'Coz I'm the tax man

I get asked a lot about whether taxing soda is effective. There has been a lot published on taxing food and beverages that are deemed bad for us. So what gives? Does taxing soda have any impact on our health? This is my take on the science, but first, let this jig run through your head….

Should five percent appear too small
Be thankful I don't take it all
'Cause I'm the taxman
Yeah, I'm the taxman

I'll tax the street
(If you try to sit, sit) I'll tax your seat
(If you get too cold, cold) I'll tax the heat
(If you take a walk, walk) I'll tax your feet

TAXMAAAAAAAN!!!

Sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) are nonalcoholic beverages containing added caloric sweeteners. In addition to carbonated soft drinks or sodas, SSBs include energy and sports drinks, less-than-100-percent fruit or vegetable juices, ready-to-drink teas and coffees, sweetened waters, and milk-based drinks. SSBs are widely consumed worldwide, and the retail sales of these beverages have been increasing over the last decade. Their consumption has been associated with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and other detrimental non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Because of their unhealthy nature, the World Health Organization has included a range of policy priorities, including SSB taxes, to help countries combat NCDs and improve the overall health of the global population.

Taxes on SSBs have been introduced in 118 countries, with 105 at the national level and 13 at the subnational level, covering 51% of the world’s population. Most SSB taxes are implemented using excise taxes (88%), with a handful of other countries implementing them through mechanisms such as import taxes, differential Value-Added Tax (VAT), Goods and Services Tax (GST), or regional sales tax (see the figure below). These excise taxes occur mainly as tax pass-throughs, in which the price increase of the taxed product falls on the consumer. In the U.S., for example, 70% of SSB taxes are passed onto consumers through higher-priced SSBs.

Types of SSB taxes being implemented around the world

In a systematic review and meta-analysis of 62 empirical studies of SSB taxes across 45 countries, the majority of SSB taxes were implemented as a tax pass-through. While the impacts were heterogeneous across the countries, the demand for SSBs was sensitive to tax-induced price increases, with a mean reduction in sales of SSBs by 15%. The sales resulted in no substitution towards healthier, untaxed beverages (e.g., bottled water). Another review argued that SSB taxes provide no substantive changes to dietary or purchasing behavior due to the lack of substitution towards healthier alternatives. Another study found that while SSB taxes modestly reduced the purchases of some taxed beverages in the taxing jurisdiction, consumers respond to the taxes by increasing cross-border shopping, in which they go outside the taxing jurisdiction and buy those same taxed beverages at a lower cost. However, taxes may spur downstream effects on other industry responses and policies, including reformulating products to reduce sugar consumption in those beverages, as was seen with the graduated sugar tax implemented in the UK.

Of the tax policies around the world, 73% are implemented in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), with the highest in South Asia. However, LMICs face many challenges in implementing SSB taxes, including a lack of political will and resources, weak national capacity to implement policies, large informal food sectors, and substantial influence of the food and drink industry on policy development.

The question remains whether SSB taxes can result in healthier dietary patterns and reduce the health implications accompanying excess consumption of these products – particularly NCDs. Most of the evidence — particularly from  Nakhimovsky et al., 2016; Niebylski et al., 2015; Teng et al., 2019; and Thow et al., 2014 — suggests that SSB taxes have impacted the purchases of taxed products to varying degrees, but not necessarily long-term and impactful behavior change towards healthier diets and improvements in health. One potential reason may be that the SSB taxes translate to only a 5 to 22-kilocalorie reduction per capita daily. This is insufficient to have a meaningful impact on disease outcomes. Some researchers suggest that one way to deal with this is to raise the current tax rates from the current approximate 5% to 20%. This would also be aligned with the WHO’s recommendation for at least a 20% tax on SSBs. Several countries, such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have substantive (50-100%) excise taxes on SSBs, which are more in line with the taxation rates of tobacco.

The question is whether other foods, particularly red meat, should be taxed due to their significant implications on the environment and contributions to climate change. While consuming red meat in high amounts can contribute to NCDs, red meat is also a source of important nutrients. If a tax on red meat makes them prohibitively expensive for those who already struggle to afford these foods, it could put these nutrient-dense foods even further out of reach for the world’s poor. Thus, a “carbon tax” on red meat might be appropriate in wealthy countries with strong social protective measures and in countries with disproportionately high levels of red meat consumption.

Building Stronger Food Systems in the Face of Global Shocks

I recently wrote a report for the Farm Journal Foundation on the current global food system crisis and the U.S.'s role in supporting small-scale producers by ramping up agricultural development assistance. A summary is below, and the full report can be found here.

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Over the past few years, the world has faced a series of unprecedented shocks that have pushed farmers and our global food system to the breaking point. The COVID-19 pandemic, international and regional conflicts, including the war between Russia and Ukraine, and extreme weather events caused by climate change have come together to create a true “polycrisis” – significantly impacting food, fertilizer, feed, fuel, and finance available to farmers. These challenges have been extremely difficult in their own right, but worst still, they have left humanity vulnerable to any future “black swan” moments that could have severe and far-reaching consequences for global food supplies.

Recent shocks have led to high food prices and worsening hunger and malnutrition around the world. This polycrisis has disproportionately negatively impacted small-scale producers and people living in low-income, food-deficit countries who spend most of their incomes on food. Smallholders generally have low levels of agricultural productivity, high exposure to climate change and other threats, scarce assets, and poor access to information, technology, markets, and services – increasing their vulnerability to shocks.

Because Russia and Ukraine are major crop producers and fertilizer suppliers, a key input to help smallholder farmers increase their crop yields, the war between the two countries has significantly impacted global food and nutrition security. Trade bottlenecks, initially caused by the COVID-19 pandemic but compounded by the Russia-Ukraine war, have further exacerbated the crisis. Structural challenges to food systems in developing countries, including farmers’ lack of access to markets and finance, poor storage and transportation infrastructure, which contribute to food loss and waste, and persistent disempowerment of women in agriculture, mean that countless farmers and food producers were already teetering on the edge of survival; additional burdens stemming from the polycrisis have pushed many into disaster. Consumers around the world have also faced enormous pressure, as disrupted agricultural supplies have led to rising food prices and lower availability and affordability of nutritious foods. New research has shown that even modest increases in the prices of staple foods leads rapidly to negative nutrition impacts from deteriorating diet quality as low-income families shift away from more nutritious and expensive foods, including vegetables, fish, and eggs, in order to afford the increased costs of rice, wheat, maize, or other dietary staples.

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A global map of the number of people with acute food insecurity, mid-2022

Through its whole-of-government Feed the Future initiative, the U.S. has an important role in enabling farmers and food systems in developing countries to withstand shocks better. Supporting global food and nutrition security is in America’s best interest both from an economic and national security standpoint. Studies show that U.S. investment in international agricultural development, research, and innovation benefits both developing countries and U.S. producers and consumers, far exceeding its costs.

Key Recommendations

Agricultural research and development (R&D) can help developing countries address their own unique challenges and shore up local food systems to withstand shocks better. Unfortunately, there have been significant decreases in inflation-adjusted U.S. and multilateral investment in food systems R&D to countries and universities in recent years, and important institutions, including CGIAR have seen fluctuations in research funding.

The U.S. government is uniquely positioned to lead investments in international agricultural research by virtue of its unparalleled capacity from the federal, university, private sectors and to generate benefits that would simultaneously help smallholder farm families around the world and American farmers and ranchers. The U.S. can strengthen its portfolio by providing additional resources to initiatives such as CGIAR, U.S. Feed the Future Innovation Labs, and the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), and by partnering with institutions with long histories of designing and delivering research for development overseas, such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Within this context, the U.S. should consider targeting additional research funding toward the following areas to increase impact:

1. Climate change adaptation and mitigation: The impact of climate change on agriculture is expected to intensify in coming years, and more investments are needed to improve smallholder resilience, productivity, and incomes. Areas that need increased research investment include drought-resistant crop varieties, better on-farm water management and improved irrigation, more precise fertilizer application, and additives to cattle feed to improve feed efficiency and/or reduce enteric methane emissions.

2. Soil health and nutrient management: More research is needed into solutions that can reduce global dependence on Russian fertilizer. The U.S. should consider investing in R&D and partnering with the private sector to develop and scale up green fertilizer, biofertilizers, fertilizer alternatives, and innovations that boost fertilizer efficiency and nutrient uptake.

3. Crop diversity and nutrition: Low productivity, high production risks, and insufficient diversification towards producing more nutritious foods are critical drivers of the elevated cost of healthy diets, especially in low-income countries. More research should focus on developing sustainable and scalable production methods for various crops, including fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, improved forages for climate-smart animal nutrition, and where appropriate, biofortification and fortification of crops and food. In addition, more research is needed to improve the affordability of animal-source foods, such as fish, eggs, and dairy, that would enhance both nutrition and livelihoods.

4. Access to markets and finance, especially for women: Research could focus on how to address barriers to smallholders’ access to credit and market information, ways to develop new market linkages, innovative financing models, and partnerships with development banks to expand lending to farmers, and how to improve farmer organizations’ capacity to negotiate with buyers.

5. Supply chain infrastructure: Inadequate food storage, poor road infrastructure, limited food preservation capacity, and the lack of physical access to food markets, especially for perishable foods, lead to significant food losses and inefficiencies along supply chains in many developing countries. Innovations focused on the infrastructure needs of small-scale producers and strategies developed to address those needs could help attract additional investment on-farm and across the entire food system.

6. Local capacity building: Giving voice and agency to local producers allows for their participation and leadership in R&D funding and prioritization decisions. Without their engagement from the start, adoption of technologies and other R&D tools produced could be futile. It is also critical to ensure that R&D investments do not cause unintended negative consequences, burdens, or harms, particularly for women who already face significant hurdles.

Too pure to be pink

For many of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s, the recent passing of Olivia Newton-John was sad. My sister and I watched her in one of our favorite movies, Grease, play the goodie-two-shoes Sandra Dee character. As much as I loved Sandra Dee, I related much more to black-clad Rizzo, the leader of the Pink Ladies gang, played by Stockard Channing. Rizzo was the badass who “didn’t take any crap from nobody.” She had a protective exterior but was also vulnerable and empathetic. She had street smarts and grit and wasn’t easily swayed, not even by the innocent Sandra Dee. “She looks too pure to be pink.” Was it Iggy Pop who said the most punk color is pink? Rizzo was very punk.

Why am I writing about Betty “Rizzo” on a food blog? I thought Rizzo was a liberated woman—a woman for the times when the women’s rights movement was underway in which women were fighting for equal rights and opportunities and greater personal freedom. Women are still fighting for their rights and freedoms. Now, more than ever. The overturning of Roe v Wade is downright heartbreaking, but I will not lose hope. I am surrounded by incredible women who continue to fight the good fight in my personal and work life. Our team consists of almost all women, and they are amazing beings. We have a lot of Rizzos on our team! They give me inspiration and perspective. They teach me new angles about how to see the world and our place in it. They are pushing for different rights in new contexts and situations in a more complex world.

Food system leader Corinna Hawkes authored a recent Lancet paper along with a smorgasbord of fantastic women leaders and indicated that we still have a long way to go in recognizing the importance of women in food systems leadership: “… in global food systems organisations, less than 34% of senior management positions are held by women and only 6% of chief executive officers and board chairs are women from low-income and middle-income countries.” Dismal.

The Next Gen(D)eration Leadership Collective is an initiative trying to change that. They are building on the experience of professional women working in the field of nutrition and food systems globally. Many women have signed up to be a part of the collective, and a 12-women task team shepherds the collective. Rizzo galore! In my view, they give voice and agency to the many young women working on food system issues, and I think the platform is “unleashing the power of women!” They may not be donning pink, but they are definitely punk.

And women are giving voice to women who may not have the opportunities that some of us do. For example, three stellar women scientists published an important piece of work in Nature advocating for funds directed towards international food assistance to prioritize women and girls. They wrote, “This food crisis is not the last crisis the world will face, but it should be the last one in which women and girls carry this grossly unequal burden. Now is the time to transform the food system to create more opportunities for women and girls, leading to greater gender equality.” Well said.

I am a middle-aged woman, and I am still learning what that means and how much it matters. I am consistently inspired by the women around me and all they are doing to make the world more equitable and meaningful for everyone. We have a long way to go, but we have come so far. So, let’s keep going. As Rizzo said, “Okay girls, let’s go get ‘em.

The World’s Food System Is Too Dependent on Wheat

This opinion piece was originally posted on the Bloomberg Opinion.

The Ukraine war highlights how reliance on a few big staple crops threatens food security and global nutrition.

Stunned by Russia’s assault on Ukraine, Europe is scrambling to diversify its energy supply — from piped Russian gas to liquified natural gas, more renewable power and nuclear power. In the same way, and for much the same reason, the ongoing war should push countries to shift and diversify their food supply — to make it more secure and, at the same time, improve nutrition worldwide.

Russia and Ukraine together supply 30% of the world’s wheat. This is why the war has caused wheat prices to skyrocket, along with the prices of many other food commodities. From February to March, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Association’s Food Price Index leapt 12.6% to an all-time high. This threatens people around the world with unprecedented food insecurity.

It also highlights the need to reform the global food system, which now leaves too many people dependent for nourishment on just a handful of mass-produced grains, including wheat, rice and corn.

To deal with the immediate shortages, farmers in the U.S., India, Canada and elsewhere will have to plant more wheat. And people worldwide will have to replace wheat with rice and other available grains. In the long term, though, this crisis provides an opportunity to change the face of agriculture and reduce the world’s dependency on wheat and other big staple crops.

Accomplishing this shift will be politically challenging. Many countries have entrenched agriculture subsidies that support big commodities including corn, rice, wheat, oils, sugar and soy, and ensure that they are grown at massive scale using uniform farm production practices. In the countries that grow two-thirds of the world’s crops, governments provide $540 billion a year in agricultural support. The U.S. alone spends $16 billion annually on farm subsidies, 80% of which goes to the largest 10% of farms.

This paradigm has many flaws. After all, there will always be risks in relying too heavily on one grain or just a few. It makes it difficult to address disruptions in supply caused by conflicts, protracted crises and fragile states — as the conflict in Ukraine makes clear. And in addition to geopolitical problems, there is the age-old but now growing threat of bad weather.

Heat waves, droughts, floods and cold spells can devastate wheat, corn, soy and rice crops. Because of climate change, extreme weather has already reduced harvests enough to push food prices up to their highest levels in 40 years. Climate change also increases the risk that such extreme weather events might occur at various locations in the same season. This phenomenon of “multiple breadbasket failures” stands to compromise billions of people’s access to food.

Subsidies for the big crops also neglect the need to promote healthy diets. Take wheat, for example. Whole unrefined wheat is a major source of starch and energy, as well as protein, vitamins (notably B vitamins), dietary fiber and phytochemicals. But demand for wheat has been rising globally because of its unique gluten properties, which make it also an ideal component of bread, noodles, pasta, cookies, crackers and many other baked foods and snacks. These highly processed foods, which now constitute a significant share of the world’s diet, are depleted of healthy nutrients and contribute to poor health.

Over the past 50 years, farm subsidies, supported by complementary research and development efforts in agriculture-dependent countries, have made rice, corn and wheat the world’s most dominant crops, accounting for two-thirds of global food-energy intake. Alternative staples such as sorghum, millet, rye, cassavas, sweet potatoes and yams haven’t disappeared — at least not yet — but they have become steadily less important.

To encourage a more diverse and resilient food supply, countries should begin reorienting agriculture subsidies toward fruits, vegetables, nuts and legumes and other nutritious foods. A recent study suggests that if half of all agriculture subsidies worldwide were repurposed to support the growing of foods that benefit human health as well as the environment, it could increase the cultivation of fruits and vegetables by as much as 20% and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions from agriculture by 2%.

Shifting agriculture subsidies is no easy lift. Many farmers depend on them to support their livelihoods, and many would consider it incredibly risky to make major changes in what they grow. But with climate change increasing and geopolitics unstable, change is becoming more and more necessary. And if people are to avoid chronic health problems such as diabetes and heart disease, they need assistance from the food system to adopt more nutritious diets. The global disruption caused by the war in Ukraine should prompt governments to reconsider their efforts to influence the crops farmers grow and move toward encouraging a more diverse food supply.

Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet?

Two years ago, I embarked on the writing of my very first book. Coming from a field of expertise that values peer-reviewed scientific publications more than books, I did not think it was in the cards to consider authoring a book about my discipline and my experience working in that discipline. But here we are, and tomorrow, my JHU Press Wavelength series trade book, Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet? will be released. The pandemic helped, unfortunately. It nudged me to sit still and put pen to paper.

The book investigates the interactions among food systems, diets, human health, and the climate crisis. It draws on my experiences (along with my team and many colleagues) working and living in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. It describes how food systems must change to slow and reverse the stark trends we see with increased hunger and obesity, catastrophic climate change, and inequities. The book draws attention to the idea that the very nature of food and food systems can play a significant role in fixing these vexing challenges and bring communities together.

Food books abound—cookbooks by celebrity chefs (thanks Anthony Bourdain!), history of food and cuisines, and self-help diet books. My book does not delve into these areas much. Instead, it delves deep into politics and shows that if we take a “business as usual” path of how food systems have, are, and will operate, there will be significant negative consequences on human and planetary health. It provides examples of what can be done by the various actors like government and food and agriculture industries to promote healthy, sustainable, and equitable diets, sustain the earth’s biodiversity, and protect the environment and all species living on the planet. And last, it raises readers’ food and environmental literacy and empowers readers to take immediate and long-term changes by helping them make informed decisions when they walk into restaurants, grocery stores, farmers' markets, and their kitchens.

The book changed the way I communicate my work. It is not easy to write about a complex topic like food systems and ensure that it inspires eaters, global experts in governments, and those working in and shaping food systems to make better decisions. I tried my best to bring to life some of my experiences working in different countries—from very poor to prosperous—and the experiences of those I have worked with and shared time with in deeply rural and urban pockets of the planet. It provides a nuanced story that takes you away from computer and desk research to farmer’s fields, families’ kitchens, and United Nations’ working forums.

I hope the book shows readers how our everyday diets are the products of massive, interconnected, and highly complex food systems that extend from the seedlings in a farmer’s field to the global distribution and marketing networks that deliver food to our plates. These systems have direct and substantial impacts on poverty, the planet’s natural resources, the nutrition of individuals and populations, the composition of the atmosphere, and social equity. They also are incredibly vulnerable to the climatic changes that we have already seen and that will accelerate in the future.

The lost art of reading a book

I recently did an interview for the Reading List with Phil Treagus. I am a big book fan (my better half is a book publisher and archiver) but especially books on food (go figure). I also have two books coming out this year that I am pretty excited about. The first is through Johns Hopkins University Press titled “Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet?” The book is my own take on improving food systems and brings in a lot of my own experiences working on food issues in different places in the world. It comes out May 2021. The second book is a textbook published by Palgrave titled “Global Food Systems, Diets and Nutrition: Linking Science, Economics and Policy.” My colleague Claire Davis and I are excited to see this book out in June 2021.

This is what I had to say about books and you can also go to the original interview here.

How do you describe your occupation?

Educator and researcher of food systems.

Talk us through a typical day for you…

My day starts with a series of very early morning (begins around 5 am) zoom meetings with other researchers and organizations (UN, NGOs, etc.) working in Europe, Africa, and Asia on projects, publications, or initiatives. If I am not teaching a course that semester, I usually have one guest lecture to do and am usually on one or two public panels/webinars/keynote talks throughout the day. I try to block some time to read, write and do data analysis and, of course, to exercise (one hour a day)—usually mid-morning or late afternoon. Sometimes, I have 10-15 meetings throughout the day, so having concentrated focus time is challenging. Dinner is always the highlight of the day. We eat early, like 5:30, and my husband whips up gourmet meals. We usually watch something on Netflix or Criterion for about an hour or so. Then back at it to do a bit of writing in the early evening. I am in bed (and asleep) by 10 pm.

What are you reading at the moment, and what made you want to read it?

Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth by Stuart Ritchie. With so much dis- and misinformation on facts, data, and evidence, and the significant conflicts of interest in the food world, I was very keen to look inward into the science community that generates information. Where have we failed? Where are our faults? What could we do better? This book highlights the pitfalls of how we develop, communicate and vet science (with nutrition examples throughout the book) and turns the mirror on the science world. It is fantastic!

Can you remember the first book you read by yourself?

It is a toss-up. The two that stand out to me and are forever imprinted on my brain is Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert O’Brien and James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl. Strangely, and I haven’t thought about this until just now, both involve the food world. Mrs Frisby (a mouse) needs to move her home, which is endangered from the fields’ annual spring plowing. She asks a sophisticated bunch of rats for help. The story of James centers on a boy who enters a peach, and his world changes. Both stories highlight the magic and mysticism of ecosystems and experiences with that magic.

Are you a page folder or a bookmarker?

Page folder. But I go one step further. I fold the top of the current page I am reading so I know where I am the next time I pick up the book. I fold the page’s bottom if there is something on that page I want to go back to or research later.

Can you tell us a little more about the Global Food Security Journal?

The Journal strives to publish evidence-informed strategic views of experts from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives on prospects for ensuring food security, nutrition, and health across food system issues. We wish to publish reviews, perspectives articles, and debates that synthesize, critique and extend findings from the rapidly growing body of original publications on global food security, nutrition, food systems, and related areas; and special issues on critical topics across food security, food systems, and nutrition including how these are impacted by climate and environmental dynamics.

If you could gift yourself books at age 16 and age 25 – what would they be and why?

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan and The End of Food by Paul Roberts. Pollan has mastered the craft of telling compelling food stories that have political, social and environmental repercussions in such an approachable way. While the book focuses mainly on the United States, it does raise questions as to the sustainability and ethics of how we grow our food and the individual dietary choices we make every day. Pollan has his fair share of critics, but I have yet to see an academic write such a compelling narrative on the fractured global food system. Paul Roberts’s book had an even deeper impact on me. It was hard to eat after reading his book because essentially, you feel the world is doomed! As Jim Morrison of The Doors sang, “the future is certain and the end is always near.” The End of Food, as the title suggests, brings those lyrics to life…

If you could invite 5 authors (dead or alive) to a dinner party – who would they be and why?

Amartya Sen (for his incredible influence on how we view poverty, famine, and human development and his many authored books including Poverty and Famine). Mark Kurlansky (for his incredible journalistic deep dives into things like Salt, Cod and Paper). Leah Penniman (author of Farming While Back and co-owner of Soul Fire Farm. A walking the talk author and entrepreneur!). Rachel Carson (for her landmark book Silent Spring that influenced the entire environmental movement). Joseph Campbell (his vast knowledge on the human experience and author of A Hero with a Thousand Faces). I highly recommend the interviews he had done towards the end of his life with Bill Moyer. After watching that, I wanted to be better at my craft.

What was the last book you purchased, and why did you buy it?

New Climate War by Michael Mann. Michael is a climatologist at Penn State. He is a clear communicator and fantastic science whose work has helped build the evidence on global warming. His new book is all about the politics of inaction on climate. In the food world, and very much tied to climate, we face similar issues of political inertia, interference and power imbalance of powerful industry players and complex scientific messages. Hopefully, I can learn something from Mann’s experience in battling the “merchants of doubt” and how he and others have fought to keep the evidence of climate change on the top of the global agenda.

What is your favourite thing about reading?

The quiet time and the ability to reflect on other’s views, worlds, and perspectives. I also find that I like the feel, experience, and act of reading an actual book as opposed to an e-book or an audiobook.

What’s the best book you’ve read in the last 6 months?

The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Written in 1962 but felt like it was written in 2020.

In your Twitter bio you describe yourself as a ‘goat lover’, I have to ask you to elaborate on this…

Goats are just so cool. Resilient, smart, and independent. And did you know they can surf? My husband and I even keep a blog, named “Goat Rodeo.” Speaking of books, there is a great book about goats entitled Goat Song by Brad Kessler who leaves New York City with this partner to go raise Nubian goats in Vermont.

If you could insert yourself into any book, which would you pick and why?

This is a tough one! Maybe Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants by Robert Sullivan. Robert would roam the city streets of New York in the silence and darkness of night observing what rats would feast on, and how they lived their lives. I am disgusted by but fascinated with these resilient little creatures and it would have been fun to spend a year doing this sort of rodential research. Turns out their diets are a lot like humans…they like junk food.

What is the book that you feel has had the single biggest impact on your life? What impact did it have?

This is really a tough one. I want to say Ulysses by James Joyce but that is a total lie. Perhaps Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. As a trained molecular nutritionist, it upended the way I think about food, human health and environmental sustainability. I pulled my head out of the petri dish and have focused much more on their connections and the macro- long view of food systems and how and where they fit into sustainable development.

If you could only own three cookbooks, which would you pick and why?

Anything by Alice Waters but especially The Art of Simple Cooking. She lays out the necessities of cookware, ingredients and basic recipes you need to at least feel like you are cooking organic, wholesome food straight out of the 1970s Berkeley. She also just propels food and cooking to an art form. Bibi’s Kitchen because it highlights the diversity of Africa’s cuisine told through and shared by grandmothers. Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking by Samin Nosrat. She makes cooking so approachable.

Are there any books you haven’t mentioned that you feel would make your reading list?

I’d also include:

Chronicles by Bob Dylan,
Just Kids by Patti Smith (I am a big fan of music books),
Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss,
Blood, Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton,
Food Politics and Soda Politics by Marion Nestle (see our interview with Marion Nestle),
Mass Starvation by Alex De Waal,
One Day I will Write About this Place by Binyavanga Wainaina,
Four Fish by Paul Greenberg,
Sweetness and Power by Sidney Mintz,
The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles Mann,
and The Way we Eat Now by Bee Wilson.

Which book sat on your shelf are you most excited about reading next and why?

The Secret Life of Groceries by Benjamin Lorr. I love the premise of this book. The author takes the reader through the inner workings of the nebulous supermarket that has become the powerhouse influencer on our diets. I am sort of scared though. I have a feeling I am going to never want to set foot in a supermarket again after reading this. Much like how I felt after reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I have yet to eat at McDonald’s (not that I really want to) since reading that book…

Generating knowledge, dutifully and honestly

“Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.”

— Haruki Murakami

This quote by Murakami really speaks to researchers and scientists: Keep focused. Crowd out the noise. Discover. Be dutiful and honest.

But as Tony Fauci, head of the National Institutes of Infectious Disease of the United States gets the cold shoulder from our dear Potus, with attempts to undermine his evidence-based warning calls of a worsening COVID-19 pandemic here in America, it is hard to ignore the last part of that quote - the falling apart bit.

As researchers, we often keep our heads down and dig deep into the details with laser sharp focus to keep generating data and evidence for the greater good of science and knowledge. But we can no longer sit quietly behind our benches and laptops and blissfully hope that someone, anyone, will read that peer reviewed paper that you just published in Journal X. We need to be attuned to the political climate.

Speaking of publications, I was asked to contribute to an exciting, upcoming Johns Hopkins University Press publication COVID19 and World Order. In my piece, I make a series of technical recommendations on what it would take to achieve resilient food systems and potential measures to address our current pandemic and avoid catastrophic future zoonotic pandemics. I bring up this publication because none of the recommendations to fix food systems I made in the paper will stand on two legs with the current fractured and sclerotic global political enabling environment. In order for food systems to function effectively, equitably, and sufficiently during the pandemic and long after, the political environment must be one that embraces global cooperation and inclusion and minimizes political polarization and geopolitical competition. And we, as scientists and researchers, cannot remain silent, disengaging from the political process, however dismal it may be.

Politics matter for the world and for science, and now more than ever. Frank Fukuyama wrote: “Countries with dysfunctional states, polarized societies, or poor leadership have done badly, leaving their citizens and economies exposed and vulnerable.” It is not surprising that states led by populist, inward-facing leaders such as the United States, Brazil, and Mexico are not sufficiently addressing the pandemic. This has led to dire consequences for the citizens living in these countries with many who are struggling with food insecurity and high COVID-related morbidity and mortality.

The COVID-19 response has also displayed the weaknesses of the multilateral system and existing institutions. Within this, the “global food architecture” is often slow, outdated and needs 21st-century support and strategic know-how. One of those entities - the World Health Organization - has tragically and sadly just lost its support from the United States during a time in what may be one of the most crucial global health issues of the century. Multi-lateral cooperation looks perilous and science and the data that it bears is being undermined.

However, cooperation can happen in times of crisis - we have seen it before. Perhaps the UN Food Summit in 2021 can be a moment to create a global strategy for food governance that is nimble, modern, and inclusive, backed by an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-like body that provides evidence and science to support actions.

As the Editor-in-Chief of the Global Food Security Journal, my co-editors and I share our perspectives on the food security challenges that face humanity and lay out our vision and call for stronger food systems research and science in the 2020s. I think this piece comes at a critical moment in food policy with COVID and climate change, because the challenges and opportunities for food systems research that lay ahead are significant, requiring that high-quality science be translated into policy faster than ever before.

“Our vision is one in which research and science, and the evidence stemming from their application, not only inform food and environmental policy, but are adopted and mainstreamed into actions at the national, regional, and global levels.”

In the paper, we write: “At a time when facts, science, and evidence are under ever greater scrutiny, and even openly disregarded as suspect by some political and business leaders, the rigors of research have never been more critical. It is also important not to become disheartened by the slow speed of change in policy and practice, even when the appropriate course of action is clear ‘to us.’ Research can and does bring about wholesale changes in attitudes, political thought, and action, but change takes time.”

We argue that the food systems have transformed, but with that transformation, we are left with profound and widening gaps to address sustainability and equity. These gaps will make future food security and continuity of life on the planet difficult to say the least. As researchers, we will have to fill in those gaps to ensure we meet the demands of a growing population sustainably while co-existing in amity with the planet.

We also need to find the stitched pockets of progress and small glimmers of hope as the basis of our knowledge to move forward - dutifully and honestly.