I think we talk a lot about holistic grazing and how it tries to mimic the bison that roamed hundreds of years ago on the land. I had an opportunity to go out and visit one of Ted Turner's ranches in Central New Mexico where they were having a bison roundup. I rode out into this landscape, which was like actually transporting myself back 200 years where there were no cars, no telephone poles, just the land and the animals. It was pretty fascinating to see those bison, 500 of them roaming across the landscape. When I was out there also, there was a herd of antelopes and another herd of elk. So, I really felt privileged to be out on that land and to witness, almost like stepping back into history.   There are a lot of young people now that are getting involved, which is really great because there was a time when it seemed like people talked about ranching dying. And there have been organizations like the Covera Coalition that have really worked hard to get young people involved in now there's a lot of interest. And not just amongst doing ranching work, but also in the scientific and academic communities. And so, I was able to work with some scientists from the University of Colorado and they were working in robotics of all things, using these robots to monitor the ground and collect data on the temperature of the soil, the composite of the soil, all sorts of things.   Another ranch I went to in Lamar, Colorado, they had reintroduced the black-footed ferret, an endangered species, that almost went extinct in the 1980s and they were bringing back to, you know, regenerate the soil in that part of the country. So, I actually went out with a team of scientists at night because they're nocturnal animals and the only time you can see them and that they can figure out what they're doing and where they're living, and how they're living is to spot them at night. They ride around from maybe 10 or 11 o'clock at night until the early hours of the morning searching for these black-footed ferrets. They'll stick their heads up out of a hole in the ground, but they're determined. And that determination and that interest was really exciting to see.   You paint a wonderful picture of all this when you were talking about the bison and being transported 200 years in the past created this very vivid image in my mind, and I can imagine how powerful it must have been to be there and how wonderful it is that you've captured this in your photographs. It is just so important that this kind of work gets communicated. One of the reasons I'm delighted that you did your book. Let me ask you a final question. How do you envision your book contributing to the broader conversation about regenerative agriculture and ranching, and the sustainable use of land, and what do you hope readers will take away?   I think the book provides a broad understanding to a very complex issue. Sometimes those issues are difficult to understand because they're wound up in a lot of statistics, or the media is not reporting accurately, or even reporting at all on the issue. I'm hoping that a book like this that shows photographs will draw people in to want to understand more. The other thing I wanted to mention was that these land managers that I have met, they understand that ranching and healthy systems go hand in hand, and making the regenerative transition is a slow, and it's a complex process. There are no quick fixes, there's no one size fits all answers. And that's most likely true, I would say, for anyone, anywhere who's trying to make that regenerative switch. In our fast-paced world, it seems like that nothing is happening, but it just takes time. That's one thing that I can see over this 10-year period is I can see a change. That's pretty gratifying.   Grasslands in particular are very overlooked ecosystem in our country, but they play a crucial role in guarding against climate change. And one thing that amazed me was that a three-foot-tall grassland plant has a root system that extends more than three to four times below the surface of the earth. And those deep roots work to stabilize and they nourish the soil and can sequester huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. So, rangelands are important in that way, and I think it's important for people to understand about that. Another thing is that I think our Southwestern and Rocky Mountain Rangelands, they're a part of our collective history and legacy, and their landscapes that provide us all with clean water and clean air. They offer us respite and recreational opportunities. And in our world now where 80% of the population resides in urban areas, it's pretty easy for us to overlook what we don't encounter every day. It's my hope that "Homeground" will engage viewers from across the country to consider the significance of regenerative ranching and its potential benefits to all of us regarding climate and conservation, wildlife, and food production.   Well, what an important goal. So good luck looking forward. So, for people who are listening, who'd like to obtain a copy of the book, how should they go about doing that?   They can go onto my website: sallythomsonphotography.com.   Bio Sally Thomson is a documentary and fine art photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work explores the relationship between nature and culture and how that forms our perception and expression of where and how we live. Thomson's previous experiences in landscape architecture and conservation planning inform her work as a photographer, which aims to inspire the conservation and regeneration of endangered environments and the cultural legacies they support. She holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from North Carolina State University School of Design. She is the Past President (2017-2021) of the American Society of Media Photographers New Mexico Board of Directors.    

Our guest today is Jasmine Crowe-Houston, social entrepreneur, and founder of Goodr.co. Jasmine started her journey cooking soul food for hungry unhoused people in her kitchen in her one-bedroom apartment in Atlanta. She fed upwards of 500 people a week for years with pop-up kitchens and parks and parking lots. Then in 2017, she founded Goodr, a technology-based food waste management company that connects firms with food surpluses to nonprofit organizations that can use the food. She has worked with organizations that have food waste issues, such as the Atlanta International Airport, Hormel Foods, and Turner Broadcasting. Today, Goodr has expanded nationwide and sponsors free grocery stores and schools. She has combined charity, innovation, and market-based solutions into a for-profit waste management company that Inc. Magazine called a rare triple win.  This episode is in collaboration with Policy360, a podcast of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. Interview Summary   Would you describe what Goodr is today?   Goodr is a blessing. We are a sustainable food waste management company that leverages technology to connect businesses that have excess food to non-profit organizations that can use that food. And at the same time, we have a line of business, which is Hunger Solutions, and we're helping brands and government and other municipalities rethink how hunger is solved in their communities. We believe that hunger is not an issue of scarcity. It's really a matter of logistics. And so, we are using technology and logistics to drive out hunger and food waste. We've built technology that includes our mobile app and portal. Imagine you are using an Uber Eats or DoorDash app. You go onto your favorite restaurant; you click the item that you want. Similar experience for our users. So, for example, a restaurant in the airport. Their menu is in our system. They click chicken sandwich; they tell us 50. Our platform is going to calculate the tax value of those sandwiches, the approximate weight of those sandwiches, and our algorithm is automatically matching those sandwiches with the non-profit that is serving 50 or more people that can take those items and then get it distributed to people in need. Another big thing that our technology is capturing is the poundage that we're keeping out a landfill. So, it's really important because we're able to tell our clients we have kept 2 million pounds of food from landfills. This is equal to this much CO2 emissions that you've helped to prevent. We do a lot of fun gamifications as well, but we're data-driven and we believe that you can't manage what you don't measure. And for too long, people have thrown everything away. They've never measured it. And now we're giving them real insights and they're seeing things like, wow, my number one wasted thing is pork. Why am I making pork so much? Maybe people here at our offices don't eat pork. Start to make changes. So, we really work on the source reduction, but the number two on the EPA is the food hierarchy chart is feeding hungry people. And so that's really where we are.   Wow, that's amazing. I want to ask because I've seen this in the food waste and food donation world, that sometimes food that's donated isn't appropriate or fit for human consumption. What happens to those food products?   Traditionally, they end up in landfills. One of the big things that we have to do at Goodr, and I'll tell you too, that change is by county. So, think of not by city, not by state. Wake County and Durham County probably have different rules because it's based off the health department in each city. So, a good example is when we were working in Florida, what we do in Miami is absolutely illegal in Fort Lauderdale. They're 10 minutes away from each other. Broward County and Dade County have different rules. So, we spend a lot of time, our R&D team, creating quality assurance checklists. And we know this food is going to live for three hours. So, you've got to get this either cooled, frozen, or donated within three hours. So, we tell our businesses that. We are moving food in an average of about 30 minutes from the time it gets picked up. Some of our customers will put in their pickup requests and ask that it's picked up the next morning. So, they're going to automatically put it in their refrigerator. That's their comfort level. They feel a lot better. It makes the food last longer and they don't always have to worry about it being fresh. A lot of the time when we're dealing with weddings, really big events, that's when we have to move right away because maybe that business doesn't have access to the kitchen the next day. And so, we need to move a little bit differently. Most of the time when a business has food that's passed that timeframe, they typically do throw it away. But what we've done is we've introduced organics recycling into our fold. So, our customers now have the ability to send that to an animal farm. We can also send it to an anaerobic digester and turn it into an organic product, or we can compost it. We're still keeping it out of landfill. It doesn't have to end up in landfill ever. That's the positive.   Yeah, that's amazing. I saw your 2019 Ted women talk entitled "What We're Getting Wrong in The Fight to End Hunger". And it has been viewed by more than 2.2 million times.   Wow. Yeah, it's so good. I didn't know if you gave me those last million, but that's good to know.   Good job! No, it was over that by the time I got to it, but it's really amazing and I'm just intrigued to get your opinion about why do you think people are interested in solving hunger and food waste?   I think people are questioning why it hasn't been solved yet. It's almost like it's not as big as cancer, right? But it's as big as cancer. Cancer's big, it kills people, right? But we spend a lot of money and there's a lot of research and we feel like we're getting closer to the fight. I don't know if people feel that we're getting closer to the fight as it relates to hunger. And if you think about it, Norbert, when me and you were kids, we probably did a canned food drive. Anybody that's listening right now is probably thinking, "I did some kind of a food drive when I was in elementary school to solve hunger in our communities." Why are we still doing that? Why are we still doing the same things? I always look at it as being the definition of insanity, right? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I think that's what people are interested in. What are we getting wrong? Why is my kid, 35 years later, why am I still doing canned food drives for my kindergarten kid and this is something that I did in kindergarten? And is this moving the needle? Is this really working? People want to know that. People want to know are we pacifying problems or is the money that we're putting behind these actually driving solutions and should we look at something else that's different? Even with my TED Talk, I remember the first week it came out, we got a lot of, "Oh, you're talking negatively about food banks, and they do great work and I volunteer at the food bank every weekend." There's a whole section in my TED Talk where I say food banks and food pantries are vital. They play a pivotal role, but they don't solve hunger alone, and we need to be open to doing new things. We're using technology in every other area of our lives. I mean, we're getting our groceries delivered, we're meeting our spouses, we're going to college. Why are we not using technology to try and solve a big problem like hunger and food waste? And so, it's just getting people open. I think that's what people are interested in finding a solution.   I'm really intrigued by the model of Goodr, the fact that it is a for-profit company. What's also interesting is given all the success that you've had up to this point, it's hard to believe now that investors hesitated to support you.   Yeah, shame on those investors, I would say. I'll tell you, Norbert, the sad thing is, right, any woman listening should know this. Women as a whole get 2% of all venture capital funding from investors as a whole. So, you take a pie and then you take 2%, and now of that 2%, you have women that are Asian, women that are Black, women that are Hispanic, women that are White. We're all taking a piece of that small 2%. So, there's part of that. I think another thing is it's hard to sometimes get conviction around that, which you don't understand. And a lot of investors, quite frankly, have never been hungry, you know? They don't really understand food waste. It's probably not... It's not AI, it's not blockchain, it's not crypto. It's not always in the headlines. It's not the cool thing. So, I think those all played a factor in it. I think that's just the reality. Investors like to invest in things that they can get excited about, and sometimes hunger and food waste just are not exciting. I also think a lot of people felt like this is so good, they should be a nonprofit. And for me, I saw the business case in what we were building right away because businesses were already paying to throw food away. That's the simple thing about it. So why would I create a nonprofit and must ask everyday people to donate so that we can get this food picked up, have to rely on volunteers that may or may not come, which possibly would cause more food to go to waste. Because if you're being paid to pick something up, you're being paid to do something, you're 99% more likely to go, right? If you're volunteering and it's raining, you may not go that day. It doesn't matter how much you care about the cause. You may not want to get in your car, you may not like to drive in the rain. Those are the things that happen. And so I also believe that businesses would value what they pay for. So, if you're investing and you're paying in a service to divert your food waste from landfill, you're more likely to make sure that your employees are actually packaging that food, recording it for donations, scheduling pickups, than you would be if it was just a free thing, and it was a nice to do. I think that was kind of like we needed to prove that, and now we've proven. We have world-class customers. We work with... You name some of them. And I mean, we've worked with everybody from the NBA to Google to Oracle, Nike World Headquarters. These are our customers, you know? People have now seen that this works. One of our biggest customers, they sent over a testimonial the other day and it says, "All the other locations are banging down my door to try and get Goodr." People just needed to give it a try. And so now hopefully when we have those investor conversations the next go around, this market's a little crazy, but hopefully we'll have a bit more willingness to give our solution a try. And there have been great investors who have made an investment in what we're doing.   Right. Thank you for sharing that. And we're at a university and we have a lot of young people who are excited about social entrepreneurship. What can you say to them to encourage them along this path?   I could say to them that they are needed. We were talking about my goal of wanting to be a professor one day, and what I want to talk about is social entrepreneurship and this model of being able to do well by doing good. That there is a way to do that in business and that it ultimately works. And we've seen the big companies that I think are pretty keen and they've seen success for are your Warby Parkers, your Patagonias. These are other B Corps, Goodr is a B Corp as well, who are kind of existing. The first model I ever saw of social entrepreneurship was Toms Shoes. They were really popular maybe 15 years ago, maybe not as much now, but there was a point when it was like, I'm going to buy a shoe and give a shoe. Bombas, the sock and undergarment company, the same thing. They're supporting homelessness. You buy a sock, you're giving a sock, you buy a T-shirt, you're giving a T-shirt. People love to do good. And so, these students that are interested in creating ways and solutions to solve some of our biggest problems, are needed now more than ever. I mean, this world is... I read an article the other day talking about all that millennials have lived through. And I was thinking to myself, goodness gracious, I've lived through a lot, two recessions, a couple of wars, a pandemic, just like everything, technology. I mean, that's the reality of it. I don't recall a smart cell phone when I was in high school and college. That was... I think the iPhone came out maybe in 2008, 2009. I graduated college by then. I didn't have that. Facebook wasn't around until 2008. You start to see what's happening to young people now because of social media, their self-esteem, the anxiety. There are so many things that we need people to be addressing because we're creating a lot more technology, but we're also creating a lot more problems, and they need to be solved.   They do. And it is interesting to think about the anxiety that's associated with some of these issues.   Oh yes.   And the fact that Goodr is trying to address food waste, which is a contributor climate change, I mean, you're providing a solution. And this is great and it helps me think that our students can start to think differently about what they can do to help address these issues.   The Project Drawdown, which is pretty much a leading climate solutions organization, they named, in 2022, food waste. Reducing our food waste is number two after fixing our energy grid. Number two thing that we could do to combat climate change is to reduce our food waste. In America, nearly 2% of GDP has been on food we never eat, which is just insane to think about. 2% of everything that we spend is on food we never eat, from production to transportation to the disposal. And so even around the food waste chain, there's still a lot more solutions that are needed. So even if that's going to be what we're producing at the farm level, what's going to waste? What can we do with it? Can we reuse it? Can we turn things into other products? I was reading an article recently about there's a new kind of leather that's going to be... It's already kind of on some runways, but it's made out of banana peels. That's a social entrepreneur that thought of that.   I love the fact that you're so welcoming and you're trying to bring people in. And that brings up the book that you've published recently, "Everybody Eats," and it's there to inspire young people in the fight against hunger. It is beautiful. And I see my daughter in this text and so I'm really appreciative of it. And it was illustrated by Nadia Fisher. And there is also a website with resources for parents and kids and teachers. What do you want to accomplish with this outreach effort?   I am often asked, will I solve hunger in my lifetime? I want to say yes, but I have to think possibly not. Hunger grows every single year. I mean, there's a new study I just was reading that it was in the Washington Post two days ago. It's increased 12%. Childhood poverty is up 20%. So sometimes I'm going, or you make the shot, we're at Duke, right? This is a basketball place. So, you make this shot and you can't keep your hand there because the team is already down, the other team's already on the other side of the court. That's often how I feel about hunger. It's like I do something that's really good. It's monumental. We've got grocery stores in schools, we're feeding students, and then I read that childhood poverty is up 20%. How do I leave a legacy that really focuses on solving hunger? I need to inform the next generation and I need to do it in a way, and how I wrote that book is really my story in the eyes of a kid. Me learning that one of my friends, my college roommate did not have food in her household, and that shaping my whole life. And now thinking like your daughter, what would she come back and tell you if she learned that a friend of hers at school doesn't have food in her kitchen like you have food in your kitchen? And they ask questions, and they want to understand that. She goes on this journey asking grocery stores and her school like, "Hey, what's going on with this food? People are going hungry. My friend at school doesn't have access to food," and she's trying to help her friend. And the reality is just like with my friend and the young protagonist in the book, her father just lost the job. I mean, so many people read these stories. I think the most recent article I saw said something like 75% of Americans are living... Are one paycheck away, just one paycheck away. And to see that, that happened to my friend, and it's the most jarring thing that has ever happened to me, probably in life. Because I had a completely different picture in my mind of what hunger looked like until that happened to me. And this happened to me probably three years into feeding people that were experiencing homelessness on the street. I've been feeding people for over a decade of my life. To learn that someone who had volunteered with me, someone who had been out feeding people with me, that they too wouldn't have food in their home, it changed my whole life and my life story. I use all the proceeds from the book to fund a Neighborhood Eats program where I feed kids on the weekends, and I know that I'm making an impact in the lives of children. And they will. My hope is in 15, 20 years, you'll be sitting here talking to someone else who's doing something around this. That's the goal.   You've touched on this, but I just want to push it a little bit further. Food waste and hunger are longstanding challenges and they touch people all along the supply chain. How do you manage the complexity of this problem?   Yeah, I think we have to continue to focus on the verticals that we're really good at because it is big. You'll probably think I'm lying to you, Norbert. I may get a hundred phone calls and emails a week. "Hey, we need Goodr here. We want it... How can I bring this here? Can I bring this to my community? I need food. My senior home needs food. The trailer park that we live in, a lot of us are... It's rural. We're not near a grocery store." I look at myself as trying... I think it's like hero overload. I'm trying to solve all this. How do I get to Canada? Oh, someone just called me from Denmark. How do we go to Denmark? How do we get here? I think what I have to really focus on is US first. I do really well with large scale venues, colleges and universities, enterprise corporate cafeterias, stadiums and arenas, airports, convention centers, places where there's a lot of food in one location. A lot of people wonder, why don't you go to small restaurants? We get calls from, "Hey, we have a deli in Long Island, New York," And we're like, "Hey, we're not there yet, but here's our resource guide for how you can donate food. Here's organizations that you can look for in your community. Here are ways you can create your own food donation programs." We try and give them resources to still solve the problem while realizing that we can't do it all ourselves. And I could tell you as an entrepreneur and as a social entrepreneur, that's the hardest thing ever. Because at first, when I first started Goodr, I'm very happy people in Canada didn't call me then because I probably would've been from Atlanta to Vancouver, and just missing a whole other part of the process. But you've got to follow the process and you've got to get really good at something and then drill in and just become the best at it. The best in class. And that's what we... When we have our all-hands meetings and our team retreats, we talk about what are we the best at? And we also say are there things that we're doing that we're not good at? And to your point, that's why I said I'm inviting other people in, right? Because I know that there's other use cases. We don't work with grocery stores. That's something that's really fascinating to a lot of people. I spent probably the first six months of customer discovery, when I was really trying to figure out who are going to be the Goodr customers that we're going to pitch to of working with trying to work with grocery stores. And what I learned is the two largest grocers in the country created and kind of funded Feeding America. There's a strong system there. I was like, okay, they've got that. Now I'm still trying to work with them on prepared foods. That's my hope with the grocery stores now is those rotisserie chickens, those are the things that don't get donated and so that's what we're really trying to focus on. But the shelf stable things, the produce items, they have a strong solution for that. And it took me six months of trying and hitting roadblocks to see that sometimes people don't want to change what they feel like they've focused on. I had to go and say, okay, well where's the food not going? Where's it missing? And I realized it was prepared foods. And that's why I'm really trying to stay on those rotisserie chickens at these grocery stores, because I think if a parent can get a rotisserie chicken, you could pull some other things together. The meat is kind of what you really need.   So how do you stay inspired?   I try and keep my eye on the prize. I got an email from a lady and her name was Bertha, so I've assumed that she was a senior. Her email said to me, Norman, "I just want to thank you guys for your food today. When I got home, my meat wasn't brown. It was fresh and everything was good. And it came from good stores, I could tell it was quality." And I'll never forget that because I thought just imagine, she's saying I got meat that's fresh. That's her thing. I'm hungry. I'm getting food from your organization and it's good, and I'm shocked by that. So shocked that I needed to send an email to say, "Hey, when I got home today, you gave me something that was good." So that's the stuff that I think keeps me going. I got another email from a lady; this is when we were doing a lot of work. We did a ton of work around hunger during the pandemic if you can imagine. And her email was just like, "I was sitting on my porch, my kids were sleeping, they were napping. And my only thought was what am I going to feed these kids when they wake up? because they're going to wake up hungry. Kids ask me for snacks. We're running low, we don't have anything. And I get a call from a driver named Jarvis who says, 'I'm around the corner. This is Goodr. I've got this food delivery.' And not only did he bring a box of food for my family, but he also brought me a pizza that was warm." because we had... I think Papa John's at the time was giving us pizzas, this is heavy in the heat of the pandemic, to deliver boxes of food that we were bringing to families. And she was just like, "This was a godsend." And she said that we gave her hope in her darkest hour, and I'll never forget that. Those are two emails, and I think both of those emails are from 2020, 2021, that still are in my head today. I think about that as a guiding light to continue to keep going and just knowing that we are really making change.   Bio   Jasmine Crowe-Houston is the creator of Goodr, a tech-enabled sustainable food waste management company that strives to eliminate hunger and save food from landfills. Through her years of work feeding vulnerable populations, Jasmine saw a great opportunity for technology to solve a real problem: hunger. In January 2017, Jasmine founded Goodr, a food management platform that allows users in the food industry to track and redirect surplus food. She's a proud alumna of North Carolina Central University. A resident of Atlanta, Georgia, she enjoys spending time with her family and friends and being a new mom to her daughter Journey. She is an avid traveler who has visited more than 30 countries. Jasmine sits on several nonprofit boards and continues to use her time for good. She was named by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top 100 influential female founders and recognized on the Black Enterprise 40 Under 40 List.  

Stories from the past help us understand who we are and who we can be. In today's podcast, we will explore a gripping new book titled "Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement," written by African American Studies Assistant Professor Bobby J. Smith II at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The book tells how food was used as a political weapon against African Americans and describes how black people fought against oppressive regimes by creating their own food systems, Bobby sets the stage for understanding how black youth today in Mississippi and beyond are building food justice movements and grappling with inequalities that attempt to contort their lives. Interview Summary   So, Bobby, what inspired you to write "Food Power Politics?"   So many different ways to answer the question. I have a family background in agriculture. I did food justice activism while I was in graduate school. I also worked on food policy councils. So, I was inspired to write it because I was already interested in understanding the ways in which food was produced, consumed, and distributed. But what inspired me to write "Food Power Politics" was actually a class I took while I was in graduate school at Cornell University in the Department of Developmental Sociology. I'm taking a course around community development and organizing and we read a book by sociologist Charles Payne entitled "I've Got the Light of Freedom." It's about the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, particularly the area called Greenwood, Mississippi in the Yazoo Mississippi Delta Region of the state of Mississippi, which is the northwest quadrant of the state. And in the book, Payne talks about the organizing tradition of the Civil Rights Movement. And during that class, I'd already been interested in understanding, again, issues of food justice and food security. So, as I was reading that book, I learned about the ways in which food became a weapon used against the Civil Rights Movement and civil rights activists responded by organizing their own food programs. And essentially, I wrote "Food Power Politics" because I wanted to raise awareness about how food can be used in different ways. But I also wanted people to rethink the idea of food. Many times, people think about food as something that's on your plate or something you get at the grocery store. But what inspired me to write "Food Power Politics" was to show a different story about food and how it impacts the lives of African American people.   Thank you for that. And I have got to tell you, I'm intrigued by the phrasing of "Food Power Politics." Could you please unpack its meaning and explain how you map it across the landscape of Black life?   "Food Power Politics" is the title of my book, but it's also the theoretical framework that I created to begin to understand, or for scholars and other people to interpret, how food can be used as a weapon. The book started as ideas for my dissertation. When I first learned about the ways in which food had been used as a weapon against African American communities, I started looking to the literature to find out how have people talked about food as a weapon. I remember talking to a number of my colleagues about the book itself and they were telling me stories about how the idea of food as a weapon is just what we call wartime tactics. So, food has been weaponized for many, many years, and centuries. So, I went to the literature, and I found out that scholars, typically legal scholars, historians, and political scientists, when they talk about how food when used as a weapon, they use the term food power. I had never heard of food power before or this framework of food power. So I, of course, as a diligent graduate student, delved into the literature and learned more about food power. And it's a concept that is usually understood in the context of international conflict whereby one nation withholds food from another nation in times of conflict as a way to mitigate the impact of the conflict, or that the nation that wills the power against another nation can win the conflict. That's what they call food power. So, I used the concept of food power and transposed it into the context of the Civil Rights Movement. And while I was studying the Civil Rights Movement, food power allowed me to think about how food had been used as a weapon against African communities, but it didn't allow me to pick up on how African American communities fought back. And that was a key part for me because many times when we think about times of oppression or social struggle, we tend to think about how oppressors oppressed people and not have those who are oppressed fight back. So, when I observed what African American communities were doing in Mississippi in response to food being weaponized against them, I theorized ideally emancipatory food power, which allows or creates this way for us to understand how African American communities use food as a way to emancipate themselves from those kinds of conditions and circumstances. So, the conflict between food power and emancipatory food power equals or is a sense is where I theorize as "Food Power Politics" which captures those struggles. I didn't want to show just one side of the struggle by which food is used against African American communities. I wanted to show both sides. And that's what the concept of "Food Power Politics" seeks to do. It gives us language to understand these instances, whether it's during times of enslavement in the African American experience or in times of Jim Crow or civil rights or even today. It gives us language to understand the ways in which food is used in times of social struggle.   This is really rich. I'm so intrigued by the idea of taking from geopolitical conflict, this notion of food power and this idea of food power against, but you also talk about food power for, and that was an important move because it shows how people can take possession of their lives and use food, that can be so complicated, for their good. And so, I hope we'll talk a bit more about that. But I really want you to take us back in time. So, what is the food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement and why do you think it's important?   So, thinking back when I talked about Charles Payne's piece, "I've Got the Light of Freedom." He talks about how food was used as a weapon against African American communities. So, although Charles Payne's book is not about food, it's not about agriculture. It's a strictly civil rights, Black Freedom Struggle type of book. But in chapter five of the book, he recounts this moment activists now called the Greenwood Food Blockade. And the food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, or the story that I want to tell, begins with this Greenwood Food Blockade. In short, it is this moment where the White political structure there in the Yazoo Mississippi Delta Region through the city of Greenwood, Mississippi, in Ford County, is where they begin to use food as a form of voter suppression. So, there's this federal surplus commodities food program. Government cheese, or government peanut butter, meats, and things like that. At the time in the Delta Region of Mississippi, that program was a big program for rural African American communities. In 1962, the Florida County Board of Supervisors decides to dismantle that program. And that was the only way that our poor world Black communities were able to even get food. Many of them were sharecroppers or farm workers or day laborers, and many of them didn't have any money to buy foods. So, all the food they got and the ways in which they fed themselves was mostly through this federal surplus commodities program, which is what they call the Surplus Food Program. So, in 1962, the Florida County Board of Supervisors in November of 1962 decide to dismantle the program as a form of voter suppression. So, what ends up happening is that now activists who are in Mississippi begin to make connections between food and the struggles of sharecroppers. And so essentially the food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement begins with this event called the Greenwood Food Blockade. And in response to the blockade, activists organized what they call the Food for Freedom program. So, that's one of the first times we see these tensions between food power against and food power for. The blockade itself is one where food power is used against these communities. And then the Food for Freedom program is designed to respond to that lack of food that is engineered by the Greenwood Food Blockade. That's my entry point and that's how I even found out about this food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement. And in 2017 when I was a graduate student, I went to Mississippi to learn more about the Greenwood Food Blockade. I wanted to locate activists who knew about it. I went to the places where the Food for Freedom program operated, and I learned so much about the Greenwood Food Blockade. But while I was in Mississippi, I also learned about another part of this story. So, during the Greenwood Food Blockade, while activists are responding to this use of food as a form of voter suppression, there's also this food stamps campaign that is engineered by White grocery store owners in the Delta and across Mississippi. Now, I call it a food stamps campaign because in 1962, our nation did not have a Federal Food Stamp program. It was a pilot program at the time. White grocery store owners in Mississippi wanted food stamps, but not food stamps to feed people; they wanted food stamps to make profit. They also wanted to get rid of the federal surplus commodities food program because they believed that that program would cut into their profit. So, once I learned more about this Federal Food Stamps campaign in Mississippi, I soon learned that another way in which food had been used as a weapon against African American communities was also through the Federal Food Stamp Program. The Greenwood Food Blockade is food as a political weapon. And then this Federal Food Stamp campaign by White grocery store owners is food used as an economic weapon, and how activists and how sharecroppers in those communities responded to that campaign was how they developed food cooperatives. Throughout each chapter of the book, I provide a case study of how food is used as a weapon against African American communities and how they respond. But they respond in different ways because when it's a political situation, they respond by attaching food to civil rights activism and freedom. Whereas the food stamps, they realize whether we have surplus commodities or whether we have food stamps, we can't control when, where, and how we access food. In response, they start developing these food and farm cooperatives in Mississippi, and that's the way we see how food can be used as a weapon against, but also how being those communities counter weaponized. And then I follow that story and situate it through today and show how particularly Black youth in the Delta today continue the food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, recognizing that things are different today and that a lot of the power structure has morphed to fit today's context. But communities are still struggling to counter weaponize the ways in which food has been used against them.   You are already leading into the next line of questioning and that's this idea why your text mostly is about historical events. You do, of course, bring it to today. And I'd like to hear you talk about this. How do you envision your book contributing to the contemporary work of food activists and their communities?   Honestly, when writing books or articles, you never know who might have access to it or who might get it. And my hope for at least communities or those who are actually on the ground doing the work around food justice or food sovereignty or any type of food movement, I want them to use the book as a part of their arsenal of stories to develop blueprints to think about the future. The reason why I wanted to end the book with thinking about Black youth, because the Black youth that I studied in the book, they were directly continuing this food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, which also showed me that there's some unanswered questions left from the past that we still need to address if we're going to create this socially just food futures. I'm hoping that my book can be used by activists to show them that they're not by themselves. In fact, they're part of a legacy, a genealogy if you will, a lineage of people who have always put food at the center of social struggle to think about how can we ensure that everybody is food secure? I couldn't leave the book in the civil rights era. I wanted to think about how people today, so the rural Black youth that I write about in chapter four in the book, they continue this story, but they're thinking about how can we, one, reclaim the past but also make it fit today? The local foodscape of the Delta is different now, back then, the Delta's Foodscape was shaped by mostly commissary stores and a few grocery stores as well as these plantation stores. And they all worked together to create this type of food outlet or food environment for to be poor world Black communities. But today we have a prevalence of corner stores, a prevalence of liquor stores, dollar stores, and those type of stores that carry cheap and highly processed foods or even no foods. And that's the foodscape by which activists are navigating today in the Delta. And I wanted to create a type of book that could help them think about how we can use history as a way to shape our strategies? Because while I tell the food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, there's a food story of the Alabama Civil Rights Movement, a food story of the North Carolina Civil Rights Movement. And I want to give people permission to begin to excavate those stories and think more about how it relates to the work they're doing today.   That's really helpful. I mean, you clearly have an eye toward the public to say, "What can folks who are on the ground doing the work of trying to fight for food justice pull from the past to use as strategy, as motivation, as even hope?" And I really appreciate that. Now I want to shift gears and talk a little bit about policy because I'm at a policy center and I'm interested to understand what we can learn about current conversations about federal, agricultural or food policies, given what you say?   I appreciate this question, Norbert. So, next year marks 60 years since Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Federal Food Stamp bill, which created food stamps. We call SNAP today the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. What does it mean to think about food stamps 60 years later? My book provides an untold history, if you will, about the food stamp program. When many people think about federal food policies, they think about these policies as a way to ensure that people get something to eat. People need these programs to get access to groceries, get access to foods from a number of places. But historically, these food policies and ag policies were not necessarily designed to impact the public at large. And I think it's important for us to understand it as we think about how we're going to revise these programs to ensure that they're meeting the needs of the actual recipients. What we do know about food stamps is that in the past, it was designed while Lyndon B. Johnson and others argued in the 1960s that it was a part of this larger war on poverty and that it would help people get out of poverty. But food policies are not necessarily designed to get people out of poverty. It doesn't necessarily give them more actual money for them to take care of other things in their lives. Now, while it gives them some type of supplemental food assistance that then could possibly increase their income, it doesn't give them direct aid. And what I want my book to do is for us to begin to complicate how we think about ag and food policies and recognizing that while on the surface or when we read the legislation, it's designed to do X, Y, and Z, what actually happens and what we do know in the 1960s after the Federal Food Stamp program is passed, and it comes in Mississippi, people become more food insecure in Mississippi. And that's interesting to understand because people think when food stamps come to Mississippi, oh, now everybody can eat. And in fact, civil rights activists were saying, "Actually, no, we can't even eat now because you have these requirements." And that's also what we're seeing today. Activists have been organizing to shift the requirements of what it means to get SNAP or what it means to get food aid. And year after year or every five years under the Farm Bill, it gets harder and harder for people to get something to eat. But somebody's still making money from these policies and I'm hoping that my book provides at least an entry point or a window into complicating those conversations. I mean, if the goal is to feed people through food policy, then I'm hoping that we can learn this history, learn from it and as a way to revise what's going on presently to impact the future.   As you know, USDA just released its most recent estimates of food insecurity in the United States and there's been an increase.   Yeah, I saw that. Yeah.   Yeah, and the fact that we're now in the conversation around the Farm Bill and what's going to happen there. I think there's some important policy conversations that need to take place. And one thing, of course, given the origins of your book and where you're located, in addition to thinking about the policy, there are racial and societal concerns that also crop up. Thank you for exploring these issues and trying to recognize the complexity of the lives that we live. So, I appreciate your project there.   Thank you for framing it the way that you did. I'm glad you borrowed the food insecurity increasing because it's important to recognize that nationally, it's gone up. So, what does that mean for those demographics that were already disproportionately impacted by food insecurity? Thank you for bringing up that particular point.   I understand that your book is the inaugural publication of the newly launched Black Food Justice series at the University of North Carolina Press. That's wonderful. Congratulations.   Thank you. I appreciate that.   My last question for you is how do you see your book reshaping our understanding of food justice?   I've been thinking a lot about food justice, at least for the past 10 years. And in many conversations about food justice, there's been an explicit focus on thinking about race, but mostly thinking about race in the context of what we called the local food movement. So many of us, even myself, have argued before about how the local food movement is overwhelmingly White and overwhelmingly affluent and that poor people or people of color or Black people can't even get access to the movement. And while that was important, some maybe five years ago thinking about food justice, what my book shows is that the story of food justice or the development of the movement has deep roots in the arc of the Black Freedom Struggle in the United States. And I think that's important because when we begin to think about food justice, we tend to automatically connect it to the Environmental Justice Movement of the 1970s and 1980s. And what my book shows is that in fact, Black folks have been doing food justice since they were enslaved. They just didn't have the language to call it food justice because they were just attempting to survive. They were trying to make new worlds in a strange world they were brought to when they were enslaved because there wasn't any knowledge. So, what my book shows or extends or what it does or what it begins to reshape, if you think about this idea of food justice, is that it shows that there's more to food justice than just an opposition to local foods or just opposition to the absence of Black people at farmer's markets and CSAs. In fact, food justice has a deep history in how Black people reimagine their worlds and how they put food at the center. And I believe that's what my book does. It reshapes our understandings of food justice, and it provides concrete examples of how food justice morphs with the times. How it looked during times of slavery versus Jim Crow versus civil rights versus current that we find ourselves in. In the sense, what I'm attempting to do is I'm showing how it connects food justice connect to civil rights, but also, I'm showing more largely how the food justice movement, in many ways, African Americans provide the blueprint for understanding how we can achieve food justice in our nation and around the world today.   Bio   Dr. Bobby J. Smith II is an interdisciplinary scholar of the African American agricultural and food experience. Trained as a sociologist, with a background in agricultural economics, Dr. Smith is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with affiliations in the Department of Food Science & Human Nutrition and the Center for Social & Behavioral Science. He is the author of Food Power Politics: The Food Story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement (University of North Carolina (UNC) Press, 2023), the inaugural book of the newly launched Black Food Justice Series at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Press.  Dr. Smith earned a B.S. degree (summa cum laude) in Agriculture, with a focus on Agricultural Economics, from Prairie View A&M University in 2011. He earned a M.S. degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics in 2013 and a Ph.D. in Development Sociology in 2018 from Cornell University. Most recently, Dr. Smith has been awarded fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), among others.  

In August of 2023, the Food and Drug Administration issued something known as a direct final rule, disregarded trans fats in the food supply. Consumers won't notice changes as the rule just finalizes FDA's 2015 ruling that partially hydrogenated oils - trans fats - no longer had "GRAS status." GRAS stands for generally regarded as safe. We cover this issue today because this trans fat ban was the product of lots of work by a key group of scientists, the advocacy community, and others. The anatomy of this process can teach us a lot about harnessing scientific discovery for social and policy change. At the center of all this is today's guest, Dr. Walter Willett. Willett is one of the world's leading nutrition researchers. He is professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and for many years served as chair of its Department of Nutrition. He's published extensively, been elected to the National Academy of Medicine, and it turns out, is the world's most cited nutrition researcher. Interview Summary   There are so many things I could talk to you about because you do work in such an array of really important areas and have just made contribution after contribution for years. But let's talk about the trans fat because you were there at the very beginning, and it ended up with a profound public policy ruling that has major implications for the health of the country. I'd like to talk about how this all occurred. So, tell us, if you would, what are trans fats, how present were they in the food supply over the years, and what early discoveries did you and others make that led you to be concerned?   Yes, this is a story from which I've learned a lot, and hopefully others might as well. Trans fats are produced by the process called partial hydrogenation. This takes liquid vegetable oils, like soybean oils, corn oil, canola oil, and subjects them to a process with high heat and bubbling hydrogen through the oil. What this is doing is taking essential molecules, essential fatty acids like the omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids and twisting their shapes just subtly, and this turns them into a solid fat instead of a liquid fat. And, of course, the food industry likes this because our culture, the Northern European eating culture, emphasizes solid fats like butter and lard. Industry really didn't know what to do with all the liquid oil that they were able to produce by another process that was discovered back in the late 1800s. The partial hydrogenation process was actually developed in about 1908, and someone actually got a Nobel Prize for that. It wasn't used widely in the food industry till the 1930s and 1940s when it was upscaled because it was cheaper, for multiple reasons, to partially hydrogenate oils and turn them into solid fats like Cricso and margarines. I got worried about this, actually, back in the 1970s, when other scientists were discovering that these essential fatty acids are important for many biological processes, clotting, arrhythmias, inflammation, and counteracting inflammation. I realized while studying food science at that time that there was nobody really keeping an eye on this. That there were these synthetic fatty acids in massive amounts in our food supplies. Margarines, vegetable shortenings were up to 30% and 40% made of trans fatty acids. And that may me concerned that this could have a big downside. So, back in 1980, with the help of some people at the Department of Agriculture developing a database for trans fats in foods, we began collecting data on trans fat intake in our large cohort studies. And about 20 years later, we saw that trans fat intake was related to risk of heart disease. We published that in 1993. That got us started on the pathway to getting them out of our food supply.   Let's talk about how present they were in the food supply. You mentioned some things like margarine and Crisco, but these fats were in a lot of different products, weren't they?   Yes, they were almost everywhere. You could hardly pick up a product that had a nutrition facts label that didn't say partially hydrogenated fat on it. It was really in virtually everything that was industrially made in our food system.   Just because they could produce them at low cost? Or did they have other properties that were desirable from the industry's point of view?   These trans fats had multiple characteristics. One, they could be solid. And again, because they mimicked butter and lard, it fit into lots of foods. Second, they had very long shelf life. Third, you could heat them up and use them for deep frying, and they could sit there in fryolators for days and not be changed. So, this was all good for the food system. It wanted really long shelf life and started with cheap ingredients.   So, after those initial findings that raised red flags, what kind of research did you do subsequently and at what level of proof did you feel policy change might be warranted?   Within our own group, we continued to follow our participants. These are close to 100,000 women in the Nurses' Health Study, and also another 50,000 in the health professionals follow up study. We confirmed our initial findings and then found that trans fats were related to risk of many other conditions, from diabetes to infertility. And simultaneous with our work in the 1990s, some of our colleagues in the Netherlands were doing what we called controlled feeding studies. These studies take a few dozen people and feed them high trans fat or low trans fat for a few weeks and watch what happens to risk factors like cholesterol levels and triglyceride levels. And they found that trans fats had uniquely adverse consequences. They raised the bad cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, and reduced the good cholesterol, HDL cholesterol. So, they had unique adverse biological effects. It was really that combination of that short-term kind of study and the long-term epidemiologic studies we were doing that made a compelling case that trans fats were the cause of cardiovascular disease.   So, a line of considerable work took place over a number of years, and then got to that point where you felt something needed to be done. And the fact that you did that science and that you were worried about these trans fats in the first place is impressive because you were really onto something important. But what happened after you did the series of studies? What steps occurred and who were the key actors that finally led to policy change occurring?   Well, as we expected, there was pushback from the industry about this because they were so invested in trans fat. And I was actually disappointed that a lot of our colleagues in the American Heart Association and others pushed back as well. They didn't want to distract from saturated fat. But, when studies were reproduced, it was really undeniable that there was a problem. But, if the studies had just been put on a shelf and sitting there, probably nothing would've happened. And it was really important that we partnered with advocacy groups, particularly Mike Jacobson, Margo Wootan at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, because they had a readership and audience that we didn't have. And they also were more familiar with the workings of the Food and Drug Administration and government in general. But I also was told somewhere around that time that women, who are the main food purchases, pay most attention to a lot of the women's journals, Family Circle, those kinds of journals. And actually, for good reasons. Their journalists are very good. So, I've talked to those journalists every opportunity. And it turned out it was really important to have some public awareness about this problem. If it was just good science and things worked as they should have, the FDA would've looked at the evidence and just ruled out trans fat from our food supply early on, but they didn't. It really took major concerted effort by the combination of the scientific community and the advocacy group.   Did you bump into conflict of interest problems with other scientists who were receiving funding from the industry and you know them talking to the press or speaking at conferences or things like that?   Well, there's plenty of conflicts of interest within the nutrition community, but actually, I don't think that was so much of an problem here. In some ways, there was a conflict of sort of personal commitment to entirely focusing on saturated fat and not wanting to see any distraction. I don't think a conflict of interest in the economic monetary sense.   Walter, I remember back when this discussion was occurring and industry was fighting back. They made claims that food prices would go up, that the quality of foods would go down, that it would be a real hit to their business because consumers wouldn't like products without the trans fats. What became of all those arguments?   It's interesting and it's important to keep in mind that the industry is not monolithic. And I have to credit Unilever, actually, with paying attention to the scientific evidence, which was really rejected here. Interestingly, at that time, all the major margarine manufacturers were owned by the tobacco industry. And you can imagine that those CEOs were not getting out of their bed in the morning and saying, well, what can I do to make Americans healthier? No, they were not interested in health. But Unilever was a food company and it was invested in staying as a food company for the continuing future. And they did realize that this was a problem, and they invested a lot of money to re-engineer their products, re-engineer their production of margarine and shortening. And they did take trans fat out of their products. They obviously did a lot of taste testing to make sure they were acceptable. And once they did that, the industry could no longer say that it's impossible to do it. It's sort of like the automobile industry when Detroit said, you just can't build low pollution cars, but then the Japanese did it and then they could no longer deny it.   Boy, it's such an interesting story that occurred. With Unilever getting involved as they did. That must have been a very positive push forward. They're second biggest food company in the world.   That was really helpful. And again, I think it was because they had a lot of scientists, both nutritionists and food chemists. I was told they had about 800 such employees at that time. They could see, if you looked at the evidence honestly, this was a serious issue. One of their chief scientists later told me that it was actually one of our editorials in the American Journal of Public Health where we estimated that there would be about 80,000 premature deaths per year due to trans fat. And once they saw that, they said, we can't have Willett going around saying there's going to be 80,000 premature deaths, and they realized they had to do something. It's interesting, you write an editorial, you don't know who's going to read it, but sometimes it hits one person who can really make a difference.   It is nice to know that people read things like that once in a while. Let's go to where you were at that point. You produced a lot of science. You were communicating this to professional audiences, but also to the general public with interviews and magazines and things like that. And the advocacy community, especially the Center for Science in the Public Interest, got activated. What happened then?   Well, a couple things happened. One is that they brought up and proposed labeling trans fat on the nutrition facts label and submitted that to the FDA. The FDA sat on it. There was, of course, lots of backdoor action by the American food industry that did not want to change what they were doing. And despite some prodding by CSPI over the years, that sat there for about 10 years almost. Ironically, there was a faculty member at Harvard Chan School of Public Health at that time who had seen a display we had done on trans fat. We built a big tower out of blocks of trans fat and had a little poster there talking about it. He went to Washington and became a senior person at the Office for Management and Budget. And Mike Jacobson went to go visit him with a petition to label trans fat, and our faculty person said, I know about trans fat because Willnett had that display in our cafeteria. He wrote a letter to the FDA that was quite unprecedented, basically saying that either put trans fat on the food label or tell us why not. Which is a quite strong letter. And then the wheels started turning, and there was delay and delay for a pushback on the food industry. But by 2008, trans fat actually did get on the food label. And that had a very major impact, because once it had to be on the label, the food industry took it out. They sort of knew it was coming because they didn't want to admit it publicly. But I think they understood for quite a while that they were going to have to get it out, but that was really the turning point. All of a sudden, almost all the food products had zero on the trans fat line there.   Let's talk about the public health impact of this. You mentioned 80,000 or some deaths occurring each year attributable to consumption of trans fat. Can we conclude from that that we're saving that many lives now with trans fat out of the food supply? And does that mean 80,000 lives year after year after year?   It's hard to know exactly and of course, so many things are going on at the same time. And the trans fat didn't go down abruptly because Unilever was, even in the American market, a pretty major producer, starting by the mid 1990s, trans fat intake actually did start to go down. And other things are going on, obviously obesity epidemic counterbalancing a lot of positive things that were happening. But, there were some economists looking at communities that adopted trans fat bans early on versus those that did not, and they could show there was a divergence in heart attacks and hospitalizations for heart disease. So it's hard to pin an exact number on it, again, because all these things happen at the same time. But it's quite clear that we would be having quite a bit more heart disease if trans fat had not been eliminated. I would also look back to another important step in the process because even though we got trans fat on the food label, and the products that had it quite quickly became, almost all of them, zero trans fat, but that didn't deal with a restaurant industry, which was also a very big source of trans fat. And there it took community activists to make this happen. There was a small community in Northern California that was really the first community that banned trans fat in restaurants, and a few other places did. But then Mayor Bloomberg of New York, there's another backstory why he got interested in this. But it's one of these things, you put out information and you don't know who's going to read it, and someone had read some of our work and to convince his health department and Bloomberg himself that trans fats had to go, and New York banned trans fats. And then some other communities, Massachusetts and elsewhere in the food industry, the restaurant industry realized they couldn't have a patchwork distribution system. And so that was a tipping point that trans fat was eliminated in the food service industry long before the FDA finally made the ruling. In fact, by the time the FDA made the ruling about trans fat and pressure hydrogenated fat, it was almost gone.   To go back and look at the history of this, it's a relatively small number of key people taking the right actions at the right time that ultimately led to change. And thank goodness for those people like you and Mike Jacobson, Margo Wootan, and Mayor Bloomberg, and a few other people in political circles that took the bull by the horns and really got something done. Very impressive. As you look back on this, what lessons did you learn that you think might be helpful for future policy changes?   I think there are a number of lessons. I'd like to think, first of all, that solid good science is really important. Without that, we couldn't have a hard time making changes that we need to do. But that's usually not going to be enough. It's really important to work with advocacy groups like CSPI. It's important, sometimes, to work with journalists and provide good information, education. But it's hard to know exactly which path is going to be successful. One thing is quite clear, in this country, in many areas, change does not happen from the top. It's not enough just to have good science. And oftentimes, changes happen from the bottom up at the local level, the state level, and the national government may be the last place where action occurs.   So what changes in the food supply do you feel would be most pressing right now?   We certainly have a lot of problems in our food supply. If you look around, most people are consuming diets and beverages that are quite unhealthy. And there are so many issues, I think, still and we've worked on this issue is a sugar sweetened beverage issue, and we've had some real progress in that area, but still, there's a huge way to go to reduce sugar sweetened beverages. But that's part of a bigger problem in terms of what we're consuming. And I would call that carbohydrate quality, that about half of our calories come from carbohydrates. In about 80% of that half, in other words, about 40%, of all the calories we consume are refined starch, sugar, and potatoes which have adverse metabolic effects, lead to weight gain, lead to diabetes, lead to cardiovascular disease. So that's a huge area that we need to work on.   You've talked, so far, with the trans fat and, you know, and with other things in the food supply like salt, these are things that you'd be taking out of the food. That all makes good sense. What about putting things in? Talk about things that might support the microbiome, more fiber, or things that might support brain health and things like that, so what are your feeling about those things?   You're right, our problems are both what's there in quantities that are unhealthy and also what's missing. Inadequate fiber intake is actually part of the carbohydrate problem. Clearly, we should be consuming many more whole grains compared to the amount of refined grains that we consume. And, of course, we get some fiber from fruits and vegetables. So I think, in addition to this huge amount of unhealthy carbohydrates and inadequate amount of whole grains, we do need to be consuming more fruits and vegetables. And then on the sort of protein source side, we're clearly consuming too much red meat and replacing that with plant protein sources like nuts, legumes, and soy products would be really important for direct human health. But also, that's an area where the environmental and climate change issues are extremely pressing and shifting from a more animal-centric diet to more plant-centric diet would have enormous benefits for climate change as well as direct effects for human health.   Bio   Walter C. Willett, M.D., Dr. P.H., is Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Willett studied food science at Michigan State University, and graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School before obtaining a Masters and Doctorate in Public Health from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Dr. Willett has focused much of his work over the last 40 years on the development and evaluation of methods, using both questionnaire and biochemical approaches, to study the effects of diet on the occurrence of major diseases. He has applied these methods starting in 1980 in the Nurses' Health Studies I and II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Together, these cohorts that include nearly 300,000 men and women with repeated dietary assessments, are providing the most detailed information on the long-term health consequences of food choices. Dr. Willett has published over 2,000 original research papers and reviews, primarily on lifestyle risk factors for heart disease, cancer, and other conditions and has written the textbook, Nutritional Epidemiology, published by Oxford University Press, now in its third edition. He also has written four books for the general public. Dr. Willett is the most cited nutritionist internationally. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences and the recipient of many national and international awards for his research.  

White Oak Pastures is a sixth generation, 156-year-old family farm in Bluffton, Georgia. It's also the home of Rancher Will Harris who runs an expansive, zero waste production system with the animals he pasture raises and butchers on the farm. White Oak Pastures produces grass fed beef, lamb, goat, and Heritage pork, and pastured turkeys, chicken, duck, geese, and more. Will is a vocal and passionate champion of radically traditional farming as the path to regenerative land management, humane animal husbandry, and revitalizing rural communities. This is the second time we've spoken with Will Harris. The first time came right on the heels of a really interesting national meeting held in Tennessee on regenerative farming, where I became very impressed with Will and the work he's doing. He was kind enough to join us for a podcast at that time. Our discussion today happens to coincide with the release of a book that Will has written entitled, "A Bold Return to Giving a Damn: One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food.” Interview Summary I really would love to dive into the meaning behind the title of your book, and what you wrote about. But let me ask you a few lead-in questions. Many years ago, you made a profound change in the way you approached ranching and farming. What convinced you back then that this kind of change was necessary? And tell us what you did if you would. My dad ran the farm before me. He was born in 1920, took over the farm post World War II, 1945. He was the generation that really industrialized, commoditized, and centralized the farm. It went from being the really typical 19th century farm under my great-grandfather and grandfather, to being a monocultural cattle operation. My dad was very, very good at it, a great cattleman. He ran the farm profitably. And all I ever wanted to do was come back and run the farm as a monocultural industrial cattle operation. I just loved it. I went to University of Georgia in 1972 and majored in animal science with the intention of coming back, and I did. And I loved it. You know, we weren't wealthy people, but we made money every year. We paid taxes every single year. And I was happy for a long time. But, in the mid-nineties, the excesses of that industrial monocultural model, became displeasing to me. When it started, it happened fairly quickly, and I decided to change. I did not have a goal to move towards, I just knew what I wanted to move away from. I started moving away from it almost 30 years ago, and I've been moving away from it ever since. I'd love to follow up on one thing that you mentioned, and it's the generational nature of kind of farming overall, and your farm. Several years ago, I did a tour of farms in Eastern North Carolina, and I was really impressed with how important the family aspect of that was. Could you just tell us a little bit about that? What does that mean to you and six generations? That's really impressive. The family aspect of it is a blessing and a curse, but it's been a blessing for us. This is just the way it is. My dad was an only child, and I am an only child. So, the passing down of the asset, the farm, farmland was very easy for us. I'm reminded that the old European way of all the assets going to the eldest son was certainly not fair, but I think that went a long way towards ensuring that the asset was passed down and kept intact, as opposed to dividing it up equally among the two, three, four, six, seven siblings. I have three daughters, two of which have come back to the farm. And I will leave the farm to those two daughters. So, our farm is unusual. And it's five, maybe six generations old, but it too will cease to be at some point. That's the way it is. There are other people that want to start farming, that need the opportunity. So this, it's just a good healthy, natural business system. You referred to the farm as an asset, but I have a feeling it's more than that. I mean you could be passing down to subsequent generations a service station, or a convenience store, or a dry cleaner or something like that. But I have a feeling that the fact that you're passing along something that is tied to the land, it just has so much more meaning. Tell me if I'm wrong. No, you're exactly right. But I put a finer point on it. There are not many non-depreciating assets. Land is a non-depreciating asset. I guess gyms are a non-depreciating asset, probably art. There just aren't many assets that don't have a finite life for them. But land is one of them. It's perpetual. And I would argue that the herds also are perpetual. Certainly, the individual animal in the herd has an expected lifespan, but the herd itself is perpetual. My cattle herd literally goes back genetically to the cattle my great-grandfather brought here 150 years ago. So, when you take that perspective, it turns the asset that you inherit or build up or however that goes, it turns it into something very, very special. And I think it should be treated that way. So, let's get back to the farm itself. What have some of the effects been on your land, of the practices that you use on the environment, and also on the food you raise? How do you work to achieve zero waste production? And what do you mean by that? Well, the impact on the land has been incredible. When I started changing the way I farm, which means principally giving up tillage, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, and grazing my animals differently and having a broad spectrum of species of animals on the farm, it changed dramatically. My land went from a half a percent organic model - point five, one half of one percent - to five percent. A 10X increase, okay? It's incredible. And just to talk about the water holding capacity, I don't want to go too far down that hole, but 1% organic matter generally holds 27,000 gallons of water per acre. So, when you go from a half percent to 5%, a 10x increase, you can see what that does to the water holding capacity. The change is just as dramatic in terms of microbial life, and other aspects of soil productivity. So, it is incredible what it does. As far as the animals go, I had a monoculture of cattle, but I had a lot of them. And I always believed that our animal welfare was just great. I mean, I thought it was fine until I had my eyes opened and I realized that keeping them well fed, watered, in comfortable temperature range, is not good for the welfare. I thought it was, but it's not. It's also incumbent upon the herdsman to give the animals the opportunity to express instinctive behavior. Cattle were born to roam and graze, not stand in a pen and eat out of a trough. Chickens were born to scratch and pick. Hogs were born to root and wallow. And in the industrial model, those species don't get to do that. So, that's a beautiful thing to me. And then the environment, you know, I really believe that we're sequestering a lot of carbon. You mentioned zero waste. And when I say zero waste, I don't want people to think that there's never any plastic that's hauled off from here. Certainly, there is. But we slaughter our animals here on the farm, we've got a pretty big slaughter plant for red meat and poultry for private farm abattoir. And it generates about seven tons a day of packing plant waste. That's the term USDA uses. We compost that and make just wonderful compost that we reapply to the land. And it's just, it's just a beautiful thing. That is beautiful. So, let's talk about the zero-waste concept. When people hear that, I think some people think that it means you don't waste any parts of the animal when it's being turned into food for human consumption. But you're talking about more than that. And you mentioned the carbon sequestration in the soil. Can you explain what that means and how that fits into the zero-waste idea? I will but let me also address the fact that it does mean what you said. It does mean using all the animals. We render the fat into the lard and tallow, which we sell or make soap out of. The hides go to make raw hide pet chews, or I send it away to be turned into leather. We have a shop where we make leather goods. I can go on and on about the things we do to not waste. We grind the bones that are not marketable as soup bones. We grind them and apply them to the land as well as a source of calcium and phosphate. So, zero waste takes a lot of different ramifications to achieve that. And as for the carbon, you know, the carbon in our soil, the organic amount I mentioned earlier? Having increased this so dramatically is yet another way of not emitting. A company called Quantis, an environmental engineering company, did a lifecycle assessment on our farm several years ago. It's called LCA. And it's actually on my website, https://whiteoakpastures.com. And it shows that we sequester carbon. It's 3.5 pounds of carbon to sequestered soil for every pound that we put up. So, it's certainly doing positive things, we believe, for the environment. That's so important, because otherwise that carbon would be up there in the atmosphere, creating a lot of damage that people know about. So, the fact that you're drawing it down, and sequestering it in the soil is doing a really good turn for our environment overall. Tet me say also, I love your website, https://whiteoakpastures.com, because it tells the story of what you do, it provides some history and resources about the farm, but also you have a lot of really pretty amazing products that you sell. And so, it's nice to know that these things are available to people who might be interested in buying the products for your farm. It is so interesting and frustrating to me that a certain brand of environmentalist has identified cattle as being the primary culprit in climate change. And of course, it's simply not true. It is not fair to brand cattle with that claim, that, you know. If you want to blame the cattle feeding industry, confinement feeding industry with that, then I support it. But the way we raise cattle not only does it not contribute negatively, but it's also part of the cure. And that's, it's just so unfair. Let's think about the radical change you made in the family's farming practices. Tell me how risky this was? I mean, how risky was it to you in terms of your reputation, your place in the community with other people that may have been continuing to use all kinds of industrial farming and ranching methods, and financially, how risky was it? That's a great question. And when I give the answer, I certainly don't sound very smart. Because there was a lot of naivety in the decision I made. I really did not understand how much risk I was taking on. I should have, in retrospect. I was just a little reckless. But I always ran the farm, and I'd always made money. I was going to change the way I run the farm, and I assumed it would continue to make money, but it didn't. I was adding value to the product I was producing, grass fed beef, that I was not able to extract from the market at that time. Partially because I didn't have processing available, and partly because grass fed beef had not come into its being in the consumer community. So, we had some pretty tough times, but we made it through it. And my timing going in the grass-fed business in that mid-nineties to early two thousands was so, so lucky. And I really, really do mean lucky. Today, I don't think we would've made it. There's too much imported grass-fed beef. That is labeled as "Product of the USA." The market has tightened and tougher because of that. We made it then, but I don't think we would make it today. What does that say for farmers today who might be considering making the kind of changes that you made many years ago? Well, I don't like reporting this, but I've gone from really being a recruiter urging people to embrace this kind of agriculture to really warning people, "Be careful." I don't recommend people not do it, but I really do focus on them being careful. And we sat up a 501 C3 called Center for Agricultural Resilience to help people learn the things that we've learned, so that they won't make a mistake. I really want people to farm this way. And my goal is not to grow White Oak Pastures. White Oak Pastures is as big as I ever wanted it to be. I never really intended it to be as big as it is. Growth is not important to me and my family. We've talked about it, and we're in agreement on that. But I do want to see regenerative food production grow. The way we farm is very cyclical, as opposed to the industrial food market, which is very linear. The food product system is very linear. And linear systems scale up really well. Cyclical systems, I think they kind of have a maximum level at which they perform well. And I think we're at it. So, my goal is not to grow White Oak Pastures bigger and bigger. Again, as a family, we've talked about it and decided not to. We don't want a business so big that we've got to hire a CEO to run it for us. We sell $25 million worth of products a year. And that's enough. It's bigger than we intended it to be. Given that you said that it's not risk free to make this kind of change, and that people need to go into it with their eyes open, it seems to me, that there's a lot more attention now and awareness of regenerative agriculture. People in the general population know about it much more than they did even just a few years ago. And you have, you know, movies about it and television shows, and you have big institutions like the Rockefeller Foundation investing in it. I see that as a positive sign. I don't know if you do as well. But are there other things that can be done to create more inducements to farmers to make this change? Are there policies, for example, that might be put in place that would be helpful? Well, and that is opposed to the multinational food corporations. There re only a handful of them, that are feeding the entire planet. And they're very linear, and there are many, many, many unintended consequences to their production system. It's really adverse to the environment, the land, the water, the atmosphere, the animals, and rural America. I can go on that on. So, let's dive into that just a little bit. What can consumers do? Where do they look for their food? What do they look for? Where can they buy things? What can they do to help? The things you said are certainly great positive signs. They're very, very, very good. But unfortunately, big food has focused on this market. And engaged in very, very talented, skillful greenwashing that tricks the public. And that's the impediment and that's the problem. I just don't know how it's going to come out. I used to believe that I was an early innovator in this new way of producing food that was better for the land, and rural America and the environment, and the animals. I was happy about it, very satisfied in it. And I still hope that's the case. But new, young, or old, a person who is moving from industrial commodity agriculture into what we do today, has a harder go of it than I had 20 years ago, because of greenwashing. From the consumer perspective, it's a lot better today. There are a lot more people talking about it, and a lot more general information out there among the public. But the multinational corporations that are tricking people, they're just very successful. When I called my book "Return to Giving a Damn," that was what I was referring to. That the consumer has got to educate themselves and see where their food actually comes from. There are more opportunities to do that, I know. Where I live in North Carolina, there are a number of butcher shops around. And some of them in particular make it very clear that they're sourcing everything from local farms, and they talk about how the animals are raised, and they're tied into the kind of thing that you're talking about. So, it's nice that there are more such opportunities out there. And butcher shops seem to be one good place to go if you're a person who consumes meat. That's a good question. And I think that the more locally you can shop, the better. We sell food online, and we ship to 48 states. And I don't want to. Now I appreciate everybody that's been buying from us. I'm grateful for it. Thank you. But I really want to sell my products to people in my geography. And I want people in the Pacific Northwest and the New England, and the other areas of the country to have producers, that they support, that are local to them, local food systems. I'm happy to sell anybody anywhere, but I'd really rather to help somebody get started. I will just say that. It's nice that you offer your foods for sale online, because that does give people the opportunity to buy some of the things that you raise, and be connected with the story of the food that you've told us all about. That is very pleasing to hear. Say just a little bit more about greenwashing. How does it take place, and how can consumers know that it's occurring? The way for consumers to avoid greenwashing, is also to know as much as you can about who you're buying your food from. I hope the kind of education that you're doing, things like joining us, and writing your book will alert consumers to these kind of practices, and hopefully there will then be demand on legislators, change the way they write the laws to prevent this kind of stuff. But boy, it takes time, doesn't it? Greenwashing is messaging. Big multinational food companies and Ag companies hire brilliant marketers to convey the message they want to convey to consumers about how the food is produced. And I mean, it can be as simple as industrial milk having these beautiful barns and meadows, and cows on the carton too, some really technical things that are done. But it allows industrial food to be sold under the guise of being very green and humane. Big multinational food companies can import grass fed beef from 20 countries. Uruguay, New Zealand, Australia, being the three biggest or almost prominent. And sell it as American grass-fed beef. Literally and legally label it "American grass-fed beef." If the animal was born, raised, and slaughtered in one of those other countries, it can be brought into this country and legally labeled by USDA, "Product of the USA." And that is the epitome of greenwashing, and it's so very wrong. But it is allowed if any value was added here. And that changed from when I first started selling grass fed beef in the early 2000's. That's not the way that rule read, the rule changed, and this was not an accident. So, let me ask a final question then regarding that. Are you optimistic? If you look at the current generation of young people, do they care more about these things than what used to be the case? And do you think that leads to some optimism about what might occur in the future? Well, it does, and there's so much money behind it. I think if the food production system in this country changes, it won't be changed by Big Ag, it won't be changed by the Department of Agriculture, it won't be changed by land grant universities. It'll be changed by consumers, and what they demand. You know, it's so nice to hear that from you. And consistent with my own experience, you know, in the classroom, you know, I've been teaching people for many years. The most recent generations of young people seem very motivated around these issues, and informed and passionate. And I see that as a very positive sign for the future. So, I'm glad your opinion on this and mine converge. And there's reason I think to be hopeful for the future. So, Will listen. It was wonderful speaking to you, and the first time we did a podcast. And equally wonderful today. So I'm really grateful you could join us. And good luck with your work. And it's clearly inspired. There is no doubt there's more enthusiasm and optimism among young people. In fact, we have an intern program. We only take six per quarter four times a year. And we get 20 something applications for the six openings every quarter. And it's incredible. And we don't push it, we don't advertise it, because I just can't have any more than that. But the number of young, smart, enthusiastic people that come through here, most of them do not come from agricultural backgrounds, is very, very heartening. That part is just great. So, many of our young people that came through here, have gone on to do really, really good things in other places. I'm very proud of them. Bio Will Harris is a fourth-generation cattleman, who tends the same land that his great-grandfather settled in 1866. Born and raised at White Oak Pastures, Will left home to attend the University of Georgia's School of Agriculture, where he was trained in the industrial farming methods that had taken hold after World War II. Will graduated in 1976 and returned to Bluffton where he and his father continued to raise cattle using pesticides, herbicides, hormones, and antibiotics. They also fed their herd a high-carbohydrate diet of corn and soy. These tools did a fantastic job of taking the cost out of the system, but in the mid-1990s Will became disenchanted with the excesses of these industrialized methods. They had created a monoculture for their cattle, and, as Will says, "nature abhors a monoculture." In 1995, Will made the audacious decision to return to the farming methods his great-grandfather had used 130 years before. Since Will has successfully implemented these changes, he has been recognized all over the world as a leader in humane animal husbandry and environmental sustainability. Will is the immediate past President of the Board of Directors of Georgia Organics. He is the Beef Director of the American Grassfed Association and was selected 2011 Business Person of the year for Georgia by the Small Business Administration. Will lives in his family home on the property with his wife Yvonne. He is the proud father of three daughters, Jessi, Jenni, and Jodi. His favorite place in the world to be is out in pastures, where he likes to have a big coffee at sunrise and a 750ml glass of wine at sunset.