Introduction
Carla Martins is currently a professor at the School of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (FSP/USP) and a researcher at the Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health (NUPENS/USP). She worked as part of the team that developed the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population. Her work focuses on cooking and its impact on ultra-processed food consumption; and cooking as a tool for protection and promotion of human health and environmental sustainability.
References:
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LOOKING AT THE FOOD CHOICES people are making around the world is an important way to better understand diverse food cultures.
This is because each population has their own dynamic and diverse food culture patterns. These patterns reflect what each population understands as ‘food’, how they are producing foods, where they are buying foods, what kind of food they prefer to buy, which dishes they are having for meals, and with whom they are sharing meals.
In other words, even if the acts of eating and cooking are common behaviours to people around the world, people eat and cook differently around the world. This means that our food choices are contextualized and are based on our food cultures.
References (continued):
Marie Persson is the Project Manager of the Nordic Food Policy Lab based at the Nordic Council of Ministers. Through action oriented policy labs and collaborations with international partners, we curate and help develop food policy tools and insights for health & sustainability.
With a background at a research network for food systems sustainability at Oxford University (Food Climate Research Network) and with my current work being focused on merging policy, culture and innovation for sustainble food, I’m interested in how we can bring together diverse fields of expertise to accelerate a transformation towards sustainable healthy diets.
I am passionate about working with food and food systems, as it is the place where so many if our challenges around human and planetary wellbeing converge. I am also interested in collaborations between science, art, design and policy, and in utilizing the power of storytelling. I helped create (and now sit on the board) of the non-profit Art & Science Initiative.
Marie Persson
Project Officer
NORDIC FOOD POLICY LAB
The Nordic diet is made up of potatoes, root vegetables, fish and shellfish, meat, berries, fruits (such as apples and pears). While inspired by global influences, the modern Nordic food culture has in the past decade seen somewhat of a revival in the use of traditional ingredients and preservation techniques. The New Nordic Kitchen Manifesto was launched in 2004 by a group of chefs and included 10 basic principles. The modern New Nordic diet it described was predominantly plant-based and locally sourced, and the manifesto principles encouraged more sustainable production. A renewed sense of pride in old varieties of grains and vegetables as well as traditional preservation techniques such as drying, fermenting, smoking, salting and pickling reentered the food vocabulary in the Nordics. For more than a decade now, modern dishes have been invented using traditional foods and methods of preparation that add both culinary and economic value to our raw materials.
Building on the momentum created by the manifesto, new food policies and food culture projects have been implemented all around the Nordic region. In this way, the food culture change that started in the gastronomy sector has spread to school canteens, workplaces and to home-cooks. In 2018, the WHO launched a high-profile report showing that the New Nordic diet is as healthy and sustainable as the Mediterranean diet. Compared to an average Western diet, the new Nordic diet contains less sugar and fat but twice the fiber and seafood.
In a continued evolution of the Nordic food culture, arguments around environmental, climate, health and animal welfare impacts of diets are taking center stage in the debate around food, and there is a growing movement towards more plant-based diets.
Siti Halati is a Programme Policy Officer for Nutrition at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), Rome, Italy. She received a bachelor degree in community nutrition from the Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia and Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Indonesia (UI). She has been working more than 20 years in the field of nutrition and public health with specific expertise in micronutrient intervention, home fortification, prevention and treatment of acute malnutrition, maternal and child health intervention, survey, monitoring and evaluation, dietary intervention, nutrition surveillance, nutrition in an emergency, food security, nutrition and public health policy. Her career with WFP includes posted in Bangladesh, Nepal, Kenya, and Uganda. Before joining WFP, she worked for Helen Keller Indonesia (HKI) in Indonesia for 12 years.
Siti Halati
Nutrition Officer
WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME
Even though Indonesia is rich in traditional cuisine with a variety of foods and dishes, many Indonesians welcome imported, processed foods such as deep-fried chicken, nuggets, burgers, sausages. Since 1980, many fast-food restaurants that serve imported, processed foods have opened in Indonesia. In the beginning, they were only available in a few big cities, but by now they are in almost every urban area of each province.
People who consume the imported, processed food are mainly the middle and the upper class, not the poor. Most of the young people like these foods, while older people still prefer traditional Indonesian dishes.
The consumption of traditional Indonesian foods and cultural dishes of urban people in Indonesia is reducing, especially among the young people. They are shifting to the imported, processed foods that represent a lifestyle that is promoted by fast-food chains and other branding activities. Also, nowadays, the imported, processed food served in the fast-food restaurants is more affordable than the food from outlets that serve traditional Indonesian dishes, except when sold by street vendors, but eating there is less aspirational to young urban residents.
It is also becoming more common for households in urban areas to prepare meals for their children with imported, processed foods such as chicken nuggets, fish sticks and sausages.
On the contrary to the urban area, people in the rural area are still preparing traditional Indonesian dishes for their meals, due to less exposure to imported, processed foods, less availability, and lower purchasing power.
Anne Palmer, MAIA is a program director at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future and an associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society. She directs the Food Policy Networks project, which seeks to improve the capacity food policy councils and similar organizations to advance food system policies. Ms. Palmer’s research interests include food retail, food policy and food policy councils, food environments, obesity, urban agriculture, local and regional food systems, and community food security. Prior to joining CLF, Palmer worked for the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs for 13 years developing and managing strategic communication plans and large-scale health communication campaigns and programs in Asia.
Anne Palmer
Program Director, Food Communities & Public Health
JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER FOR A LIVABLE FUTURE
“We know that placing supermarkets in a neighborhood without one can attract other retail, provide jobs for residents, and even change people’s perceptions of food access in their community. We also know that most people shop outside of their neighborhood for food and don’t change what they are purchasing even if they change shopping venues. Therefore, opening a new store alone is unlikely to have an impact on a shopper’s diet. What causes people to change their food purchasing patterns or to have healthier purchasing behaviors? The most evident factor in changing purchasing is an increase in income. People with more formal education and more nutritional knowledge will also make healthier purchases. If we want to improve diets, we need to look at all the factors that are related to poor eating habits and work on them simultaneously.”
Corey has worked on sustainable seafood issues for more than 17 years and is the co-founder of Postelsia, a company that supports innovative solutions for sustainability challenges in the seafood industry. Postelsia works toward inclusive solutions that seek to solve problems for the whole supply chain. Their recent work includes supporting the development of the James Beard Smart Catch program, a chef education program that seeks to educate chefs about sustainable seafood and supports their involvement in efforts to improve seafood. Postelsia has also been supporting the development of the Asian Seafood Improvement Collaborative, a group of stakeholders working to build their own fisheries and shrimp aquaculture improvement tools in Southeast Asia.
Corey Peet
Co-Founder
POSTELSIA
The answer to this question is no because shrimp is a species that is both caught from the wild and farmed in a pond on every continent except Antarctica. It connects people all over the world via the dinner plate and when done sustainably can provide good livelihoods and promote healthy coastal ecosystems (mainly for farmed). The problem has been that the seafood industry has not created the right incentives to move the industry forward in a sustainable way and in fact it has done the opposite. The incentives today are for the cheapest price possible in order to have a commodity product which drives the value out. This strategy fails to account for the fact that shrimp is produced in many different ways and there is an opportunity to build a new value proposition for shrimp and create the right incentives for the true potential of the industry to be realized.
Dr Sandro Demaio is a medical doctor and globally-renowned public health expert and advocate.
Sandro previously worked for the World Health Organization and was CEO of the EAT Foundation. He also co-founded the NCDFREE global social movement and established a not-for-profit foundation to improve the health and nutrition of Australian kids.
Sandro has published many scientific journal articles and is author of the Doctor’s Diet cookbook. He also co-hosts the ABC television and Netflix show Ask the Doctor.
Alessandro Demaio
CEO of VicHealth
VICTORIAN HEALTH PROMOTION FOUNDATION
Eat regularly and carefully in appropriate environments and, whenever possible, in company.
In an industrialised and fast paced world, the food we eat and how we eat is increasingly being driven by convenience, perpetuated by pervasive marketing of unhealthy ultra-processed foods, ready-made foods and meal delivery services. No longer do we place the same value on preparing and cooking a nourishing meal from scratch – and with this has also been lost opportunities for social connection.
Brazil’s dietary guidelines take a simple approach to food and nutrition, and prompt us to slow down and enjoy foods, with others, that are respectful of the environment. Taking what was a complex narrative of nutrient measurements and creating a set of food principles that are more accessible, more intuitive, and more holistic. The guidelines prompt us to consider food in the context of family, society and environmental sustainability, and its principles intend to shift food cultures and our food ways. The way we eat and who we eat with are given equal importance to what we eat, recognising that food and the social practices that surround food are powerful opportunities that have the potential to nourish and connect people.
Brazil’s guideline’s golden rule is something that we should all aspire to – always prefer natural or minimally processed foods and freshly made dishes and meals to ultra-processed foods.
Carlo Fadda, Research Director, Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture, joined Bioversity International in 2004 in Vietnam, where he spent almost three years as part of a project to manage agrobiodiversity in situ. Carlo has managed projects in China, Ecuador, Morocco, Kenya, Ethiopia, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, and Tanzania, among others. In 2015, Carlo moved to Ethiopia to establish Bioversity’s office in the country. From 2016, he represented all Bioversity’s country offices on the Senior Management Team. For the last six years, he led the ‘Seeds for Needs’ research team, which matches genetic diversity to farmers’ needs and brings material from genebanks back into production systems. His work centres on the understanding that conservation and use of genetic resources cannot be decoupled from rural development, livelihoods, and economics. He has a PhD in evolutionary biology and zoology from the Sapienza University of Rome. Carlo is also an adjunct researcher at Scuola S. Anna Pisa in Italy. He is based in Nairobi.
Carlo Fadda
Research Director, Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture
BIODIVERSITYINTERNATIONAL.ORG
Eating indigenous food addresses many issues related to food system’s impact on climate, environment, biodiversity and health. Indigenous food is produced locally and consumed locally, thus it reduces the environmental cost of transport. Indigenous food is adapted to local conditions and prevalent pests and diseases; thus, it requires limited use of fertilizers and application of pesticides limiting GHG emissions and environmental pollution. This is particularly true for local varieties of major crops, such as maize, rice and wheat, which will also be better conserved if they are used more. Indigenous food is diverse and generally nutritious, particularly local fruits, nuts, pulses and vegetables. Considering that malnutrition is largely related to low consumption of fruits and vegetables, eating more of this food types can reduce the incidence of malnutrition and save lives. Eating indigenous food can protect biodiversity: out of 7,000 species humanity could consume, 15 species provide 90 percent of the world’s food energy intake, and three, rice, maize and wheat, provide 66% of the total energy. Thus, eating more indigenous food means incentive to use more species in production systems. Eating indigenous food can provide incentives for farming communities to diversify their production systems, making them more resilient to climate change and more ecologically sound, attracting more birds and insect species, thus contributing to biodiversity conservation and provision of ecosystem services. Eating indigenous food provides a different gastronomic experience, giving you pleasure which can improve wellbeing and support the livelihood of local communities.
Alison Blay-Palmer, the UNESCO Chair in Food Biodiversity and Sustainability Studies, is the founding Director for the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems and a Professor in Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Her research and teaching combine her passions for sustainable food systems and community viability through civil society engagement and innovative governance. Alison collaborates with academics and practitioners across Canada and internationally including partners in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, South Africa, and the United States. This work gained recognition in both 2012 and 2019 when her partnership was one of three nominees for a national SSHRC Partnership Impact Award. Other on-going research projects with partners and students include: City Region Food System, Climate Resilience with the Resources Centre on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); and food security, health and climate change in the Northwest Territories. Alison has been a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists since 2016.
Alison Blay-Palmer
Chair in Food Biodiversity and Sustainability Studies
UNESCO
Eating locally connects me to my local food system in so many wonderful ways. I know more about the people who grow my food, and sometimes I meet them myself. I have access to fresher food and I know how it is grown or produced. Buying local food lets me support famers who are in my food community and keep money close to home. It also let’s me help the environment as I can buY food from people who grow or make things that tread as lightly as possible on the planet so we have better soil and more biodiversity. Local food let’s me do something immediate to help the world, so that gives me a concrete thing to do in this time of so many pressures.
Dr. Lana Vanderlee’s research aims to design and evaluate population-level nutrition policies and interventions that address diet-related non-communicable diseases and environmental sustainability, to help inform Canadian and international policy decisions. She conducts applied research with global networks of investigators to evaluate the status and impact of government and food industry policies relating to food environments, like dietary guidelines, restrictions on marketing unhealthy foods to children, food labelling, efforts to reformulate the food supply, and sugary drink taxes.
Lana Vanderlee
Assistant Professor
L’ ÉCOLE DE NUTRITION – Université Laval
There are many ways that food marketing influences dietary choice, particularly among young people. The amount of food marketing we are exposed to is substantial: that children and adolescents are exposed to is substantial: in 2016, the US food industry spent somewhere around $13.5 billion dollars advertising food across all forms of media. This translates into a huge amount of exposure to advertising – in the US, children are exposed to around 10-11 food ads per day, which means they see several thousand ads promoting less healthy food choices per year. Children are particularly vulnerable to promotions and advertisements, as they are not able to understand and process the persuasive messaging that is present in most food advertising. Research has shown us that advertising for less healthy food increase childrens’ preferences for these foods, and also increases childrens’ requests to purchase food items – known as ‘pester power’ – that ultimately influences parents’ food purchases. Marketing works, and protecting children from unhealthy food messaging now is a priority identified by the World Health Organization and others to help improve dietary choices and create a healthier food environment for everyone.
Dr. Wolfson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. Dr. Wolfson’s research focuses on health and social policies and programs related to food and beverage choices, and factors that influence diet quality, food insecurity, and obesity and diet related disease prevention. In all her work, Dr. Wolfson’s goal is to produce evidence that contributes to social and policy change, supports the creation of a health promoting and sustainable food system, helps develop effective policies, and ultimately, improves the public’s health, particularly for the most vulnerable members of society.
Julia Wolfson
Assistant Professor, Health Management and Policy
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Cooking meals at home, particularly from scratch or less processed ingredients, is associated with lower overall energy intake, greater fruit and vegetable consumption, and better diet quality. As the food environment has become dominated with fast food and highly processed, energy dense options, cooking meals at home has become a key recommendation for healthy eating. But, for many people, cooking healthy meals on a daily basis is difficult given the busy lives we lead today. And, cooking is a very complex behavior that encompasses multiple, interrelated skills and capacities including planning, budgeting, time management, organizational skills, perceptual skills, and technical cooking skills. It is, therefore, important to develop the skills and capacities to prepare meals that do not rely on highly processed ingredients; doing so can have benefits for diet quality, diet related health outcomes such as diabetes, and depending on what foods people cook (e.g. plant based meals), potentially for the health of the planet as well.
Jess Haines is a dietitian and an Associate Professor of Nutrition at the University of Guelph in Canada. Dr. Haines’s research aims to bridge epidemiologic research on the determinants of health behaviours with the design, implementation, and evaluation of family-based interventions to support children’s healthy eating and growth. Dr. Haines is the co-Director of the Guelph Family Health Study, a family-based cohort study aimed at understanding predictors of health behaviours in families with young children.
Jess Haines
Dietitian and Associate Professor of Nutrition
UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH, CANADA
Balancing paid work, household work, and parenting responsibilities is a challenge for many families across the globe. And this challenge of balancing work with family and other life commitments has been shown to influence our food choices. A study of over 3700 parents found that parents who report higher conflict between work and family commitments report fewer family meals and higher intake of fast food as compared to parents with lower work-family conflict. Lack of time is one of the most commonly reported barriers to choosing healthful foods and is associated with higher intakes of fast food as well as convenience or prepared meals. Policy approaches to provide greater flexibility over work hours and location as well improved childcare access and affordability, including before and after school care, could ease parents’ struggle of balancing work and family, which could improve the overall wellbeing of families while also improving their food choices.
Olivia Weinstein is a registered dietitian and the culinary nutrition manager at Boston Medical Center’s Teaching Kitchen. In addition, Olivia has a private practice where she offers one-on-one nutrition counseling and at-home cooking lessons. Olivia is a group fitness instructor and certified personal trainer at local gyms in the Boston area. Olivia’s passion for health and cooking nutritious foods was born at an early age. Growing up in a single parent household, Olivia was responsible for cooking dinner and packaging lunches for herself and her siblings at 10 years old. Olivia has turned her passion for cooking into a career where she connects daily about food and helping people find easy and affordable ways to stay healthy.
Olivia Weinstein
Culinary Nutrition Director
BMC TEACHING KITCHEN
Joyce Slater is an Associate Professor of Community Nutrition in the Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences, at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. She teaches food and nutrition literacy education, and public health nutrition. Joyce uses survey and mixed methods, and participatory approaches to conduct research on the role of food literacy in well-being; food and nutrition security; and nutrition surveillance. Her research has been funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Canadian Home Economics Foundation. Joyce is also a Registered Dietitian who worked in various public health organizations for 18 years before obtaining her PhD and joining the University of Manitoba.
Joyce Slater
Associate Professor
UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA
1- Statistics Canada. Table 11-10-0125-01 Detailed food spending, Canada, regions and provinces DOI
2- USDA Economic Research Service, Food Expenditure Series.
3- North American Initiatives on Food and Organic Waste. 2018. Characterization and Management of Food Loss and Waste in North America – White Paper
OLIVIA WEINSTEN: I think it’s because people want life to be frictionless – or as frictionless as possible. We strive for automation in our lives to minimize the effort and cognition needed to complete daily tasks. Our phone wakes us up in the morning, navigates us through our commitments, and delivers us food at the end of a long day with a swipe. Cooking, on the other hand, creates friction. It takes time, effort and thought– the antithesis of society’s efforts to automate. So when we swipe for food, we reduce that friction and feel satisfied by convenience. In short, cooking creates friction. Meal delivery does not.
JOYCE SLATER: Food skills are critical to healthy eating, as people with adequate cooking and shopping skills tend to have better diets, which lead to better overall health. However, ever-expanding markets of ultra-processed foods, fast food and app-based meal delivery make developing food skills, like cooking with less-processed ingredients, seem unnecessary. Further, many children are not learning sufficient food skills at home, or at school where programs such as home economics have been eroded in recent decades. In Canada 30% of food expenditures are made from restaurants. In the United States, almost 50% of food expenditures are on food “away from home”. Lack of food skills also contributes to food waste: Canadian and American consumers throw out about 180 kg of food year each!* Cooking should be considered an essential life skill, social skill, and health promotion strategy. Taking time to plan meals, learn some healthy recipes, and teach our kids these skills is time well-invested. It will save money, the planet and your health!
Judith has been the director of Madkulturen since its establishment in 2011. Prior to that she was the director of Fairtrade in Denmark. She holds a Master from Cambridge in Environment and Development from the department of Geography and now combines her passion for sustainability with work in the field of Food.
Judith Kyst
Director Food Culture
MADKULTUREN
There are several and considerable benefits of families eating together. In general, when we eat together, the food we eat is healthier and it taste better and eating together have a positive influence on our well-being. This counts for family meals as well. Studies show that children from families who often eat together will eat more fruits, vegetables and wholegrains. Children from families who eat together less often will drink more sweet drinks, eat more unhealthy snacks and more high-fat foods. There can be different explanations for these benefits. Some point out that eating together involves a more stringent social regulation of the type and quantity of food eaten. Others that eating together is an occasion for exchanging norms and attitudes in general and to speak about what we eat and why we eat it. Eating together as families serves other purposes as well. For many families, the family meal is a recurrent, recognizable, structuring and socializing event with formative and educative functions. To many, the family meal thus become a key element in building and maintaining the family. The family meal helps organizing the day and family meals influence both mental and physical health, as eating together creates stronger family ties and a stronger sense of belonging. Eating homecooked meals together as a family is also the most widespread ideal for meals in Denmark. However, lack of time and energy in everyday life can be an obstacle for the homecooked family meal. One way of overcoming this might be to involve and engage the children in the cooking.
Jamie has worked in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) field for over 20 years, working on a wide range of projects, from tracking deforestation rates in Southeast Asia, to predicting groundwater recharge rates in Southern Arizona, to mapping bike routes in Baltimore City. Jamie joined the Center for a Livable Future in 2010 and sees his GIS skills as a natural fit in advancing the Center’s mission. Through his work at the Center, Jamie has come to appreciate how complex the food system in Maryland is, even at the local level. He likes the challenge of presenting the many elements of the food system–and their interconnections–in a way that people can easily process and understand. Jamie has helped develop the Maryland Food System Map, a web mapping application that he believes is a useful tool for people to learn more about Maryland’s food system. He has also contributed to the Center’s Baltimore City Food Environment research. Jamie has been motivated by the people and organizations he has encountered while working at the Center. Whether it is a grandmother trying to bring healthier food options to her neighborhood in Baltimore, a researcher trying to better understand the environmental impacts of a particular agricultural practice, or an educator simply helping her students learn where their food comes from, Jamie is inspired by how each contributes to raising awareness about our food environment and moves us closer to making better choices about our food.
Jamie Harding
GIS Specialist, Food Communities and Public Health
JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER FOR A LIVEABLE FUTURE
The retail environment is made up of a complex set of physical, economic, social, and cultural factors that influence where we shop for food and what kinds of food we purchase and eat. Some of these factors include proximity to food, affordability of food, available food options, marketing and advertising, government policies, cultural norms, and market forces. The retail environment, however, is only part of the equation. Individual and household income, education, and preferences also factor into the decisions we make about what food to buy.
Lauren McIntyre manages research uptake for IMMANA (Innovative Methods and Metrics for Agriculture and Nutrition Actions) and the ANH Academy. This involves driving the research uptake strategy for the programme, managing uptake of the outputs and impacts of grants and fellowships, and training and capacity building of grantee research partners in research management and communication methods. She has previously worked in aquatic ecology, food buying and environmental land management.
Lauren McIntyre
Research Uptake Manager
IMMANA
References:
Turner, C., Kalamatianou, S., Drewnowski, A., Kulkarni, B., Kinra, S., & Kadiyala, S. (2020).
Food environment research in low-and middle-income countries: a systematic scoping review. Advances in Nutrition, 11(2), 387-397.
Pehlke, E. L., Letona, P., Hurley, K., & Gittelsohn, J. (205). Guatemalan school food environment: impact on schoolchildren’s risk of both undernutrition and overweight/obesity. Health promotion international, 31(3), 542-550.
Downs, S. M., Thow, A. M., Ghosh-Jerath, S., & Leeder, S. R. (2014). Developing interventions to reduce consumption of unhealthy fat in the food retail environment: a case study of India. Journal of hunger & environmental nutrition, 9(2), 210-229.
Hawkes, C. (2005). The role of foreign direct investment in the nutrition transition. Public health nutrition, 8(4), 357-365.
Popkin, B. M. (2014). Synthesis and implications: C hina’s nutrition transition in the context of changes across other low‐and middle‐income countries. Obesity reviews, 15, 60-67.
Pries, A. M., Filteau, S., & Ferguson, E. L. (2019). Snack food and beverage consumption and young child nutrition in low‐and middle‐income countries: A systematic review. Maternal & child nutrition, 15, e12729.
Green, M., Hadihardjono, D. N., Pries, A. M., Izwardy, D., Zehner, E., & Huffman, S. L. (2019). High proportions of children under 3 years of age consume commercially produced snack foods and sugar‐sweetened beverages in Bandung City, Indonesia. Maternal & child nutrition, 15, e12764.
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Changing food environments, in the context of globalization, increased time pressures and unaffordability of nutritious foods, are driving demand for quick, convenient foods to procure, prepare and consume. Recent decades have seen the increasing commercially produced snack foods in LMICs. Foreign direct investment (FDI) has mechanised international food businesses to enter these new markets. Whilst many of the favoured snacks in LMICs (such as fruit) are healthier than those dominant in MEDCs, high sugar, salty and fatty snacks are increasingly consumed. Energy-rich, micronutrient‐poor snack foods consumed early in life can displace more nutritious foods, including breast milk. Over consumption of unhealthy snacks presents a substantial risk of micronutrient dilution, which is contributing to all forms of malnutrition in LMICs. Where readily available and affordable, unhealthy snacks are seen as a desirable and convenient source of calories. Children and adolescents are particularly vulnerable to aggressive marketing, during a dynamic period of growth and development which determines their health outcomes as adults. Food companies target under 20s online, through web pages and social media. Schools providing access to sugary, high-fat snacks and beverages, and restaurants providing an appealing social environment for young people may also be contributing to the rising intake of snack foods.
Gupta, V., Downs, S., Ghosh-Jerath, S., Lock, K., Singh, A. (2016) Unhealthy Fat in Street and Snack Foods in Low-Socioeconomic Settings in India: A Case Study of the Food Environments of Rural Villages and an Urban Slum, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behaviour, 48, 4, 269–279.
Ochola, S., & Masibo, P. K. (2014). Dietary intake of schoolchildren and adolescents in developing countries. Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism, 64(Suppl. 2), 24-40.
PAREKH, N., JUUL, F., & KIRCHNER, T. R. (2019). The evolution and spread of industrial food: Building youth resilience through food and media literacy. UNSCN NUTRITION, 99.
Azeredo, C. M., de Rezende, L. F. M., Canella, D. S., Claro, R. M., Peres, M. F. T., do Carmo Luiz, O., … & Levy, R. B. (2016). Food environments in schools and in the immediate vicinity are associated with unhealthy food consumption among Brazilian adolescents. Preventive medicine, 88, 73-79.
Keats, E. C., Rappaport, A. I., Shah, S., Oh, C., Jain, R., & Bhutta, Z. A. (2018). The dietary intake and practices of adolescent girls in low-and middle-income countries: A systematic review. Nutrients, 10(12), 1978.
As Director of Recipe Management, Lisa currently oversees Culinary Systems for Sodexo North America. Her team manages recipe data, menu architecture, and nutrition services, as well as assists with ingredient selection and culinary development, for all of Sodexo’s market segments. A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Lisa has over 30 years of experience in all facets of food service management. As a Certified Research Chef, she specializes in product and concept development. She is also the Plant Forward Working Group Co-Chair for the CIA’s Healthy Menus Research & Development Collaborative, as well as the co-chair of CIA’s Healthy Kids Collaborative.
Lisa Feldman
Director of Culinary Services
SODEXO
The short answer to why there is only fast food in underserved urban communities can be traced back to President Lyndon Johnson, who in the wake of the Watts Riots in 1965, sent the Small Business Administration to investigate the economic root cause. The SBA, along with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, chose to focus on fostering minority entrepreneurship to drive local employment and morale. Unfortunately, the outlet for the funding attached to this initiative was fast food franchises. And while providing an outlet for local minority-owned business and employment, it did major damage to the dietary patterns in those neighborhoods. Coupled with major marketing dollars aimed at urban populations to keep sales up, cracking the code to healthier options is almost impossible. The only way to incentivize healthier options is to literally incentivize the restaurants selling food in those neighborhoods to serve something healthier. Operating a restaurant leads to small profit margins. R&D is expensive and no organization is willing to put lots of capitol into a new menu offer that isn’t reasonably guaranteed to succeed. Providing the funding to dive into marketing in these areas, create healthier options that are culturally relevant to the local population, and then do targeted marketing within those communities is the only way to create systemic change.
2. EAT-Lancet Commission Brief for Food Service Professionals (2019).
3. Swinburn, B et al. (2019). The Global Syndemic of Obesity, Undernutrition, and Climate Change: The Lancet Comission Report. Lancet; 393(10173):791-846.
Felipe Frangione’s passion for food and cooking started at a young age, by assisting his Italian grandmother to make craft pasta and breads. After graduating in Culinary Arts in Brazil, he started working in restaurants and in the hospitality market, and was invited to run the culinary operation for branded products from St. Marché, a big retail chain in São Paulo. In 2014, Felipe won the Best Dish Brazilian Contest, promoted by the International Oil Council. Since 2015, Chef Felipe has been working for Compass Group on the Google account, currently overseeing culinary operations in Latin America.
Felipe Frangione
Latam Regional Executive Chef working for Compass
FOOD+ BY COMPASS
The “PF” is commonly known as “the workers meal” and it is a full balanced meal to nourish you through the day as it is composed of: 1 portion of grains (white rice), 1 portion of pulse (beans), 1 portion of vegetable (salad green with tomato and onion), 1 portion of animal protein (beef steak). All of these elements are featured at the same time representing 1/4 each of the plate (although the ratio can vary depending the region, but ingredients and categories do not change). The “PF” could be healthier and more sustainable if Chefs start looking at this common and well known dish with the same mindset used at high end meals, aiming not to standardize but approach it from a seasonal and local perspective, introducing more variety for Brazilians on a daily basis, naturally balancing ingredient costs by leveraging local economy and buying more from family and small producers. The outcome would be an amazing increase in nutritional facts and flavor as selected ingredients would be at the peak of the flavor and nutrients.
Carla Martins is currently a professor at the School of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (FSP/USP) and a researcher at the Center for Epidemiological Research in Nutrition and Health (NUPENS/USP). She worked as part of the team that developed the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population. Her work focuses on cooking and its impact on ultra-processed food consumption; and cooking as a tool for protection and promotion of human health and environmental sustainability.
Carla Martins
Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Visiting Fellowship
UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
The Brazilian school-feeding program (In Portuguese: Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar – PNAE) has been a great ally to achieve fairer, healthier and more sustainable food systems because it combines a public policy to guarantee healthy and sustainable eating at school and, at the same time, a strategy to value and protect the family farmers work. Protected by the law, the acquisition of foods to prepare the menus of every public school in Brazil needs to be, at least, 30% produced by the family farmers (preferable, organic farmers). This strategy has being a strong initiative to protect the local food systems, to promote population’s health and to provide nutritional education by school’s meals.
Further reading:
Lifelong farmer John Peterson manages Angelic Organics, a Biodynamic Community Supported Agriculture farm since 1990 located in northern Illinois, now serving more than 2500 families in Chicagoland. Peterson is the subject of Taggart Siegel’s award winning feature documentary film The Real Dirt on Farmer John. John has shared his life extensively through theater, film and writing. His lifelong passion for farming is the perfect backdrop (and sometimes foreground) for the dramatic stories he shares. Check out his posts at Farm News for updates on his farm. Married on December 4th, 2010, John and his wife Haidy share a passionate interest in Anthroposophy, design, and each other.
John Peterson
Founder
ANGELIC ORGANICS
When you join a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) Farm, you are entering into a deep relationship to the earth through the fresh local nutritious food that you receive. To join, you purchase a “share” of the summer’s harvest, thus becoming a shareholder. You then receive a weekly box (or every-other-week box) of the freshest, seasonal produce during the harvest season. (There are many variations on the CSA model today—exclusively vegetables; vegetables and other foods such as meat and dairy, sometimes referred to as full diet CSA; customized shares; non-customized shares; pre-pay for your share or pay over time, etc.) Your food will reside in a richer context than if you simply buy it from a store; it comes from a farm of which you are a part. As your food grows, it experiences weather that you learn about from your farmer. It grows in soil on your farm that you can visit. You not only experience your food more fully when you join a CSA; you experience the earth more fully, because you are now a part of a farm. Fresh and local are great attributes of food, but being aware of the journey that your food takes from seed to table will make the experience of your food even richer.
For more than a decade, Jessica Hager (she/her/hers) has been focused on social determinants of health, namely food security, and currently serves as director, healthcare partnerships and nutrition at Feeding America. Her work has centered on the development and execution of a national strategy aimed at improving food security through cross-sector partnerships, applied research, and hunger-relief sector transformation. Much of these efforts are featured on Hunger + Health, a site developed by Hager to educate, connect and engage cross-sector professionals addressing food insecurity. She is a proponent and lifelong student of working with communities to illuminate and interrupt systemic barriers hindering humanity’s progress to ensuring dignity and basic needs for all. Hager served as co-lead to the inaugural diversity, equity and inclusion planning team at Feeding America, laying a foundation for evaluation and systems-level change within the organization. She also serves on the board of directors at enfleshed, a national non-profit focused on the centering of marginalized experiences, conversations and communities. Currently a resident of Chicago, Hager hails from Texas where she was an active member of Austin’s non-profit sector. She holds a MA in Social Work from University of Chicago and BA in Communication Studies from Southwestern University.
Jessica Hager
Director, Healthcare Partnerships & Nutrition
FEEDING AMERICA
Through a network of 200 food banks that reach every county in the United States, Feeding America is providing food assistance to more than 40 million people each year. A food bank is a non-profit organization that collects and distributes food to hunger-relief charities. Food banks accept, sort and store large format donations which are broken down for distribution through smaller front line agencies. While some food banks offer direct service programs, they usually do not themselves give out food directly to people struggling with hunger. Food banks partner with food pantries, meal programs, shelters, and operate their own food distribution programs to provide nourishment to families, individuals, children and seniors.
Food banks in the U.S. and across the world are very diverse – from small operations serving people spread out across large rural areas to very large facilities that store and distribute many millions of pounds of food each year, and everything in between. A variety of factors impact how food banks work, from the size of the facility to the number of staff members. But, one thing all food banks have in common is that they rely on donors and volunteers to carry out their day-to-day operations.
Food banks may also offer other services or serve as a central hub for referrals to other services such as federal nutrition assistance programs, job skills training, financial literacy programs, after-school programs or health care referrals. They also raise awareness about hunger in their communities and work with elected officials to support policies that help people facing hunger.
Learn more about local food insecurity by exploring data from Feeding America’s annual Map the Meal Gap study.
Karen Bassarab is a senior program officer with the Food Communities and Public Health program at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF). Her work focuses on understanding interactions between the built environment, food access, policy and collaboration in shaping place-based food systems. Karen spends most of her time at CLF on the Food Policy Networks project working to build the capacity of food policy councils and similar organizations to effectively engage in food systems policy change. Karen has a Master’s degree in community and regional planning and public policy and has worked for over a decade on food systems programs and policy.
Karen Bassarab
Senior Program Officer – Food Communities and Public Health
JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER FOR A LIVABLE FUTURE
Improving access to healthy food for a large portion of Americans is a complicated problem due to the interrelationship between accessibility, affordability and availability. These three A’s are central to a web of factors that further complicate the issue. Factor, like the quality, type and seasonality of available food; the availability of foods that are culturally-acceptable or meet dietary needs; the cleanliness, safety, hospitality and hours of operation of food retailers; individual taste; the modes of transportation available to get to a food retailer; the household income and cost of living of a person; the race or ethnicity of a person, and where a person lives. Improving access to healthy food by looking at only one factor is an ineffectual long-term solution.
That, however, is how we use policy to improve food access: piecemeal. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the largest and most effective US program to address food insecurity and yet, the program mostly only solves one problem, the affordability of food. SNAP provides an immediate solution but does not address the underlying reasons for why families cannot afford food or why healthy food costs more than highly processed foods. We need a new approach to policy that puts the needs of the people with the greatest hardship in accessing healthy food at the center of the solution. We need an approach that starts with honoring the dignity and well-being of people. We need an approach that is flexible and yet comprehensive to recognize that the interrelationship of factors that impact food access vary by place.
Prof. Bryndis Eva Birgisdóttir is a professor in nutrition at the University of Iceland. She started out with a BSc in nutrition from the Karolinska Insitute and University of Stockholm, as a stepping stone towards a further degree in Clinical Dietetics from Gothenburg University. After graduation she worked for a few years as a clinical dietitian at the National University Hospital in Iceland along with research and lecturing. However, after her PhD in nutritional epidemiology from the University of Iceland, she worked on public health nutrition projects and research, both in Iceland and from Bruxelles. When relocating to Oslo, Norway Bryndis worked on several research projects at the Norwegian Public Health Institute before moving to Iceland again, as an associate professor/professor in nutrition at the University of Iceland. Bryndis is currently a guest researcher at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
Bryndís Eva Birgisdóttir
Professor
UNIVERSITY OF ICELAND
The measures have been different, but the Nordic countries, mainly with the support from the Nordic Council of Ministers, have also worked together on many solutions and their action plans on nutrition bear similarities. The Nordic Dietary Recommendations, form in part, the basis of Nordic Nutrient Recommendations as well as Food Based Dietary Guidelines in all the Nordic countries. These are very similar, recommending plant based healthy whole foods for improved public health, with focus on Nordic Food. The guidelines are aimed at the general population, but are also in use in governmental institutions where food is offered, such as in kindergartens and schools and elderly care. The Nordic countries have also worked together towards the Keyhole, a simple front of packaging nutritional label, put on products adhering to a certain nutritional standard. Through other Nordic projects, such as the New Nordic Food project, an approach toward local sustainable nutritious and delicious food was taken, casting Nordic Food as a gastronomic cultural adventure. There has also focus on commensality, the importance of the cooking and the meal as a happy social event. This has also given ways to new nutrition education in schools, focused on smelling and tasting as well as hands on growing of food. Some of the Nordic countries have been using food policies, such as taxation of sugar to tackle the flood of unhealthy food, and all countries have set up a ban on advertisement of unhealthy food towards children, although implemented in different ways. There have also been public-private and civil society partnerships on changes in food production, differing in depth and endpoints as well as various voluntary nutrition commitments. Together all these measures have broadened the range of healthy food in stores. Furthermore, all the Nordic countries monitor the diet of their populations on different levels and do research on the effect of food eaten on health. However, today a minority eats according to the Nordic diet guidelines. Some larger cities have made their own policies. Policies, whether governmental or more local, are more easy to set than designing, funding, initiating, accomplishing and evaluating the different projects. Many of the above measures could be used more efficiently and there is definitely room for even more productive and diverse public health nutrition measures. The future will reveal the fruits of these.
Food banks in the U.S. and across the world are very diverse – from small operations serving people spread out across large rural areas to very large facilities that store and distribute many millions of pounds of food each year, and everything in between. A variety of factors impact how food banks work, from the size of the facility to the number of staff members. But, one thing all food banks have in common is that they rely on donors and volunteers to carry out their day-to-day operations.
Food banks may also offer other services or serve as a central hub for referrals to other services such as federal nutrition assistance programs, job skills training, financial literacy programs, after-school programs or health care referrals. They also raise awareness about hunger in their communities and work with elected officials to support policies that help people facing hunger.
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