[Music]
friends colleagues ladies and gentlemen
our food system is broken if it was a
glass vars he would be lying shattered
at my feet I’m gonna tell you a bit
about why it’s broken and more
importantly what we can do to fix it I’m
gonna bore you with some numbers but
just not not just numbers
the first shocking statistic and I’ve
been doing this for quite a while is
that nearly 1 in 2 people on this planet
are malnourished the the images that
we’ve just seen are one set of extremes
but when you put together the severe
wasting the severe stunting anaemia
vitamin A deficiency overweight obesity
diabetes hypertension you put all that
stuff together you get about one in two
people on this planet as malnourished
and no country is exempt from that
problem the country we’re in right now
66 percent of the population is
overweight 1/3 is obese 15 percent is
anemic it’s extraordinary
so no country on this planet has a
monopoly on the problem of malnutrition
and no country on this planet has a
monopoly on the solutions we’re in a
very different world than we were just
15 years ago just give you some of the
kind of boring statistics but they’re
important this is a number you might see
a lot that was just a report out by the
Rome UN agencies last week it said
actually this number is no longer 800
million these are people going to bed
hungry every night this has gone up 30
million in the last year so that’s the
number you hear about a lot here’s
another number that you may hear about
the two billion that don’t get enough
iron or vitamin
or vitamin D or zinc they’re deficient
in some kind of vitamin or mineral and
that number has been static for the last
20 years
no not going up but not going down and
then you’ve got this other massive kind
of freight train coming down the track
which is overweight and obesity 1.9
billion and there’s an overlap because
overweight or obese folks can be
deficient in micronutrients and minerals
right so when you no one’s actually put
all of that together but if you do some
rough calculations you get about three
to three-and-a-half billion people with
one of these conditions and so that’s
nearly one in two on this planet but
numbers so these why does this matter it
matters cause isn’t there’s a big
mortality risk and a big morbidity risks
risk how does this all add up this just
came out last week in The Lancet or
maybe the week before last in The Lancet
it’s the latest estimate of the global
burden of disease so there are some
folks in Seattle and all around the
world the whu-oh they put together all
the mortality data around the world from
all causes all the morbidity data and
they scrunch it up into one number
called disability adjusted life years or
Daly’s I’m sure you’re familiar with
them many of you and then they say okay
what are the risk factors that generate
all of this stuff and they rank for top
ten and here are the top ten and six of
them the ones in dark red are all diet
related so the food system is broken
it’s generating masses amounts masses of
amounts of malnutrition and this
malnutrition is having incredibly
corrosive effect on individuals on
communities families and nations and
ultimately the world this is so numbers
move some people and they they moved me
I’m an economist I grew up on numbers
but the reason I got into this whole
area was because of some just a visit
that I went in my early 20s to India and
and saw some kids that were just I
couldn’t believe how malnourished
they were I couldn’t believe what they
look like I couldn’t believe the
conditions they lived in I couldn’t
believe that this condition could
persist for so long and one of the
things that really struck me very early
on was a was a statistic that I heard
which is that at Birth a baby’s brain
weighs half a kilo right
and obviously the baby’s brain grows and
neurons develop and synapses form and
you know all of this all of it thickens
and at one month at one year of age the
baby’s brain weighs about a kilo so you
go from half a kilo at birth to a kilo
at one year of age the adult brain
weighs 1.4 kilos so from year 1 to year
57 I’ve only added point 4 of a kilo and
some people would be surprised that I’ve
even added that much right so from from
conception through to that first year of
life 70 percent of the brain
infrastructure is being developed in any
insult in that period whether it’s poor
diet or infection is catastrophic to
that child’s life chances now the food
system what is the food system it’s a
horrible term it means basically it’s
very simple everything that from the
nutrients in the ground that are then
propagated into food food is then stored
transported harvested processed sold
marketed consumed and hopefully not too
much of it is wasted that’s the food
system and there are multiple food
systems that operate in every country
actually there are lots of campaigns to
save our broken food system and I said
the food system is broken why do I think
it’s broken the first reason is we
create the demand for healthy food in a
really terribly boring way right you may
not think it living here as I walk from
the Tottenham Court tube station to to
the building here you see what is it
organic what’s that big store over there
globe was it planet organic I was like
wow that’s amazing
so but in general we create the demand
for healthy foods really badly we when
we do create the demand most people
actually can’t afford healthy food and
I’ll give you some pretty shocking
statistics on that and then finally
governments don’t make it very easy for
people to buy healthy food they don’t
make it very easy sometimes for
businesses to do the right thing for
healthy food so I’m going to talk about
how we can do better on those three
dimensions so the first thing is whether
you live in this shanty town in Cape
Town or whether you are Kyle and I
haven’t put these two pictures together
this is a picture whether you whether
you frequent this fancy golf course on
the Left we need to revolutionize the
way we think about creating the demand
for healthy food so there’s a highly
scientific picture of the brain the left
brain is I’m a kind of left brain person
very driven by numbers and very kind of
linear and logical my family wouldn’t
say that but I I protest I am this kind
of person and you know and this is a
classic public health behavior change
programs you should eat this food
because it’s really good for you and you
should eat it and I don’t know why
you’re not eating it because it’s really
good for you so please eat it on the
right side of the brain is all the other
stuff the aspiration the emotion the
colours the music the language the
craving the desirability the
deliciousness and I go to lots of
nutrition meetings all over the world I
never hear the word delicious ever at
any nutrition meeting why would anyone
eat healthy food if it’s not delicious
right businesses are absolutely
brilliant at this kind of stuff they
make you eat food you didn’t even know
you wanted they make you buy things you
didn’t even know you wanted we need
hybrid approaches we need to bring the
best of the science from the public
sector and the best of the disruptive
processes from business I’ve been
travelling for 35 years on planes a lot
and I’ve maybe the first couple of times
I ever got on a plane I listen to the
public service announcement on safety
after that I’ve just tuned it out
completely but just last month I was on
a plane and it was a British Airways
plane and they had this great news food
safety at this great new safety video
which is lots of celebrity so that’s
that’s not why I paid attention to it I
paid attention to it because it has
incredible amounts of humour basically
people taking the piss excuse me out of
themselves and out of the whole process
of how formal it is and we need that
kind of we need that kind of disruptive
messaging around creating the demand for
healthy food so here’s an example of
some of the work that my organization
has been doing in Indonesia it’s called
the healthy gossip campaign we’ve teamed
up with some media companies and some TV
companies and brought in some public
sector folks from the government and
together they’ve come up with a
one-minute video about around a healthy
gossip campaign and it’s about their
it’s about the village gossip who
happens to be a woman but men are just
as gossipy as women we know that talking
and being very judgmental and very
critical of all her neighbors and
friends with the way in which they feed
their kids and it’s very funny and very
humorous and by the end of the minute it
turns out she’s the one who’s the really
who’s not very clued in about how to
feed your kids and that the attraction
has been the uptake has been huge the
the viewing numbers and that and they’re
talking about this campaign has been
huge so that’s usually where the story
ends but we commissioned an Australian
University to actually figure out if
this has had an impact so here’s a
rather techie slide it shows in four
districts in Indonesia this is a group
that was exposed to the ads and this is
a group that wasn’t exposed so there’s a
control group and a treatment group
they’re very similar at the baseline
which is the 47 and the 45 this is kids
who have diets that are adequate in
nutrients at the end of the two year
exposure the gap is is 14% not as big as
we would like but there’s a there’s a
definite impact of this intervention so
effective behavior change is rare but if
you get it right it can be very powerful
because it’s contagious it can get
people talking about things it can
change the way we think about things it
can change norms second thing we need to
do is drive down the cost of healthy
diets my clicker is not working there I
was in a I was in a in Mozambique
working with one of the businesses we
work with businesses to help them get
the price of healthy foods down I was in
this guy’s this small businesses office
and I said what’s that what’s that
picture on the wall I took a photo and
this is the picture and he said that’s
our business plan we want to get the
price from here down to here that’s that
was the business plan why is that
business plan so important here’s a
study that came out last year The Lancet
global health it’s looking at these four
countries on the right Bangladesh India
Pakistan and a Zimbabwean it said how
much would it cost those families to
purchase five fruits and vegetables a
day you and I can purchase five fruits
and vegetables a day no problem we could
probably purchase 50 if we wanted to
right no problem
it turns out that these families would
it would take 52 percent of their income
to purchase five fruits and vegetables a
day and these are five fruits and
vegetables a day that are available and
normally consumed in their context that
these families were living in so they
just simply can’t afford to do it so we
have been working with businesses in
Kenya and Mozambique around healthy and
safe foods and again an independent
evaluation of those programs we provide
small grants and TA and business advice
has shown in three of the four we are
helping firms small medium enterprises
in the countries increase their market
share and drive down the price and the
final thing to do is enable businesses
to do positive things for nutrition
businesses are part and a big part of
the problem in the food system a big
part but if we’re going to turn the food
system around they have to be a big part
of the solution
and this picture is you know we have to
create fertile ground for them to do the
right thing make it easier for them to
do the right thing and harder for them
to do the bad things I’m gonna give you
one example of how we have been working
with the government of Pakistan to make
it easier for businesses to do the right
thing so in Pakistan not much food
not much staple food so things like
wheat flour is fortified and if you add
iron and zinc to wheat flour you’re
helping families because they consume
this stuff a lot of this stuff you’re
helping families get more nutrients in
the diet but it’s really difficult for
businesses to pick this up if it’s going
to cost them a lot more and the
government of pakistan was putting a
sales tax on the stuff you add to wheat
flour the four Tiffa can’t you add to to
make this stuff have more iron and zinc
so we did a very I think very
sophisticated political economy analysis
we did an analysis of all the
parliamentarians
that were going to be involved in
passing a law to reduce or even exempt
this for TIFF acun from the sales tax
and then we targeted those those
politicians with with key messages about
why this was a good thing to to exempt
the sales tax and this is the budget
document this is the cover of the
document in in Pakistan of their 2017
budget on page 14 of that document you
can see this it’s proposed to provide an
exemption from sales tax on premixes
which is the stuff you add to the wheat
flour to fight growth stunting I’ve
never seen the words growth stunting
fight growth stunting in a budget
document before so for us this may not
seem terribly exciting to you but for us
this was incredibly exciting because it
means that millions of people are able
to get fortified wheat flour so my final
slide friends is perhaps the most
powerful thing we can do to change food
systems is not the demand stuff so much
it’s not the business stuff so much it’s
not the enabling environment stuff
although that’s important
it’s actually to ask the right question
we’re in a university I used to head up
the IDS at Sussex and I always told my
colleagues we need to spend half our
time figuring out what’s the right
question to ask and then the other half
for going out what’s the answer the very
often we don’t spend enough time
figuring out what’s the right question
to ask I hear this question a lot how
are we going to feed the world by 2030
and of course these two foods on the
right rice and hamburgers
they’ll do a fine job of filling
stomachs but what you feel I mean and of
course people who don’t have full
stomachs need their stomachs to be
filled but the right question to be
asked is what needs to happen to nourish
the world as well as feed it all right
that’s the right question and we need to
get policy people we need to get
businesses we need to get schools we
need to get local leaders we need to get
community mobilizers we need to get
families thinking not just how can I
feed my child yes of course that’s
important but am i doing enough or could
I be doing more or could I and I mean as
a mayor or could I as a municipal leader
or could I as a Minister of Health or
could I as a procurement officer in a
supermarket or could I as a journalist
could I as a civil society organization
be doing more to nourish the world
that’s what needs don’t be happened we
need to build demand we need to lower
the price of healthy food and we need to
support responsible businesses and call
out irresponsible businesses that’s what
gain works on please join us
thank you
[Applause]
friends colleagues ladies and gentlemen
our food system is broken if it was a
glass vars he would be lying shattered
at my feet I’m gonna tell you a bit
about why it’s broken and more
importantly what we can do to fix it I’m
gonna bore you with some numbers but
just not not just numbers
the first shocking statistic and I’ve
been doing this for quite a while is
that nearly 1 in 2 people on this planet
are malnourished the the images that
we’ve just seen are one set of extremes
but when you put together the severe
wasting the severe stunting anaemia
vitamin A deficiency overweight obesity
diabetes hypertension you put all that
stuff together you get about one in two
people on this planet as malnourished
and no country is exempt from that
problem the country we’re in right now
66 percent of the population is
overweight 1/3 is obese 15 percent is
anemic it’s extraordinary
so no country on this planet has a
monopoly on the problem of malnutrition
and no country on this planet has a
monopoly on the solutions we’re in a
very different world than we were just
15 years ago just give you some of the
kind of boring statistics but they’re
important this is a number you might see
a lot that was just a report out by the
Rome UN agencies last week it said
actually this number is no longer 800
million these are people going to bed
hungry every night this has gone up 30
million in the last year so that’s the
number you hear about a lot here’s
another number that you may hear about
the two billion that don’t get enough
iron or vitamin
or vitamin D or zinc they’re deficient
in some kind of vitamin or mineral and
that number has been static for the last
20 years
no not going up but not going down and
then you’ve got this other massive kind
of freight train coming down the track
which is overweight and obesity 1.9
billion and there’s an overlap because
overweight or obese folks can be
deficient in micronutrients and minerals
right so when you no one’s actually put
all of that together but if you do some
rough calculations you get about three
to three-and-a-half billion people with
one of these conditions and so that’s
nearly one in two on this planet but
numbers so these why does this matter it
matters cause isn’t there’s a big
mortality risk and a big morbidity risks
risk how does this all add up this just
came out last week in The Lancet or
maybe the week before last in The Lancet
it’s the latest estimate of the global
burden of disease so there are some
folks in Seattle and all around the
world the whu-oh they put together all
the mortality data around the world from
all causes all the morbidity data and
they scrunch it up into one number
called disability adjusted life years or
Daly’s I’m sure you’re familiar with
them many of you and then they say okay
what are the risk factors that generate
all of this stuff and they rank for top
ten and here are the top ten and six of
them the ones in dark red are all diet
related so the food system is broken
it’s generating masses amounts masses of
amounts of malnutrition and this
malnutrition is having incredibly
corrosive effect on individuals on
communities families and nations and
ultimately the world this is so numbers
move some people and they they moved me
I’m an economist I grew up on numbers
but the reason I got into this whole
area was because of some just a visit
that I went in my early 20s to India and
and saw some kids that were just I
couldn’t believe how malnourished
they were I couldn’t believe what they
look like I couldn’t believe the
conditions they lived in I couldn’t
believe that this condition could
persist for so long and one of the
things that really struck me very early
on was a was a statistic that I heard
which is that at Birth a baby’s brain
weighs half a kilo right
and obviously the baby’s brain grows and
neurons develop and synapses form and
you know all of this all of it thickens
and at one month at one year of age the
baby’s brain weighs about a kilo so you
go from half a kilo at birth to a kilo
at one year of age the adult brain
weighs 1.4 kilos so from year 1 to year
57 I’ve only added point 4 of a kilo and
some people would be surprised that I’ve
even added that much right so from from
conception through to that first year of
life 70 percent of the brain
infrastructure is being developed in any
insult in that period whether it’s poor
diet or infection is catastrophic to
that child’s life chances now the food
system what is the food system it’s a
horrible term it means basically it’s
very simple everything that from the
nutrients in the ground that are then
propagated into food food is then stored
transported harvested processed sold
marketed consumed and hopefully not too
much of it is wasted that’s the food
system and there are multiple food
systems that operate in every country
actually there are lots of campaigns to
save our broken food system and I said
the food system is broken why do I think
it’s broken the first reason is we
create the demand for healthy food in a
really terribly boring way right you may
not think it living here as I walk from
the Tottenham Court tube station to to
the building here you see what is it
organic what’s that big store over there
globe was it planet organic I was like
wow that’s amazing
so but in general we create the demand
for healthy foods really badly we when
we do create the demand most people
actually can’t afford healthy food and
I’ll give you some pretty shocking
statistics on that and then finally
governments don’t make it very easy for
people to buy healthy food they don’t
make it very easy sometimes for
businesses to do the right thing for
healthy food so I’m going to talk about
how we can do better on those three
dimensions so the first thing is whether
you live in this shanty town in Cape
Town or whether you are Kyle and I
haven’t put these two pictures together
this is a picture whether you whether
you frequent this fancy golf course on
the Left we need to revolutionize the
way we think about creating the demand
for healthy food so there’s a highly
scientific picture of the brain the left
brain is I’m a kind of left brain person
very driven by numbers and very kind of
linear and logical my family wouldn’t
say that but I I protest I am this kind
of person and you know and this is a
classic public health behavior change
programs you should eat this food
because it’s really good for you and you
should eat it and I don’t know why
you’re not eating it because it’s really
good for you so please eat it on the
right side of the brain is all the other
stuff the aspiration the emotion the
colours the music the language the
craving the desirability the
deliciousness and I go to lots of
nutrition meetings all over the world I
never hear the word delicious ever at
any nutrition meeting why would anyone
eat healthy food if it’s not delicious
right businesses are absolutely
brilliant at this kind of stuff they
make you eat food you didn’t even know
you wanted they make you buy things you
didn’t even know you wanted we need
hybrid approaches we need to bring the
best of the science from the public
sector and the best of the disruptive
processes from business I’ve been
travelling for 35 years on planes a lot
and I’ve maybe the first couple of times
I ever got on a plane I listen to the
public service announcement on safety
after that I’ve just tuned it out
completely but just last month I was on
a plane and it was a British Airways
plane and they had this great news food
safety at this great new safety video
which is lots of celebrity so that’s
that’s not why I paid attention to it I
paid attention to it because it has
incredible amounts of humour basically
people taking the piss excuse me out of
themselves and out of the whole process
of how formal it is and we need that
kind of we need that kind of disruptive
messaging around creating the demand for
healthy food so here’s an example of
some of the work that my organization
has been doing in Indonesia it’s called
the healthy gossip campaign we’ve teamed
up with some media companies and some TV
companies and brought in some public
sector folks from the government and
together they’ve come up with a
one-minute video about around a healthy
gossip campaign and it’s about their
it’s about the village gossip who
happens to be a woman but men are just
as gossipy as women we know that talking
and being very judgmental and very
critical of all her neighbors and
friends with the way in which they feed
their kids and it’s very funny and very
humorous and by the end of the minute it
turns out she’s the one who’s the really
who’s not very clued in about how to
feed your kids and that the attraction
has been the uptake has been huge the
the viewing numbers and that and they’re
talking about this campaign has been
huge so that’s usually where the story
ends but we commissioned an Australian
University to actually figure out if
this has had an impact so here’s a
rather techie slide it shows in four
districts in Indonesia this is a group
that was exposed to the ads and this is
a group that wasn’t exposed so there’s a
control group and a treatment group
they’re very similar at the baseline
which is the 47 and the 45 this is kids
who have diets that are adequate in
nutrients at the end of the two year
exposure the gap is is 14% not as big as
we would like but there’s a there’s a
definite impact of this intervention so
effective behavior change is rare but if
you get it right it can be very powerful
because it’s contagious it can get
people talking about things it can
change the way we think about things it
can change norms second thing we need to
do is drive down the cost of healthy
diets my clicker is not working there I
was in a I was in a in Mozambique
working with one of the businesses we
work with businesses to help them get
the price of healthy foods down I was in
this guy’s this small businesses office
and I said what’s that what’s that
picture on the wall I took a photo and
this is the picture and he said that’s
our business plan we want to get the
price from here down to here that’s that
was the business plan why is that
business plan so important here’s a
study that came out last year The Lancet
global health it’s looking at these four
countries on the right Bangladesh India
Pakistan and a Zimbabwean it said how
much would it cost those families to
purchase five fruits and vegetables a
day you and I can purchase five fruits
and vegetables a day no problem we could
probably purchase 50 if we wanted to
right no problem
it turns out that these families would
it would take 52 percent of their income
to purchase five fruits and vegetables a
day and these are five fruits and
vegetables a day that are available and
normally consumed in their context that
these families were living in so they
just simply can’t afford to do it so we
have been working with businesses in
Kenya and Mozambique around healthy and
safe foods and again an independent
evaluation of those programs we provide
small grants and TA and business advice
has shown in three of the four we are
helping firms small medium enterprises
in the countries increase their market
share and drive down the price and the
final thing to do is enable businesses
to do positive things for nutrition
businesses are part and a big part of
the problem in the food system a big
part but if we’re going to turn the food
system around they have to be a big part
of the solution
and this picture is you know we have to
create fertile ground for them to do the
right thing make it easier for them to
do the right thing and harder for them
to do the bad things I’m gonna give you
one example of how we have been working
with the government of Pakistan to make
it easier for businesses to do the right
thing so in Pakistan not much food
not much staple food so things like
wheat flour is fortified and if you add
iron and zinc to wheat flour you’re
helping families because they consume
this stuff a lot of this stuff you’re
helping families get more nutrients in
the diet but it’s really difficult for
businesses to pick this up if it’s going
to cost them a lot more and the
government of pakistan was putting a
sales tax on the stuff you add to wheat
flour the four Tiffa can’t you add to to
make this stuff have more iron and zinc
so we did a very I think very
sophisticated political economy analysis
we did an analysis of all the
parliamentarians
that were going to be involved in
passing a law to reduce or even exempt
this for TIFF acun from the sales tax
and then we targeted those those
politicians with with key messages about
why this was a good thing to to exempt
the sales tax and this is the budget
document this is the cover of the
document in in Pakistan of their 2017
budget on page 14 of that document you
can see this it’s proposed to provide an
exemption from sales tax on premixes
which is the stuff you add to the wheat
flour to fight growth stunting I’ve
never seen the words growth stunting
fight growth stunting in a budget
document before so for us this may not
seem terribly exciting to you but for us
this was incredibly exciting because it
means that millions of people are able
to get fortified wheat flour so my final
slide friends is perhaps the most
powerful thing we can do to change food
systems is not the demand stuff so much
it’s not the business stuff so much it’s
not the enabling environment stuff
although that’s important
it’s actually to ask the right question
we’re in a university I used to head up
the IDS at Sussex and I always told my
colleagues we need to spend half our
time figuring out what’s the right
question to ask and then the other half
for going out what’s the answer the very
often we don’t spend enough time
figuring out what’s the right question
to ask I hear this question a lot how
are we going to feed the world by 2030
and of course these two foods on the
right rice and hamburgers
they’ll do a fine job of filling
stomachs but what you feel I mean and of
course people who don’t have full
stomachs need their stomachs to be
filled but the right question to be
asked is what needs to happen to nourish
the world as well as feed it all right
that’s the right question and we need to
get policy people we need to get
businesses we need to get schools we
need to get local leaders we need to get
community mobilizers we need to get
families thinking not just how can I
feed my child yes of course that’s
important but am i doing enough or could
I be doing more or could I and I mean as
a mayor or could I as a municipal leader
or could I as a Minister of Health or
could I as a procurement officer in a
supermarket or could I as a journalist
could I as a civil society organization
be doing more to nourish the world
that’s what needs don’t be happened we
need to build demand we need to lower
the price of healthy food and we need to
support responsible businesses and call
out irresponsible businesses that’s what
gain works on please join us
thank you
[Applause]
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