Food Bytes: June 1st Edition

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

Indeed, it has been a while. One would have thought that the COVID-19 pandemic would have made me more productive—there is so much to blog about! Alas, for some of us, we’re okay going “underground” so to speak.

Speaking of underground, cicadas have emerged—the Broods (X) are back after a 17-year slumber. What does that have to do with the pandemic? Well, everything and nothing. My guest blogger and better half went hunting to cook some up. And let me tell ya, they are scrumptious. Truly. I too spoke about them on NPR and CNN.

COVID-19 has us not only experimenting with grubs but has upended our entire lifestyle. This NY Times piece argues that as we emerge from a year ++ of inactivity and less than normal eating patterns, we do not have to give in to all the diet fads that companies want you so badly to believe and buy. The video is quite thoughtful.

So many podcasts on food…but I like Point of Origin. This one, on “food apartheid” as opposed to “food desert” is particularly interesting.

Speaking of podcasts, I am pretty excited about my book that is coming out on June 22: Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet? I spoke to Jeremy Cherfast of Eat This Podcast about the book and fixing our food systems.

The UN Food Systems Summit is gearing up for better and for worse. There is a lot of chatter, dialoguing, planning, and writing on the peripheries. Corinna Hawkes, my go-to on all things food systems, has been keeping up her blog sharing gems of thoughts on leadership, inclusion, and what it means to truly change food systems around the world.

Some other random media nuggets that caught my eye this past week or so:

• NYT questions the measurement of Body Mass Index. It’s about time…

• Inspiring article in Mother Jones about black farmers reclaiming land that is rightfully theirs.

• Mark Bittman has written another book and this one hits hard at the U.S. food system. Always provocative, here are some of his thoughts on what needs to change. Alice Waters weighs in too.

• Should we have a scientific body that weighs the evidence on food systems? Some say no. Why? Because it already exists. Yes, it does but it needs help…

We cannot end any Food Byte edition without highlighting some of the fantastic science being generated on all things food. Here are a few gems:

• Animal source foods reduced stunting in young children in Bangladesh and Nepal. Nature Food.

• A modeling exercise looked at the cost-effectiveness of food programs on saving children’s lives. Bottom line, they make an impact. Global Food Security.

• A call to action for a one-health approach to avoid future land use-induced spillover events. Lancet Planetary Health.

• Interesting perspective of pastoralists and another piece on their resilience. One Earth and Aeon.

• You say you want a food systems data revolution? Well, think again. Sustainability.

• While food systems could address disability-adjusted life years due to chronic hunger, population pressure and climate change will make it much worse, particularly for sub-Saharan Africa. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

And that’s all she wrote folks. See you soon.

Food Bytes: October 1st Edition

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

Its been a while since the last Byte. What can I say, COVID and all things America has got me down, slow to move and at times, speechless. So here it goes.

The Food Systems Dashboard was officially launched on June 1st and I think thus far, it is a useful tool. It brings together 170 indicators that characterize food systems, representing just about every country and territory on the planet. There are some snazzy ways to visualize the data or if you choose, you can just download the entire data set. Have at it and send feedback. Keep checking on it, because more features, bells, and whistles are coming soon.

The Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition published its new Report, Future Food Systems: For people, our planet and prosperity a few days ago. It’s chock-full of really good data with contributions from many stellar experts and scientists working on food system transitions and transformation. Plus, the cover is pretty badass.

Speaking of world order, or the lack thereof, a new book out of John Hopkins Press entitled “COVID-19 and World Order: The Future of Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation” is out. Project Muse was gracious enough to provide it as a free download. I contributed a chapter on food security. I recommend reading the last section of the chapter, “The necessity of world order for food security.” I am a bit harsh on the UN and CGIAR systems, but the COVID-19 response has displayed the weaknesses of the multilateral system and existing institutions. Many of these organizations are totally necessary but are perhaps now out of date and in need of an overhaul.

The High-Level Panel of Experts of the UN Committee on Food Security published a great paper on COVID-19 and food security. My guess is the very thoughtful Jennifer Clapp may have been a significant contributor. They lay out some scenarios of short to long-term impacts of the pandemic on food systems. Here is a quick diagram if you don’t have time to read the report. Basically, we are all screwed.

View fullsize

Food policy specialist Corinna Hawkes has a new blog series out entitled the Better Food Journey. Cool stuff. Check it out.

Are you getting sad? Brace yourself, because according to the World Wildlife Fund’s Living Planet Report, “Our relationship with nature is broken.” Sounds like a Werner Herzog documentary. They argue that because humans are the biggest instigators of nature’s destruction we should be the ones to fix it. Here here. Agreed. Too bad our current administration of the ol’ US of A doesn’t feel the same. And THAT is problematic for the whole world not just as dummie Americans or Californians, although “climate change is smacking California in the face.”

Let’s change the subject to one a bit more uplifting. Childhood stunting! In all seriousness, the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition just published a series on how countries can reduce stunting. They highlight some countries that have had success, and for those of us who work in nutrition, the usual suspects - Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Peru et al. But there are some good lessons to be had. Check out the supplement here. And for those more interested in the state of acute malnutrition, there is a good website of acute malnutrition data on over 20 indicators, including prevalence, incidence and coverage.

And for any of you interested in the UN Food Systems Summit slated for next year, keep posted on the latest news here. There will be a lot of activity leading up to the Summit. The question remains, will any of it matter for those being left behind living with hunger, food insecurity, and poverty? Or will it be just another global high-level meeting of the usual suspects? The jury is out…but I will remain hopeful.

Food Bytes: October 6th edition

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

Fall has arrived and with it, some interesting controversies in the food space.

Let’s start with sustainable diets. The New Yorker has a great read about the Impossible burger saving climate change. But according to the International Livestock Research Institute, “alt proteins” are not an answer for poorer countries. As Romeo Void sang, “never, say never.” Jonathan Safran Foer was a meat eater and went cold vegan. And he has another book about it.

Who is not going to save us all from climate change? Brazil. There is a lot of attention to the Brazilian Amazon forest fires. Here is a really good video summarizing the current situation of the Brazilian Amazon forest fires, much of it due to beef. Speaking of beef, there was a lot of controversy over a recent publication that it is okay for people to not limit their red meat consumption, following a slew of reports on its harmful impacts on health and the environment. NYT has been covering the controversy and now most recently, backlash with conflicts of interest. It turns out some were funded by the beef cattlemen association and ILSI, quoting NY Times here a “shadowy industry shaping food policy around the world.”

Paul Ferraro of Johns Hopkins has an article about how climate change solutions remain so elusive, particularly on the way we disseminate evidence. He argues: “We've always assumed the evidence must matter, but in reality we have almost a complete absence of evidence about the value of evidence…But then when it comes to building capacity, disseminating that information, we don't apply a scientific lens anymore. We just do it. We have no idea how to effectively use the science and the evidence we generate to move human behavior.” Tru dat.

Maybe fish will save us all. A fantastic article in Nature on the importance of global fisheries in solving micronutrients. My favorite? Shellfish, particularly, clams. Did you know spaghetti vongole was from Naples? Certo!

The World Bank has summarized the current controversy of childhood stunting being equated to a measure of cognitive development. And on the other end of the spectrum of child growth, a new report estimates that the number of obese children globally is predicted to reach 250 million by 2030, up from 150 million now. Wow. Scary stuff. We often things of these child outcomes — stunting, wasting and overweight — as separate, but we should really stop doing that. This article calls for a unified approach. While I agree, it seems these days we are on a divided battlefield in nutrition and food, with no agreement on much of anything in sight. But, I am a pessimist!

Good enough

As we begin a new year, I have noticed a common theme on twitter and newsfeeds -- How rough 2018 was for so many people, and how much they looked forward to its end. The Washington Post wrote, “…around the globe, 2018 was a year of enduring complex conflicts.”

I would agree that sometimes, it seems the world really is on its knees. With the white house in complete chaos, picking fights with everyone from Mexico to China, the looming Brexit, the DRC, Yemen and Syria in disarray, and the “demise of the liberal order” with right wing populist Bolsonaro winning the Brazilian elections, the political climate is alarming to say the least. The violence we do to each other seems never ending – particularly in the U.S. with gun-related injuries and deaths continually plaguing Americans. Climate change is barreling down on us, with natural disasters ramping up, becoming less predictable and more destructive.

But when we look at the whole picture and try to not react to the sensationalized news feed that inundates us 24/7, things have actually improved for many people around the world. Just look at the statistics of people living in extreme poverty (number of people living on less than $1.90 a day). In the 25 years from 1990 to 2015, the extreme poverty rate dropped an average of a percentage point per year – from nearly 36% to 10%. That is a massive decline! During the same time period, the mortality rate of children under the age of five has fallen by more than half since 1990 – from a rate of 93 (meaning, 93 children die out of every 1,000 live births) to 39.

While the Rohingya situation in Myanmar is devastating, Steven Pinker, Harvard Professor, and author of The Better Angels of our Nature argues that we are doing better than we did 30 years ago and conflicts and genocides taking place around the world have been on a downward trend since the end of the Second World War. And countries recover from conflict. In Rwanda, at the height of their genocide in 1994, the child mortality rate was 282 children per 1000 live births. Now?  38. What a success story.

Rate of deaths in genocides, 1900-2008 (Source: Our World in Data)

In Martha Nussbaum’s new book, The Monarchy of Fear, she argues the same case. She writes that while the present moment “may look like backsliding from our march toward human equality … it is not the apocalypse” and the world is in a much better place than it was following the Second World War in the 1950s in which women, minorities, and the LGBTQ to name a few, had minimal rights and human injustice was rampant. Nussbaum argues that now is “actually a time when hope and work can accomplish a great deal of good.”

The late and great Hans Rosling also agrees in his book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. He argues that by looking at data over time and in the right way, one can see that the world is making huge strides overall. It is just a matter of looking at the bigger picture and the larger trends over time. Yes, children and mothers die, yes there are displaced peoples, conflicts and famines, and yes, the world is very unfair. But at the same time, largely, humans are progressing in positive ways and the news and media, and probably your twitter feed, often does not reflect that.

Because The Food Archive is all about food, let me get to my point. While progress is happening, there has been less success globally in tackling hunger and malnutrition. Those who are food insecure, or hungry, is still too high and we are seeing an increase in the actual numbers and prevalence of people who are hungry over the last two years. However, when looking at the prevalence over a longer period of time, since 2005 those who are hungry in the world have declined from 14.5% in 2005 to 10.9% in 2017. On the opposite spectrum, in 2000, 8.7% of adults were obese, and now, 13%. That 13% equates to 678 million people in the world who are struggling with obesity, or an unhealthy body mass index.  The trends show increases across the board.

Prevalence of obesity is rising among adult men and women over time (Source: Global Nutrition Report)

That said, as reported by the Global Nutrition Report, there are gleams of hope. Stunting, or chronic undernutrition has been declining. In 2000, 33% of children under the age of five were stunted and now, in 2017, 22%. That is almost a 50% decrease. Asia has made significant progress in stunting going from 38% to 23% as has Latin America and the Caribbean declining from 17% to 10% and Africa from 38% to 30%. The question is, why and how? Places like Nepal, Bangladesh and Lesotho have seen significant declines in stunting while still being quite poor. There are many researchers and publications that are trying to understand why these countries have witnessed success, but I think we can argue that it is a combination of interventions from diet, health care, sanitation and hygiene as well as factors not having to do with nutrition at all – like income generation, women’s status, and jobs and remittances.

So what do I hope 2019 looks like? While progress isn't inevitable, and everything doesn’t always get better for everyone all the time, progress is happening in both small and large ways. We need to seek out that progress, learn from what worked, and get into a mindset of problem-solving. We know a lot about what has worked and why, particularly in places where hunger and undernutrition has rapidly come down – look at China, look at Brazil, look at Ethiopia! We also have pockets of success in tackling poor diets, and overweight and obesity. Effective soda taxes in Mexico! Easy-to-read labels on the front of packaged foods high in sugar, fat and salt in Chile! Traditional diets being kept alive in places like Japan and Italy! Obesity rates actually coming down in some states of the U.S. – shocker!

I am well aware of broken resolves, so I refuse to say this year will be better than the last. It is not that I have completely lost faith in humanity and the endeavor it brings, it is just that I think we will need to find the stitched pockets of progress and small glimmers of hope as the basis of our knowledge to move forward. Now, one could argue that seems like a pretty lame new year’s resolution, and instead we need grand-scale, disruptive change. But for me, now, with our current state of affairs, I think that perspective is as good as it gets. And that is good enough.