Everybody wants to rule the world

As we approach this year’s climate summit, the Tears for Fears song “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” keeps running through my head.

Welcome to your life.

There’s no turning back.

When it comes to climate change, we are now moving on a linear path. No looking back, as painful as it is. While scientists have been warning us for decades — bordering half a century of ‘red flags’ in both evidence and advocacy — here is where we now sit. In the midst of a massive climate breakdown which will change the world as we know it.

The headlines read: Climate emergency. Climate breakdown. Climate crisis. Global heating, not global warming. It took a young girl, Greta Thunberg, to push governments — the rulers of our world — to take notice. It took an older gent, David Attenborough to scare the hell out of all of us. Fish stocks and biodiversity collapse, wildlife extinction, and with that, human extinction not being far behind.

But is anyone listening? Is there anyone out there? It seems rulers just want to keep ruling their kingdoms, playing that fiddle while Rome burns. Literally.

“All for freedom and for pleasure.

Nothing ever lasts forever.

Everybody wants to rule the world.”

Top on the list of Nero-like impersonators is Donald Trump. A buffoon, but a dangerous one. He has completely ignored the science, and refuses to cooperate with other nations by not ratifying the COP Paris agreement in which the the United States signed in 2015. By signing onto the COP, each country has in principle, agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, use green energy sources and keep the world well below 1.5 degrees. This signing was an “intent.” But ratification is key. Since 2015, there are still some countries who have not legally ratified their agreement and they include Angola, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Libya, Oman, Russia, South Sudan, Suriname, Turkey, and Yemen. Trump is wanting to completely pull out let alone ratify. His next opportunity to do so will be in November 2020. Interesting timing yes?

This is all sad nonetheless. It would be one thing if the United States solely suffered from their silly political choices, but that is just not the case with climate (among other things). Everyone suffers from decisions of powerful rulers who just don’t give a shit.

The UN Secretary General’s remarks at the Climate Summit Preparatory Meeting said:

“It is plain to me that we have no time to lose. Sadly, it is not yet plain to all the decision makers that run our world. On the plus side, we have the Paris Agreement on climate change and a work programme agreed last year in Katowice. But we know that even if the promises of Paris are fully met, we still face at least a 3-degree temperature rise by the end of the century – a catastrophe for life as we know it. Even more worrying is that many countries are not even keeping pace with their promises under the Paris Agreement.”

The UN SG has reason to worry if one were to actually look historically at the data and trends. And the science holds up. Twenty-five years ago in 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists comprised of 1700 independent scientists, wrote a canary in the coal mine (excuse the analogy…) piece entitled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity.” This group called on our global society to stop the environmental destruction being witnessed back then if we are to ensure that “vast human misery is to be avoided.” They expressed concern about past and future damage to the planet and outlined areas of concern involving ozone depletion, freshwater availability, marine life depletion, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and continued human population growth. These scientists argued that we are fast approaching the limits of the biosphere and we may not be able to reverse the damage done.

Source: Ripple, W.J., Wolf, C., Newsome, T.M., Galetti, M., Alamgir, M., Crist, E., Mahmoud, M.I., Laurance, W.F. and 15,364 scientist signatories from 184 countries, 2017. World scientists’ warning to humanity: a second notice. BioScience, 67(12), pp.1026-1028.

Fast forward to 2017, another group of scientists looked back at their warning and evaluated the human response since that time by exploring available time-series data across a series of environmental indicators. Since 1992, with the exception of stabilizing the stratospheric ozone layer, humanity has failed to make sufficient progress on almost all of the environmental challenges outlined in the Warning paper, and in most cases, the situation has become much worse. The figure to the left shows the different trends tracked before and after 1992 in gray and black lines, respectively. Pretty dismal and downright scary to see the the massive deforestation, declines in species, increases in dead zones, and the steep rises in greenhouse gases and temperature.

How did our world get to this state? We are in the middle of a new experiment -- a democracy free fall in which global freedom, open political systems and free societies are threatened. The world experiences ebbs and flows in the history of time, and let us hope that the decisions of rulers, the political institutions that provide the checks and balances on these rulers, and our planet survive this ebb. As the UN SG said, we have to. We are in a battle for our lives.

The joys of flaneuring

Taking walks does wonders for the soul. One can walk in nature, in a park, or flaneur a city. The idea of flaneuring has always intrigued me. It is the art of noticing. Flanueuring comes from the French word, flâneur, which means "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", or "loafer". Flânerie is the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations. Charles Baudelaire described the flâneur in Le Figaro in 1863.

The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. His passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. For the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. To be away from home and yet to feel oneself everywhere at home; to see the world, to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world—impartial natures which the tongue can but clumsily define. The spectator is a prince who everywhere rejoices in his incognito. The lover of life makes the whole world his family, just like the lover of the fair sex who builds up his family from all the beautiful women that he has ever found, or that are or are not—to be found; or the lover of pictures who lives in a magical society of dreams painted on canvas. Thus the lover of universal life enters into the crowd as though it were an immense reservoir of electrical energy. Or we might liken him to a mirror as vast as the crowd itself; or to a kaleidoscope gifted with consciousness, responding to each one of its movements and reproducing the multiplicity of life and the flickering grace of all the elements of life.

To see the world. Yes. Exactly. Now, most people “see” the world through their iPhones. Rarely observing through their own self. There is something about exploring, noticing the details, getting a little lost, that evokes freedom. It also feels really good to have walked the distance of half a marathon, at your pace, in a day. Walking is good for physical and mental health. This has long been known. Needless to say, my partner and I take walking very seriously.

maphattan project

For those of you who know us, you know we have embarked on a few “walking projects.” First was the MaPhattan Project in which we walked every street in Manhattan. We tackled one neighborhood at a time. We made it fun - it wasn’t a mundane thing. We did some reading up on each hood we would tackle to ensure we spotted famous landmarks - Andy Warhol’s factory on the east side, where Lou Reed scored heroin in Harlem, where Charlie Parker lived in the village, etc etc. We also ate at a restaurant that was either a classic gotham spot or represented the nabe well. Dominican food in Washington Heights for example. Sometimes we would do 20 miles in a day, sometimes, 10. Matt Green took it one step further and walked every street in NYC - all five boroughs. Hero. It was the best way to see one of the greatest cities on earth - the colors, the smells, and the transitions of an American city constantly on the move. And so were we.

Roaming every rione

We also did the Roaming Rione Project where we “roamed each rione (Italian for neighborhood) of Rome, street by street, taking in the sights, sounds, textures, smells + tastes.” There were 22 rioni and then after, we did one last giro around the Aurelian wall encompassing Rome which we did on 31 Dec 2018, as well as a few long walks into the quartiere beyond the wall. Food was always involved of course. And our research on the neighborhoods? Hard. Remember. Rome has been around a good long while. The accumulation of history was beyond comprehensible. Rome was also a lot harder to navigate than Manhattan. New York is for a large part, on a grid, so it was easy to find the breaking points. Rome, not so easy. Lots of twisty-turning streets and small avenues to navigate. Sometimes, going in circles. We tried to not use our google map, because that just takes the fun out of it. My partner would print out maps. Yes, we are old fashioned. We also still get DVDs. Stop the snickering. The printed version helped us get our boundaries. But that was it. Bodies of water helped. For Manhattan, you are surrounded by water. With Rome, you had to lean on the Tevere River as your guide post. The Rome project didn’t take us as much time as New York interestingly. It just wasn’t as big. Okay, maybe we cheated a little…There are so many sneaky alleys in Roma.

Now, we are onto our next adventure. We live in Washington DC which is littered with natural park spaces that often connect up with one another. We find ourselves most weekends exploring these parks, staying off man-made roads as much as possible. As Henry David Thoreau wrote, "In wildness is the preservation of the world.” But we are contemplating an epic DC city walk. It would involve all the embassies/consulates, all the state named streets (interesting that DC is not a state but a microcosm of the world), hitting each quadrant - NW, NE, SW, SE. The name of this epic project? Microcosmic DC Pyschogeography. We will document it of course, eat some good food, and learn a little US history using only our walking shoes and a printed out map.

And with that, I leave you with one of my fav songs — Horst Langer by Poem Rocket on their album…get ready for it…PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY.

Food Bytes: June 3 - June 30

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

The month of June was filled with lots of food-related action - meetings, conferences, prizes and elections. Let me tell ya, it was hard to keep up. The question is, what is the result of all these meetings and the environmental footprint of moving all these bodies from meeting to meeting? Does it actually shift the agenda in positive directions? Are we all just talking to our friends? Is it just a way to keep us busy posting photos and videos on twitter? I wonder sometimes. I am not criticizing. I am a part of the problem. But I do think it is time to rethink what all this effort is amounting to, and for who.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization, also known as FAO, hosted a Future of Food Symposium with some dynamo speakers, but not a lot of action coming out of it. FAO also just announced the election of their new Director General. His name is Qu Dongyu from China. He is currently the Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China. Makes sense. China is a giant and is greatly shaping the world’s food system. Looking forward to seeing his vision. He has a lot of work to do…

The American Society of Nutrition @nutritionorg hosted their annual nutrition conference, right upon Johns Hopkins doorstep in Baltimore. Lots of diverse science being presented and also lots of controversy around sponsporship of events and significant presence by industry. I was only there for a day but that was about all I could take sitting in an over air-conditioned window-less conference center looking at powerpoint after powerpoint. That said, it is a great way to get caught up on the latest science. And Marie Ruel, a stellar international nutrition scientist at IFPRI, was awarded the Kellogg Prize for Lifetime Achievements in International Nutrition. Well deserved. Her talk is here. I highly recommend reading Marie’s incredible body of work. Much of it can be found here. You will see why she got the award - she accomplished so much over the last 30+ years. And she still has more to do!

The @EATforum Stockholm Food Forum, also an annual affair, took place. Glitz? Check. Grand? Check. Aspirational? Check. But what’s next? The impact of EAT is yet to be seen and it remains unclear on where they will go from here. Do they do advocacy? Policy? Science? I did the opener with Johan Rockstrom or also known as Johan Rockstar. It was fun. The video is below. One thing is clear to me, if they are advocating for a better food future for all, they need to take the show on the road.

Speaking of EAT, the EAT Lancet Commission fall-out keeps churning. Some of the authors of the Commission provide some explanation of issues raised by other scientists on the environmental targets here in a Lancet short response/commentary. Another study put the EAT-Lancet reference diet to the test among a large prospective cohort of British adults. The researchers found that the diet has beneficial associations for ischaemic heart disease and diabetes, but no association with stroke and no clear association with mortality. The media continues to churn out pieces on sustainable diets and mentioned the EAT Lancet report. Great that the work is garnering so much attention in the popular press but what now? Some highlights in the last few weeks:

• This Vox piece closely examines what our diets will look like in a hotter, drier climate. Lots of talk (literally - it is an interview style piece) on the future of food and technology.

• The Eater highlights the rise of the plant-based burgers in particular, the Impossible Burger, and how fast it went viral. Seems everything David Chang touches turns to gold.

• Stepanie Feldstein also wrote for Yes Magazine about the plant-based burgers and argues that while it won’t save the course we are on with climate, small individual actions do matter, and manifest in different ways.

• This Devex article asks about the relevancy of the EAT Lancet report to the global south. Good question. One expert from Liberia indicated that many in her country don’t even know about the report. That is not a surprise. That said, in the talks I have given on the report, I have emphasized what it does and does not mean for Africa and Asia (as well as what the report did and did not do), as a researcher who squarely works in both continents. Still a lot of work to do to ensure the global findings of the report translate in appropriate ways that ensure livelihoods and culture are considered right along with health and environmental challenges for particular, diverse country contexts.

• I had to laugh at the title of this Guardian article. “Most 'meat' in 2040 will not come from dead animals, says report.” Why does that sound scary when taken at face value?

Okay enough on that! The @WorldFoodPrize 2019 winner was announced this month. The prize will go to Simon Groot, a Dutch vegetable “seedsman” where he started the East-West Seed Company reaching over 20 million smallholder farmers. More about his life can be found here. Not sure how the World Food Prize calculates the reach. I recall last year they credited shared prize winners Haddad and Nabarro, with “reducing the world’s number of stunted children by 10 million between 2012 and 2017.” While these two giants definitely made contributions, how did they get to that number?

Two publications on India just came out that I highly recommend. The first is a book, published by the great Prabhu Pingali and colleagues on Transforming Food Systems for a Rising India. It is a part of a book series by Chris Barrett at Cornell, on Agricultural Economics and Food Policy. I will publish a book on food systems for nutrition in mid 2020. At the same time, the Global Food Security Journal just published an article on future diets in India. They show that by 2050, there will be projected increases in per capita consumption of vegetables, fruit and dairy products, and little projected change in cereal (rice and wheat) and pulse consumption. Meat consumption is projected to remain low. The question remains, what will that mean for their production and food supplies and their nutrition outcomes?

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Future direct consumption trends in India by Alea-Carew et al 2019 GFS Journal

Much being written about the food system front these days. To start, Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist for the New York Times, in all of his eloquence highlighted the obscene inequities of our food system. He wrote:

“If some distant planet sends foreign correspondents to Earth, they will be baffled that we allow almost one child in four to be stunted, even as we indulge in gold leaf cupcakes, $1,000 sundaes and half-million-dollar bottles of wine.”

Guido Schmidt Traub and colleagues from the Food and Land Use Coalition argue that there are three ways to fix the food system in Nature. I agree with their three pillared approach (see figure below) but how? and with what investment? More details please! And if you don’t even know what I am talking about when I say “food system”, Corinna Hawkes and colleagues lay it all out in a policy brief. She also has another brief on why food systems matter for policies. I really like these - and there are more to come. Marion Nestle also lays out what it would take to change the United States food system. Marion is so practical. I would love to see her do more global work. Maybe we all need a dose of her realism.

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What it would take to change the food system. Schmidt-Traub et al 2019 nature

The SDSN Network hosted an online conference on nutrition-sensitive agriculture from 3-5 June, 2019. Nutrition-sensitive agriculture offers great potential for achieving SDG 2, as it connects agricultural development to improved nutrition outcomes. Many nutrition-sensitive agriculture interventions have been applied in recent years. This e-conference aimed to turn the evidence coming from these interventions into concrete recommendations for practitioners. Close to 1,000 people from all over the world registered for this e-conference, taking part in three live sessions and interacting via an online conference platform. We had great speakers — Matin Qiam, Harold Alderman, and Agnes Quisumbing — who highlighted the latest research. Missed it? All the powerpoints and videos can be found here.

Speaking of SDSN, they are also responsible for the SDG Index. The 2019 report just came out. Do indices really do much? Do they spur action?Guess who ranked number one in the world in moving towards achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals? Denmark followed by Sweden. What a shocker! Last? Central Africa Republic. Second worst? Chad. Triste…Looking at the OECD countries, the USA is awful. Yo Trump, I thought you were going to make America great again. Yah, right.

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OECD Progress on the SDGs (2019)

But it ain’t just America my friends, Italy is struggling on many fronts. Just coming back from Rome, I am reminded about the scale of the rubbish there. And now it seems the trash problem is becoming a public health hazard. Such a beautiful dazzling city ruined by poor management. Oh, and tourism. Mamma mia.

Speaking of indices, Bioversity just released their Agrobiodiversity Index Report which assesses dimensions of agrobiodiversity in ten countries to measure food system sustainability and resilience. Strangely, only 10 countries are shown. Not sure why there are not more. Would be interesting to know if this will be more widespread. And if you think dedicating a day to biodiversity is important, think again. @AgroBioDiverse lays out why he dislikes the International Day for Biological Diversity. I actually completely agree with him. I have very similar sentiments with the Decade of Nutrition…

Food Bytes: May 26 - June 2

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

Loved this NYT article about Africa’s millennials who are making their way back to farming. “We are making farming sexy.” Hallelujah. Welcome you “agripreneurs.” Make Africa the world’s breadbasket.

Speaking of leading newspapers, if you live in L.A., the city of angels, you will like the new Food section of the LA Times. It is more about where to eat and cook and less about politics and there is a paywall. While LA is having a renaissance on all things food creation, Gotham city is shutting many of its old school diner doors. “A luxury rental tower called the Frontier stands on the site of the old Frontier Diner in Murray Hill.” The New York we all loved died long ago…

Addicted to the joe? Here is everything you ever wanted to know about coffee and its expansion from Africa to the Americas.

Policy does matter. Did you doubt that? Bloomberg Philanthropy highlights the new Task Force on Fiscal Policy for Health – co-chaired by Mike Bloomberg and economist Larry Summers – to address the growing health and economic burden of noncommunicable diseases with fiscal policy tools that are currently underutilized by governments and their leaders. Lots o’ case studies including good stuff on sugar tax.

We know America is struggling. The Brookings Institution has published an interactive exploration of how she is doing. The Hamilton Project’s Vitality Index is a measure of a place’s economic and social wellbeing. It combines a county’s median household income, poverty rate, unemployment rate, prime-age employment rate, life expectancy, and housing vacancy rate. What does this have to do with food? Well, everything. Check it out.

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Vitality Index of America. The bluer, the better.

The last food bytes posting highlighted the research on processed foods, and impacts on weight gain. This thoughtful NPR piece talks about how hard it is to move away from processed foods, even when Americans are cooking more. Sarah Bowen and colleagues discuss the barriers: cost, time, and culinary resources. It just ain’t that easy to cook wholesome, from scratch meals day after day. You just can’t beat convenience sometimes. As the authors say: “… inequality is baked into our food system.” And ain’t that the truth.

Our favorite Tamar Haspel over at the WashPo is keeping it real. Now she is delving deep on the plant based burgers which seem to be all the rave. There are two - The Beyond Burger (peas) and Impossible Burger (soy). She takes both to task on environmental impacts, nutrition impacts and cost. And then there is steak. Will we ever replace it or our craving for it?

CSIS’s Take As Directed has a great podcast with Chris Murray at IHME on global diets and risk of disease. He discussed this paper that was highlighted previously on Food Bytes. “Diets account for more deaths [cardiovascular and cancers] than any other risk factor.” He argues the medical community is surprised and skeptical of this message. Interesting!

The Economist breaks down taxes on sugary drinks. Mexico was the trendsetter and now, 40 countries and seven American cities have started to tax sugary drinks. They argue that those that are not in favor of the tax argue that taxes are a “fun-killer, souring people’s pleasure” and can be regressive, because poorer people spend a bigger share of their incomes on soft drinks. But if demand is sensitive to increased prices, then a tax will change behavior, in a positive direction. Let’s see how it all plays out. The bigger question is, will taxes make a dent in the obesity pandemic. Hard to tell.

For any of you who collect and analyze child growth data (also known as anthropometry) in the field, the WHO has finally released a technical report that defines basic criteria and standards for sampling, training and standardization of anthropometrists, data collection, supervision, for data management including quality assessment and analysis, interpretation and reporting of anthropometric data. FINALLY. This is LONG overdue. Well done WHO. 

And last but not least, GAIN has started a new site called Nutrition Connect. Its purpose is to mobilize knowledge, share experiences, and stimulate dialogue on public private engagements (PPE - not be confused with PPP!) for nutrition. Links can also be found in the Food Archive’s Resources page.

Food Bytes: May 6 - May 25

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

The Annual Reviews have just released a special issue on the Future of Food. Presents 20 articles on "Research & efforts to ensure a safe, nutritious, & affordable global food supply, while preserving biodiversity & minimizing environmental damage." Keen to read these by some stellar scientists!

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Processed food is having its moment. New research shows that those who eat ultra-processed foods gain more weight than those who ate whole or minimally processed foods. Researchers at the National Institutes of Health, tested this using the randomized, controlled trial approach. Study participants on the ultra-processed diet ate an average of 508 calories more per day and ended up gaining an average of 2 pounds over a two-week period. People on the unprocessed diet ended up losing about 2 pounds on average over a two-week period. Fantastic food writer Bee Wilson has a new book entitled: The Way We Eat Now: How the Food Revolution Has Transformed Our Lives, Our Bodies, and Our World. She writes about how these processed foods, ala junk food, has taken over traditional diets everywhere in the world, and is having impacts on health, at a very alarming pace.

Another study highlighted the impacts of poor diets on health. An estimated 80,110 new cancer cases among adults 20 and older in the United States in 2015 were attributable to eating a poor diet. Other research supports this claim. The study found that decreasing dietary fat and eating more fruits and vegetables may lower a woman’s risk of dying of breast cancer. They tracked 48,835 women ages 50 to 79 without breast cancer since the 1990s.

The way we eat is changing. There is a fantastic piece by the Guardian looking at how more and more people are eating alone, and it has quite dramatic changes on the way we eat, what we eat and why we eat. Netflix is involved in this equation…

Let’s discuss individual foods. Are you obsessed with vanilla? Check this out. Like citrus? You may be disappointed after reading this. With 70% of America consuming bananas, they can’t be that bad right? Think again. Do you dig on swine? This may scare you.

Some places, as we know still are food insecure in the world. The UN FAO reports 815 million people go to bed hungry. Venezuela, sadly is not immune, and is really in a free fall. NYT is reporting that “Butchers have stopped selling meat cuts in favor of offal, fat shavings and cow hooves, the only animal protein many of their customers can afford.” Terrible times for the country. Let’s hope things turn around soon.

On the polar opposite, but strangely, very much on the same side of the coin, it always thought that urbanization is driving the obesity pandemic. A very impactful Nature study has shown that 55% of the global rise in mean body mass index since the mid-1980s—and more than 80% in low- and middle-income regions—was due to increases in body mass index in rural areas. The team of scientists argue that: “There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories.”

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The difference between rural and urban mean body mass index in women. Figure A is 1985. Figure B is 2017.

Nature is on a role. They also just published a really important paper nothing related to food, but on HIV. The researchers used a high spatial resolution across the continent to look at HIV prevalence sub-nationally. They already published a similar study examining undernutrition. They show that the epidemic is very unevenly spread. Of the 25 million HIV-positive people in sub-Saharan Africa, one third live in very small, highly concentrated pockets. The remaining two-thirds are spread out more broadly. This work will help hone in on the hotspots and where attention should be drawn to continue progress on halting the spread of HIV.

As for furthering education and building capacity, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine is starting a new Center on Climate Change & Planetary Health and the University of Washington has a new degree program on Food Systems, Nutrition and Health. Google them if you are interested in these new academic programs!

The Sustainable Development Solutions Network is hosting a 3-day webinar on Nutrition-sensitive agriculture. Sign up! We have three stellar speakers who will be talking about:

• Smallholder production and Dietary Diversity

• Market Challenges and Solutions to Nutritious Food Access

• Women’s Empowerment for Better Nutrition

And on a personal note, I was sad to hear about the passing of Kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina. He has some famous stories, including How to Write About Africa. But his most defining moment has been his coming out as a gay man, in a letter to his mum, raising awareness and rights of LGBTQIA throughout the continent.

FOOD BYTES: WEEKLY NIBBLES FROM APR 22 - May 5

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

We saw a lot of really great stuff being written in the diet space this week by mainstream media. First, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and particularly Thin Lei Win published a great piece entitled, and get ready for it, “Death by Diet.” Gothic meets food. Love it. But seriously. The article and accompanying pieces highlight the fact that our diets are now so unhealthy, they are causing illness, disability and death. I really liked this figure below from the report showing what we should be eating and what we are actually producing.

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Second, the NYTimes hit it big and right this week with a Food and Climate series. One article highlighted what we should eat for health and the environment and answer lots of pesky questions that we have about diets and what is considered more sustainable or not. Got a question about the impact of different milk products on different environmental indicators? They show you the path. Grass or grain fed beef? They have you covered. Check it out and take the quizzes. Clearly, diets are “hot” (no pun intended) at the moment.

The Economist had an interesting piece on global meat consumption and the transitions in demand. While some high-income countries are moving away from meat consumption, other countries are and will continue to see an increase in the demand for pork and beef. Countries like China, and continents like Africa will continue to demand meat as incomes rise, and imports make their move to these parts of the world. The impacts on undernutrition can be profound - with animal source foods filling important nutrient gaps. However, the environmental effects cannot be underestimated. So what do we do? Trade-offs are inevitable. As the article states, the consequences “will be global.”

Speaking of diets, many women in the world do not get enough iron, resulting in anemia which has serious health ramifications. This past week, I participated in a webinar hosted by the WHO and The Accelerated Reduction Effort on Anaemia (AREA) Community of Practice. I talked about how double duty actions can be done to address anemia and obesity or undernutrition in women. Marion Roche focused on adolescent anemia and gave an excellent overview. My slides are here.

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Antimicrobial resistance, is getting more attention these days. The UN just came out with a report and the NYT highlighted it in scary detail. The report argues that overuse of antimicrobial drugs in humans, animals and plants is fueling resistant pathogens that could kill 10 million people annually by 2050. Yikes. Food system actors, beware.

I did a fun podcast with my former student Khris at UNC Chapel Hill. The podcast is called “We All Gotta Eat .” We talked about food but more largely development, youth movement sand just being a bit more punk rock if you really want transformational change.

"EAT"ing my banoffee pie

I had the pleasure of launching the EAT Lancet Commission report in beautiful Cork Ireland at the University of Cork College, hosted by Nick Chisholm at the Center for Global Development. It was a really great event attended by a diverse set of individuals including those from the livestock sector and dairy farmers, advocates, students, professors and researchers.

I presented the overall findings from the EAT Lancet Commission report but I also gave two additional perspectives. The first was my personal view on what I thought the EAT Lancet did not cover adequately or ignored, but should not have. The second was the Ireland perspective - what does the EAT Lancet mean for the future of Ireland’s food system? My slides are here.

On what I thought the EAT Lancet did not adequately do. It did not:

1. Address the confused space of sustainable diets and the epidemiology and science to support it. This was the most contentious aspect of the report and continues to be questioned. I don’t think the report cleared up the debate of what are considered sustainable diets and may have made things more contentious and perplexing.

Inequities in meat consumption

2. Tackle the inequities in food systems. The report did not at all go into how people experience difficulties in accessing healthy foods and the inequities in which they bring. It is easy to say eat less meat, but it really depends on where you are in the world, who you are, how contexts and situations can be more or less vulnerable, and what you can afford and access.

3. Take on the entirety of food systems. The EAT Lancet Commission just covered food production and consumption — the head and the tail of the food system — but we know there is this whole middle piece that drives health, sustainable and economies: food supply chains, food environments and drivers of food system transition. The EAT fell short in covering the full scope of food systems but if we did, the report would be 500 pages, not the current 50, in which still, no one read…

4. Focus on who will feed us and their livelihoods. The report did not at all go into the impacts of this type of diet and earth system change on food producers and their livelihoods, ways of life, and traditions. Nor did it go into women producers, small and medium sized producers or rural development/impacts.

5. Examine the actors, especially, consumers and behavior change. The diet really looked at supply side changes and not much on how consumers can take on such a diet, how behavior change is needed and what nudges should be put into place.

6. Consider the local social determinants, and the trade-offs. The report was lofty, ambitious and global. But local nuance, decision making and context is needed, and the report just didn’t have the bandwidth to take on local to global perspectives.

On Ireland. It was fascinating to launch the report in Ireland for a few reasons. I took the train from Dublin to Cork and the landscape was riddled with black and white cows and green rolling hills. I knew the launch could be tough…Was I entering a snake pit?

Bountiful beef cows!

First, the cattle and dairy industry is strong here. And for good reason. The agriculture sector contributes significantly to the GDP of the country. The Irish beef sector currently accounts for over 30% of the value of Irish agricultural output at producer prices. Number of cattle heads here. The beef output of Irish farming provides the key input to the Irish meat processing industry. In 2014 the Irish meat processing employed over 13,000 people. Irish agriculture is dominated by family-owned farms.  There are almost 140,000 farms, with an average land holding of 32.5 hectares.  Pasture-based farm enterprises dominate, and as a result, Irish output is dominated by dairy and livestock, especially beef.  Dairy and beef account for two-thirds of gross agricultural output and similar proportions of agri-food exports. Ireland is currently one of the world’s fastest-growing dairy producers and exporters.

Second, the impacts on climate change should not be taken lightly. They have seen a 25% and 9% increase in dairy and cattle head numbers. As a result, their agriculture sector contributes 33% of GHGe in Ireland. Methane is 64% of that. Nitrous oxide from N fertilizer application and excretion of manure is 31%. Energy contributes less - 20% and transport 19% of GHGe. GHGe have been increasing 3.5% every year since 2015 in Ireland. Ireland can play a lead role in fulfilling the “sustainable intensification” goal but so far, they are falling short on the climate agenda. Irish farmers are aware of the need to produce more from less and are addressing their carbon footprint. There is a lot more to do. A Teagasc blueprint on how to make Irish farming carbon neutral is a roadmap, but stakeholders have not signed up to the necessary timelines which will cause them to be fined 600 million for not adhering to the targets set out during the Paris COP agreement. 

The insanely delicious banoffee pie

Third, we know that the traditional Irish diet is not sustainable. Some of the top risk factors of death and disease in Ireland are related to diet. And have you ever had banoffee pie? Enough said.

While I was there, there were a lot of the questions about the “hangover” of the report. More of the questions asked by media were about the political backlash of the report findings, why WHO pulled their consensus of the report, and what it means for Ireland’s livestock industry. I found myself defending a report that while I feel fully responsible for what it says, I too find not helpful when we get into the nitty gritties, the realities and the nuance needed to make such transformational changes.

I have never been in something so high profile that I have had to defend but don’t have complete ownership over its content. I am glad to take the fall on things that I believe in or that I have been solely responsible for. But this is a different beast.

FOOD BYTES: WEEKLY NIBBLES FROM APR 5 - 21

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

After all the chaos of the Mueller report and sanctuary cities here in the U.S., I found much joy in tuning out, and instead reading about our fellow friend, the coyote’s diet. Turns out, they eat a lot of cats. Not so much roadrunner. Talk about the new urban hunter! The researchers who investigated the scat of these stealthy creatures also found that their diets consisted of “baseballs, shoes, furniture, and bedazzled jewels.” Hide your pets…

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National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report: Sustainable Diets, Food and Nutrition

The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine held a a public workshop in Washington, DC, in mid 2018 on sustainable diets, food, and nutrition. Workshop participants reviewed current and emerging knowledge on the concept of sustainable diets within the field of food and nutrition; explored sustainable diets and relevant impacts for cross-sector partnerships, policy, and research; and discussed how sustainable diets influence dietary patterns, the food system, and population and public health. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

This week, climate change was on the minds of many, with young people marching in the streets and young, but wise Greta Thunberg showing her courage in the fight, hence being honored by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people.

We at Johns Hopkins hosted an event on food and water security in the era of climate change. We had some really fantastic experts speaking at the event. I was hoping for a sold out house, but no such luck. We had good attendance but I guess people don’t care that much about the changing climate. I have no other explanation. Here is what the event was about:

The media headlines in the last two weeks showing Nebraska and Mozambique underwater are tragic glimpses of a new era - the era of climate-related natural disasters. Climate change is and will continue to impact the lives of everyone, and will have significant ramifications on both water and food security globally. Climate-related impacts affect water availability in regions that are already water-stressed, as well as the productivity of both irrigated and rain-fed agriculture. Rising temperatures translate into increased crop water demand and have consequences for food availability, and potentially, the nutritional content and quality of crops. Likewise, insufficient and compromised food access and utilization influence households and individuals ability to access healthy diets and drinking water, which can have detrimental health outcomes. No one is immune — both the livelihoods of rural communities and food security of urban populations are at risk of water insecurity linked to climate variability. The rural poor, in particular, are disproportionately affected by climate effects. It is likely that climate variability and change will continue to exacerbate food insecurity in areas currently vulnerable to hunger and undernutrition. There is an immediate need for considerable investment in adaptation and mitigation actions toward “climate-smart agriculture, water and food systems” that are resilient to climate-related shocks. This seminar will delve into water and food security in the midst of a changing climate and what we can do as a global community to adapt and mitigate.

Speaking of climate change, I really liked this piece by Richard Waite and Janet Ranganathan of the World Resources Institute (a speaker at our event) on beef and climate. They unpack 6 common questions about the contentious topic of the sustainability of beef production systems and climate change. Here they are:

1. Q: How does beef production cause greenhouse gas emissions? A: Through the agricultural production process and through land-use change.

2. Q: Is beef more resource-intensive than other foods? A:Yes.

3. Q: Why are some people saying beef production is only a small contributor to emissions? A: Such estimates commonly leave out land-use impacts, such as cutting down forests to establish new pastureland. I think it is politics and some denial there too…

4. Q: Can beef be produced more sustainably? A: Yes, although beef will always be resource-intensive to produce.

5. Q: Do we all need to stop eating beef in order to curb climate change? A: No.

6. Q: Would eating less beef be bad for jobs in the food and agriculture sector? A: Not necessarily

If you want to read their long responses, check out the article! They also have a ton of solutions in their Creating Sustainable Food Futures report and in the figure below.

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World Resources Institute’s Menu of Options from their most recent report: Creating Sustainable Food Futures

And climate change is definitely real. Farmers are feeling the effects. A NYT article looked at Honduran coffee farmers are being hit hard. Estimates suggest that least 1.4 million people will flee their homes in Mexico and Central America and migrate during the next three decades. But if Trump has his way, they will be met with a Game of Throne like wall…

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Johns Hopkins Global Food Ethics and Policy Program newsletter

Last but not least, there is a lot of talk about cultural appropriation around food these days. A restaurant opened in New York called “Lucky Lee's”, a new Chinese restaurant, not run by Chinese but a Jewish American couple who wanted to have a Chinese restaurant that served “clean” food that was healthy. Not sure what the hell they were thinking. You can’t really mess with food particularly because it is so deep rooted in people’s culture and tradition. It holds a special place in society and it gets quickly politicized when you remove it from its core identity.

And last, last but not least, the Global Food Ethics and Policy Program at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at the Johns Hopkins University puts out a weekly newsletter on interesting articles in the food space, much like this one. It is curated by Claire Davis at the Berman, and I find it to be a rich source of information on ethics and politics of food and nutrition. I encourage you to sign up for it. It is also in the Food Archive resources section.

Why Hunger Amidst Plenty?

I had the pleasure of doing a keynote talk at the “Ending Global Hunger Conference” at the Center for Global Food Security of Purdue University . My talk was entitled “Why Hunger Amidst Plenty?” My slides are here.

The punchline of the talk was this: We are living in a complex world made up of multiple burdens of malnutrition. While the obstacles to address the burden are daunting for citizens, there are tools to solve it. We just need political will, global cooperation, and immediate action.

The malnutrition burden is massive. But the story is mixed - there is the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let’s start with the good. Stunting is coming down - in some places quite fast - like Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Nepal. Also, the risk of dying from a famine has become much, much smaller than at any time in history. Then there is the bad. For the third year in a row, there has been a rise in world hunger. The absolute number of undernourished people has increased to nearly 821 million in 2017, from around 804 million in 2016. These are levels from almost a decade ago. Further, “hidden” hunger remains significant but is shrouded in mystery. We don’t know the state of micronutrient deficiencies, particularly among the nutritionally vulnerable populations, such as children under five years of age, women and adolescent girls. And now the ugly. Overweight and obesity is rising everywhere and among every stage of life. No country has stopped the trends we are witnessing.

The question remains why?

• Why do we still have hunger & undernutrition?

• Why are we not seeing improvements? And in some cases reversals of progress?

• How did we get to this place of paradox: hunger & obesity?

• What can we do about it?

I argue that hunger is still rampant because of poverty, conflict change, conflict, poor infrastructure, unstable markets, food loss and waste, and periods of seasonal hunger in rural places.

But how did we get to this place of paradox? That is complex but in a nutshell, our lives and lifestyles are transforming as are our diets and food systems. Many in the world are now consuming sub-optimal diets, exercising less and hence are more sedentary, and these contribute to the risk of disease and death. At the same time, healthy diets are not accessible to all.

As a result, many people are now affected by both food insecurity and obesity at the same time.  Food-insecure populations, really no matter where they live, are subject to the same, but unique influences in trying to consume a healthful diet:

• Limited resources and lack of access to healthy, affordable foods

• Cycles of food deprivation and overeating

• High levels of stress, anxiety and depression

• Limited access to health care

• Fewer opportunities for physical activity

• Greater exposure to marketing of obesity-promoting products

The question remains, what to do? There is no one simple measure that can successfully shift the burden at the national or global scale. Rather, a constellation of different approaches and strategies, operating across scales and supply chains, and targeted at different people and organizations will be required. I argue for 10 actions:

1. Care. We need governments, industry and citizens to care about their diets and their nutrition, climate change and food systems.

2. Push for countries to develop a food systems policy. No country has implemented a full range of updated, comprehensive, and evidence informed strategies to encourage a healthier and more equitable food system.

3. Consider the situation a “Syndemic” and take on triple duty actions.

4. Consider options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. Dietary, technological change on farms, and reductions in food loss and waste are critical to reduce environmental impacts of our food system on the planet.

5. Don’t forget about who will continue to feed the world. As Ruth DeFries eloquently wrote: “Now we are transforming from farmers to urbanites. Our newest experiment-to feed massive numbers of people from the work of a few-is just beginning. The outcome is yet to be seen.” Who will feed us when the average age of the world’s farmer is 60?

6. Invest in small and medium holder farmers. Smallholder farmers have more diversified landscapes, making important contributions to the overall dietary diversity for the world’s population. 53-81% of micronutrients in the food supply are produced by small and medium farms. These farms make up 84% of all farms and 33% of the land areas globally and are more predominant in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

7. Maximize net increases of nutrition along value chains. Identify points in the chain that can be “leveraged for change.” Leverage points can cause nutrients to be lost or exit the value chain as well as enhance the nutritional value of select nutrient-rich foods.

8. Engage and empower women in on- and off-farm opportunities. Women need social capital including information and access to new technologies and farming practices and tapping into social networks that may assist in times of hardship. Women need access to credit with greater ability to invest in infrastructure and to smooth consumption or production shocks. And last, we need to improve their human human capital and agency - give them opportunities for education, and increase their ability to get health and nutrition services.

9. Help consumers navigate this complex web. Give them the information and knowledge the make healthy choices. Make them affordable, accessible and culturally appropriate. But consumers are super, duper confused…

10. Dig deeper. We must address the underlying social determinants that impact malnutrition. Every country is impacted by poverty but its determinants may be different, or the same…

Food Bytes: Weekly Nibbles from Mar 25 - Apr 4

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

This week’s food bytes focuses on the complications of understanding what is a healthy diet because there seems to be much havoc and confusion in the space. The more havoc, the more people want to dissect the havoc or relish in it. And we seemed to be inundated these last two weeks with diet news.

Tamar Haspel is a fantastic food columnist for the Washington Post. There was a lot of twittering and conversation, which she does not shy away from, about her recent article entitled “Here’s what the government’s dietary guidelines should really say.” She hauls the science of nutrition over the coals leaving no one left standing. In her article, she presents two main criticisms. Her first issue is the flawed nature of nutritional sciences. Errors abound in the way diet data is collected, the way observational studies assess impacts of those diets on outcomes, and the ways in which confounding factors are taken into account. Her second issue is the conflicts of interest in nutritional science. She highlights not just perverse industry-funded research, but also, the nutrition experts’ often ideological world views, or “fanatical opinions that abound in nutrition” which shape interpretations of the data in misleading ways. These two issues, the imperfect science and the conflicts of interest, interact and influence each other.

Following her merciless critique, Haspel concludes that “In the two decades I’ve been writing about nutrition, my confidence in what we know about food and health has eroded.” She is not alone. Many people are very confused about what is healthy and what is not. What will kill you and what will keep you alive. What is sustainable, and what will ruin the planet. She is left feeling certain about three simple things: (1) eat a wide variety of foods with their nutrients intact; (2) keep your weight down; and (3) get some exercise. Sounds about right.

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Timeline of the nutrition science field

Do former New York Times writer Mark Bittman and Yale Professor David Katz agree with these sentiments? Largely yes. They argue, “eating well remains difficult not because it’s complicated but because the choices are hard even when they’re clear.” But they have answers. Lots of them. They thought of every question imaginable about diets and health and tried to answer them. Many of the answers are a bit “take my word for it,” but I give them the benefit of the doubt. Although some could wonder why we trust Bittman over credible scientists, but I digress. They argue that future conversations are no longer needed. Yeah, if it were only that easy boys…

Katz also delves deep into why we are eating as if we know less about food than ever before. He argues that humans have been bamboozled by prominent ideologues in the field of nutrition who have built careers defending just one point of view. Similar sentiments to what Haspel highlighted. He argues:

“Where humans practice any reasonable variant on the theme of wholesome foods, mostly plants, in a balanced, time-honored assembly; wherever they eat mostly vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds, and drink mostly water, they tend to live long, prosper with vitality, and go late and gentle into that good night.  It is not the job of “science” to tear down this established foundation: It is the job of science to build upon it.”

I think what Katz is getting at is that the science of nutrition has come a long way, and there is lot of agreement about the science, but we need to build further on that evidence base. At least, I hope that is what he means. Well-respected Dariush Mozaffarian (Dean and Jean Mayer Professor at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy) and colleagues have shown a timeline of the nutrition field and how far the science has come. In the final piece of their timeline - the future - they argue, “Public health future nutrition policy must unite modern scientific advances on dietary priorities with creative new approaches for trusted public communication and modern evidence on effective systems level behavior change.” Trusted public communication. Sounds quite similar to what is being argued by Katz and Haspel. The question is, how do we ensure the science and the way it is communicated by scientists, media and journalists, is trustworthy?

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Global Burden of Disease Lancet study: impact of diets on mortality

But the chug and churn of nutritional sciences continues amidst the havoc. Here are three studies published these past two weeks that show the impact of diets on health, at three different levels: at the dietary pattern/whole diet level, the food group level and the individual nutrient level.

1. The Global Burden of Disease project out of the University of Washington just published a Lancet paper on the impact of suboptimal diet on noncommunicable disease mortality and morbidity (Full discloser: The Food Archive archiver is an author on this paper). The estimates (and modeled data) show that 11 million deaths and 255 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs) were attributable to dietary risk factors. High intake of sodium (3 million deaths and 70 million DALYs), low intake of whole grains (3 million deaths and 83 million DALYs), and low intake of fruits (2 million deaths and 65 million DALYs) were the leading dietary risk factors for deaths and DALYs globally and in many countries.  

2. Sabrina Schlesinger and authors published a systematic review looking at the impact of food groups on risk of overweight, obesity and weight gain. They found that increased consumption of whole-grains, fruits, nuts, legumes and fish consumption had a negative association with overweight and obesity. Positive associations were found for refined grains, red meat, and and sugar sweetened beverages and overweight, obesity and weight gain. 

3. And last, a Nature paper examined the impact of carbohydrate, a macronutrient, quality on health. They argue that the quality of carbohydrate-rich foods (high in fiber and whole grains) rather than quantity has the strongest effect on decreased mortality and reduced incidence of cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes mellitus and colorectal cancer.

Still confused? Everyone is sort of saying the same thing that Michael Pollan said so simply a decade ago, now a mantra for many: Eat food, mostly plants and not too much.