Obesity Hunger 1 global food issue Ellen Gustafson
I’m Ellen and I am totally obsessed with
food but I need to start out obsessed
with food I started out obsessed with
global security policy because I’ve
lived in New York during 9/11 and it was
obviously a very relevant thing and I
got from global security policy to food
because I realized when I’m hungry I’m
really pissed off and I’m assuming that
the rest of the world is - especially if
you’re hungry and your kids are hungry
and your neighbors kids are hungry and
your whole neighborhood is hungry you’re
pretty angry and actually low and behold
it looks pretty much like the areas of
the world that are hungry are also the
areas of the world that are pretty
insecure so I took a job at the United
Nations World Food Program as a way to
try to address these security issues
through food security issues and while I
was there I came across what I think is
the most brilliant of their programs
it’s called school feeding it’s a really
simple idea to sort of get in the middle
of the cycle of poverty and hunger that
continues for a lot of people around the
world and stop it by giving kids a free
school meal it gets them into school
which is obviously education the first
step out of poverty but it also gives
them the micronutrients and the
macronutrients they need to really
develop both mentally and physically
what was working at the UN I met this
girl her name is Lauren Bush and she had
this really awesome idea to sell the bag
called the feed bag which is really
beautifully ironic because you can strap
on the feed bag but if it each bag we’d
sell would provide a year’s worth of
school meals for one kid it’s so simple
and we thought you know okay it cost
between 20 and 50 bucks to provide
school feeding for a year we could sell
these bags and raise a ton of money and
a ton of awareness for the World Food
Program but of course you know at the UN
sometimes things move slowly and they
basically said no and we god this
is such a good idea and it’s gonna raise
so much money so we said screw it we’ll
just start our own company which we did
three years ago so that was kind of my
first dream was to start this company
called feed and and here’s a screenshot
of our website we did this bag and for
Haiti and we launched it just a month
after the earthquake to provide school
meals for kids in Haiti Sophie’s doing
great we’ve so far provided fifty five
million meals to kids around the world
by selling a five hundred fifty thousand
bags ton of bags lotta bags all this
time you’re really when you think about
hunger it’s a hard thing to think about
because what we think about is eating I
think about eating a lot and I really
love it and it’s a little strange about
international hunger and talking about
international issues is that most people
kind of want to know what are you doing
in America what are you doing for
America’s kids
there’s definitely
in America 49 million people in almost
16.7 million children I mean that’s
pretty dramatic for our own country
hunger definitely means something a
little bit different in America than it
does internationally but it’s incredibly
important to address hunger in our own
country but obviously the bigger problem
that we all know about is obesity and
it’s dramatic the other thing that’s
dramatic is that both hunger and obesity
have really risen in the last thirty
years
unfortunately obesity is not only an
American problem it’s actually been
spreading all around the world and
mainly through our kind of food systems
that were exporting the numbers are
pretty crazy there’s a billion people
obese or overweight and a billion people
hungry so those seem like two bifurcated
problems but I kind of started to think
about you know what is obesity and
hunger what are both those things about
well they’re both about food and when
you think about food the underpinning of
food in both cases is potentially
problematic agriculture and you know
agriculture is where food comes from
well agriculture in America is very
interesting it’s very consolidated and
the foods that are produced lead to the
foods that we eat well the foods that
are produced are more or less corn soy
and weed and as you can see that’s
three-quarters of the food that we’re
eating for the most part processed foods
and fast foods unfortunately in our
agricultural system we haven’t done a
good job in the last three decades of
exporting that to those technologies
around the world
so African agriculture which is the
place of most hunger in the world has
actually fallen precipitously as hunger
has risen so somehow we’re not making
the connect between exporting a good
agricultural system that will help feed
people all around the world who is
farming him that’s what I was like
wondering and so I went and stood on a
big grain bin out in the Midwest and
that really didn’t help me understand
farming but I think it’s a really cool
picture and and you know the reality is
that between between farmers in America
who actually quite frankly when I spend
time in the Midwest are pretty large in
general and their farms are also large
but but farmers and the rest of the
world are actually quite skinny and
that’s because they’re starving most
hungry people in the world are
subsistence farmers and most of those
people are women which is a totally
other topic that I won’t get on right
now but I’d love to do the feminist
thing at some point I think it’s really
interesting to look at agriculture from
these two sides there’s this large
consolidated farming that’s led to what
we eat in America and its really been
since around 1980 after the oil crisis
when you know mass consolidation mass
exodus of small farmers in this country
and then in the same time period you
know we’ve kind of left Africa’s farmers
to do their own thing
unfortunately what is farm ends up as
what we eat in America a lot of what we
eat has led to obesity and has led to a
real change in sort of what our diet is
in the last 30 years it’s crazy
1/5 of kids under to drink soda hello
you don’t put soda in bottles but people
do because it’s so cheap and so our
whole food system in the last 30 years
has really shifted I mean I think you
know it’s not just in our own country
but really we’re exporting this system
around the world and when you look at
the data of least developed countries
especially in cities which are growing
really rapidly people are eating
American processed foods and in one
generation they’re going from hunger and
all of the detrimental health effects of
hunger to obesity and things like
diabetes and heart disease in one
generation
so the problematic food system is
affecting both hunger and obesity not to
beat a dead horse but this is a global
food system where there’s a billion
people hungry and a billion people obese
I think that’s the only way to look at
it and instead of taking these two
things as bifurcated problems that are
very separate it’s really important to
look at them as one system we get a lot
of our food from all around the world
and people from all around the world are
importing our food system so it’s
incredibly relevant to start a new way
of looking at it the thing is I’ve
learned in in the technology people that
are here which I’m totally not one of
them but apparently it really takes 30
years for a lot of technologies to
become really endemic to to us like the
mouse and and and the internet and
Windows you know there’s 30 year cycles
I think 2010 can be a really interesting
year because it is the end of a 30-year
cycle and it’s the birthday of the
global food system so that’s the first
birthday I want to talk about you know I
think if we really think that this is
something that’s happened in the last 30
years there’s hope in that it’s the 30th
anniversary of GMO crops of the big gulp
Chicken McNuggets high fructose corn
syrup the farm crisis in America and the
change in how we’ve addressed
agriculture internationally so there’s a
lot of reasons to take this 30 year time
period as as sort of the creation of
this new food system I’m not the only
one who’s obsessed with this whole
thirty year thing the icons like Michael
Pollan and Jamie Oliver in his TED Prize
wish both addressed this like last three
decades time period is incredibly rare
for food system change well I really
care about 1980 because it’s also the
30th anniversary of me this year and so
in my lifetime a lot of what’s happened
in the world and being a person obsessed
with food a lot of this has really
changed so my second dream is that I
think we can look to the next 30 years
as a time to change the food system
again and we know what’s happened in the
past so if we start now and we look at
technologies and improvements to the
food system long term we might be able
to recreate the food system so when I
give my next talk and I’m 60 years old
I’ll be able to say that’s been a
success so I’m announcing today the
start of a new organization our new fund
within the feed foundation called the 30
project and the 30 project is really
focused on these long-term ideas for
food system change and I think by
aligning international advocates that
are addressing hunger and domestic
advocates that are addressing obesity we
might actually look for long-term
solutions that will make the food system
better for everyone we all tend to think
that these systems are quite different
and people argue whether or not organic
can feed the world but if we take a
30-year view there’s more hope in
collaborative ideas so I’m hoping that
by connecting really disparate
organizations like the one campaign and
slow food which don’t seem right now to
have much in common we can talk about
holistic long-term systemic solutions
that will improve food for everyone some
ideas I’ve had is like look the reality
is kids in the South Bronx need apples
and carrots and so do kids in Botswana
and how are we gonna get those kids
those nutritious foods
another thing that’s become incredibly
global is production of meat and fish
understanding how to produce protein in
a way that’s healthy for the environment
and healthy for people will be
incredibly important to address things
like climate change and and you know how
we use petrochemical fertilizers and you
know these are really relevant topics
that are long-term and important for
both people in in in Africa who are
small farmers and people in America who
are farmers and eaters and I also think
that thinking about processed foods in a
new way where we actually price the
negative externalities like
petrochemicals and like fertilizer
runoff into the price of a bag of chips
well if that bag of chips then becomes
sort of inherently more expensive than
an apple then maybe it’s time for a
different sense of personal
responsibility and food choice because
the choices are actually choices instead
of three-quarters of the products being
made
from corn soy and wheat the 30 project
org is launched and I’ve gathered a
coalition of a few organizations to
start and it’ll be growing over the next
few months but I really hope that you
will all think of ways that you can look
long-term at things like the food system
and make change
you