This story was originally published on October 7, 2015.
Here’s what I love about food: It connects every person on this planet, and every person who has ever lived on this planet (everyone has got to eat to survive, right?). On a deeper level, food is a conduit to other issues that I care deeply about — from individual health to the global environment.
This week, Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan (et al) wrote a big opinion piece declaring that the next president of the U.S. needs to establish a National Food Policy (NFP), because right now we have a bunch of piecemeal solutions that end up overlooking the major problems our food system faces. Pollan and Bittman rightly point out that such a policy would have far-reaching consequences in national security, the environment, education, and healthcare. They say that the first step is to call on all presidential candidates to "put forth their own NFP." That’s where we foresee a problem: The Food System is incredibly complicated — where does one even start?
To help the presidential candidates get an idea of what experts are concerned about, we went straight to the source and asked this question: "What would you change about the food system if you had a reset button?" Here are 14 ideas for change from some of the best in the food biz, such as Mario Batali, Dan Barber, Tom Colicchio, Jamie Oliver, and Ruth Reichl. For anyone (including future presidents) looking for a primer on these issues, this is a good place to start.
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Chef Dan Barber, Blue Hill Farm
"If a genie actually granted me one wish, I’d go small — or so it would seem. I’d have a law passed that made it illegal to apply nitrogen to wheat late in the growing season. Banning this late nitrogen application would prevent a tremendous amount of runoff from polluting our waterways and our oceans. It would also lead to wheat with lower protein levels. (Nitrogen boosts protein quickly, and packaged breads — the Wonder Breads of the world — demand high-protein wheat.) Without artificially inflated protein levels, the industry would not have the strong wheat they need to withstand the battering of industrial high-speed mixers. Packaged bread would become much more expensive. More expensive packaged bread would mean that the loaves that actually taste good — made with nothing except good wheat, water, and salt — would become a relative bargain.
"As people discovered the taste of wheat, they would demand it from local farmers. Wheat grown locally would lead to more local milling and malting facilities, invigorating an economy around supporting good bread. In the end, my small wish would result in improving the soil health of the 55 million acres of wheat grown in this country and vastly improving the flavor of our most essential staple grain."
Photo by: Mark Ostow.
Chef Mario Batali, Babbo
"We need to go back to whenever it was that food changed from being a basic human right to a commodity. We need to go back and put ‘food for all’ ahead of commercial interests. Appalling hunger, along with outrageous levels of waste and environmental destruction, is a byproduct of our current food system — and it’s obviously broken.
"Today, fewer and fewer farmers are controlling more and more of the production and the labor, and yet 70% of the world’s hungry are actually directly involved in food production. And here in America, cheap, calorie-dense processed “foods” — that I don’t think you can even call food — are often the only financially logical choices for far too many households.
"We tend to simplify the problem by saying we just need to offer access to healthier fruits and vegetables, but that is not sufficient, and that doesn’t change the fact that everyone has the right to sustenance. This approach to food as a commodity and lack of regard for the less fortunate among us can be linked to many of the ills in our food system, from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), antibiotics in our meat, GMOs, farm laborer abuses, and on the opposite end, obesity and climate change."
Photo Courtesy of: Mario Batali.
Chef Jamie Oliver, Author Of Everyday Super Food
"I'd hit the reset button on something I am focusing on right now, which is getting the British government to introduce a tax on fizzy soft drinks with added sugar. Crucially, the money raised from this tax would be put to immediate use, supporting initiatives to prevent obesity and diet-related diseases in our hospitals and schools, and, of course, in funding better food education. Earlier this year, I visited Mexico and saw the great work that’s being done as a result of their sugar tax and it’s very inspiring — it proves that taxes like this can work.
"We have a global obesity crisis. We can’t shy away from that and we desperately and urgently need to take action in order to save lives and turn this crisis around. We have a chance to try and prevent the next generation living shorter lives than us, and we need to tackle this now. In the U.K., we spend billions every year on treating diet-related disease — it’s crippling our health system. We also have 26,000 kids of elementary school age having multiple teeth removed under anaesthetic every year, all because of too much sugar.
"The majority of better food education leads to better food choices. I’ve seen this in schools and homes all over the world. We all love a treat sometimes, and I’m not arguing with that, but when a treat becomes an everyday occurrence, that’s when the problems start. We’re seeing this with sugary drinks — taxing them is a great place to start, because it not only raises awareness of their negative impact, it will raise all-important funds for food education, too."
Photo Courtesy of: Jamie Oliver, Ltd.
Marion Nestle, Professor Of Nutrition & Food Studies at N.Y.U.
"I'd say let’s fix the farm bill. I want agricultural policy aligned with health policy, so every decision about agricultural policy takes human and environmental health into consideration. Right now, the farm bill supports commodity agriculture and does virtually nothing to promote consumption of fruits and vegetables. That’s fixable! If we made this change, we would all eat more healthfully, and our agricultural system would be more sustainable and have less of an effect on climate change."
Photo by: Bill Hayes.
Leanne Brown, Author Of Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day
"To build an equitable, just food system, we need to make a great many changes, not just one. But if there’s one change that has the potential to improve nearly every aspect of the food system, it’s teaching kids how to cook.
"I would make cooking a mandatory part of school curriculum: showing first-graders a dozen ways to cook a carrot, asking middle-schoolers what makes Italian food Italian, and ensuring high school seniors know how to prepare delicious, reasonably healthy meals that fit even the smallest budget and make 'starving student' an oxymoron.
"Kids could be responsible for making lunch for themselves and their classmates once per week and asked as homework to make dinner for their family occasionally, starting at an appropriate age. Food-educated kids will grow into adults who are better able to navigate the complex food environment. They can demand better choices and reject the food myths we are currently fed (like that healthy food is expensive, or that making delicious food is difficult).
"If people value and understand food, they will support policies that respect farmers and encourage sustainable farming practices. If people value and understand food, they will be more willing to support the rights of workers in every part of the system and pay them living wages. If people value and understand food, they will realize that we have the ability to make real food a basic right for every single person."
Photo by: Jordan Matter.
Chef Tom Colicchio, Crafted Hospitality Group
"I really think that the agricultural government subsidy program is a big problem. If I had a reset button, I'd get rid of all agricultural subsidies. Currently, the U.S. government heavily subsidizes crops like wheat, corn, and soy, and it has a major impact on pricing of foods. Why is someone eating a fast food burger, for example? Because it’s cheap. And it's cheap because it’s subsidized. Getting rid of subsidies would allow farmers compete on an open playing field. I've met with many farmers who are not subsidized by the government and they don't want a hand out, they just want to be able to compete.
"Many people argue that ending these kinds of subsidies would have negative consequences on farms, farmers, and food production, but that has not been the case in New Zealand, which did away with its crop insurance policies years ago. The result of this change? A peach, for example, would be competitively priced with a fast food hamburger; that would have a major impact on people's purchasing decisions, our resulting food system, as well as their health."
Ruth Reichl, Cookbook Author, My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Saved My Life
"I would stop allowing advertisers to advertise to young children. I think we have created this obesity crisis [with] these kids who have no ability to filter the ads that they’re plunked in front of for hours a day. They don’t know the difference between an ad and entertainment, and we are beaming this stuff to these helpless victims who then develop a taste for industrialized food. I think if you stop doing that, the next generation would be much, much healthier."
Photographed by Mikkel Vang
Chef Marco Canora, Hearth
"I'd press a reset button on transparency in the restaurant industry, because there needs to be a huge shift. As people become (rightfully) concerned with what they and their families can and cannot eat, restaurants must be more stringent and utilize a third party to enforce guidelines that eliminate the uncertainty surrounding what they serve their customers.
"For example, a restaurant can say that it's serving 100% grass-fed beef, when in reality, the fact may be very different, and there is no way to prove or challenge this claim. This is at the core of what must be changed in our world, in order to ensure that restaurants are indeed serving what they claim to serve."
Photo by: Michael Harlan Turkell.
Andrew Tarlow, Owner Of Marlow & Sons, Etc.
"If I had a reset button, I would focus on making the planet healthier and focus on a more localized food system. I would create a food system where everyone is eating food only produced within 100 miles of their location. People ask about places that have to endure many months of cold, and while that is a challenge, humans have lived, thrive, and proliferated in places cold climate zones before the modern food system was in place.
"At all my restaurants in Brooklyn, our menus are made up of seasonal, organic food. And while that is a challenge in the winter months, we're amazed what kind of solutions we can come up with year-round with a little bit of creative thinking. I would also want to make farming more space-efficient, so we could leave more space for grasslands, biodiversity, and have more greenery around us. I have to wonder if that wouldn't make a better, more healthy planet, which is something that is essential for us all to survive."
Photo courtesy of: Andrew Tarlow.
Anya Fernald, Belcampo
"I would change our thinking on agriculture to favor systems of integrated agriculture — growing different types of things in the same systems — as opposed to monocultures, which create a massive block of one type of crop or production. Diversity in agriculture has positive environmental benefits and allows plants and animals to retain and build their resilience. It’s kind of like in your own body — we are learning now how having a diversity of foods and a diverse microbiome is crucial to human health and resilience — agriculture is the same way.
"By creating huge monocultures, we build weak systems that need a lot of chemicals and antibiotics, and are dependent on all sorts of human engagement to produce food. Selecting crops and animals for monoculture effectively favors those species that do well in this industrial context, always at the expense of flavor and health benefits, such as antioxidants and protein content. If we used an integrated agriculture approach, the environments of and around our farms would be healthier, food would taste better and be more nutritious."
Photo courtesy of: Anya Fernald.
Laurie David, Author & Producer, Fed U p!
"I would change the food labels to measure sugar in teaspoons instead of grams. Did you know that 4 grams is the equivalent to 1 teaspoon of sugar? It's almost impossible to visualize a gram, but everyone understands what a teaspoon looks like! If we put this change into place, food companies would have a much harder time hiding the amount of sugar in food and every consumer would be able to instantly visualize and understand how much sugar they are eating or drinking. The next time a mom picks up a 12-oz Gatorade, she will probably think twice before giving her daughter 13 teaspoons of sugar!"
Photo Courtesy of: Laurie David.
Nicolas Jammet, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Sweetgreen
"Seasons are part of nature, and as a culture, we've overridden seasonality with modern innovations that enable us to eat certain things year-round. To optimize flavors, soil health, and our diets, we'd push for a mainstream return to seasonality, which is what we strive to do with our own menu at Sweetgreen.
"Kids are our future. If they're not eating well in school and learning about healthy living, then the future looks pretty bleak. Access to healthy foods in schools will help kids grow, be healthier, and learn better, all of which create a better future. Our Sweetgreen in Schools program teaches kids about eco-literacy, wellness, nutrition, and seasonality, and we're working with local partners to put salad bars and gardens in schools. It's never too early to learn about being healthy and to learn about the impact of a healthy diet on your body and the environment."
Photo Courtesy of: Nicolas Jammet.
Lauren Bush Lauren, FEED
"As the founder and CEO of FEED, I've dedicated my career to fighting hunger. I hear this statistic a lot, but it still blows my mind: Nearly 800 million people in our world today struggle with food insecurity. What blows my mind even more is that hunger is a solvable problem. There is enough food produced each year to feed everyone on the planet. Ending hunger is not going to come from producing more food. It's going to come from improving access to food in the most vulnerable communities.
"And it is just this fact that led us to develop FEED Supper, our annual grassroots 'gatherings for good' that are hosted in homes, schools, companies, and restaurants across the county from September 16 to October 16, which is World Food Day. These dinners not only connect people in their communities, but also provide meals to people in need. Our goal is to provide 2 million meals to families in need in just one month.
My reset button, in a perfect world, would make hunger-focused organizations and businesses like FEED unnecessary, as everyone would have access to adequate food. But save that grand vision, I would make it easy for everyone to get involved in improving access to food and with that, ensuring families everywhere have the nutrition they need to grow, learn, and thrive."
Photo Courtesy of: Lauren Bush Lauren.
Gunnar Lovelace, Co-Founder and Co CEO at Thrive Market
"If I could wave a wand and change the food system, I would guide the allocation of $100-plus billion a year in the U.S. towards a massive network of national Regenerative Organic farms transforming conventional farms to more labor-intensive sustainable practices. Studies are showing that building healthy top soil is one of the fastest and lowest cost ways to sequester carbon, produce truly nutrient-dense food, and provide good-paying farming jobs for millions that revitalize the roots of family-owned farms. This critical investment of resources would be a total game-changer on many levels that are good for the health of our bodies, the economy, and the environment. At the same time, I would continue to expand new supply chains that disrupt normal retail mark-up, like we've been able to build with Thrive Market — making healthy, organic food affordable. Simultaneously, I would invest in educational content that helps consumers understand the fundamental benefits of diets made up of mostly vegetables, healthy fats, low sugar, and less-processed carbs. If we did these things in concert together at scale, we would look back in 10 years with astonishment at the positive systemic transformation of our country."
Photo credit: Courtesy of Thrive Market.Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
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