1 00:00:07,250 --> 00:00:12,620 JEREMY: Hello and welcome to another episode of Eat This Podcast with me, Jeremy Cherfas. 2 00:00:14,540 --> 00:00:23,240 There's a strand of thought about people who eat a bad diet that runs along the lines of, well, why don't they just make a good dish of 3 00:00:23,240 --> 00:00:25,370 lentils and a nice green salad? 4 00:00:26,720 --> 00:00:31,040 Or else let's just ban all advertising for junk food. 5 00:00:31,070 --> 00:00:38,510 Or even, we should ban the manufacture of addictive, hyper palatable, ultra processed stuff. 6 00:00:38,900 --> 00:00:48,500 Now, while each of those may have its merits, none of them really takes into account the way people actually encounter food in their 7 00:00:48,500 --> 00:00:52,490 daily lives and how they choose what to eat. 8 00:00:52,730 --> 00:01:02,660 So in this episode, I'm talking to Corinna Hawkes, director of the Division of Agri-Food Systems and Food Safety at FAO here 9 00:01:02,660 --> 00:01:12,110 in Rome. We last spoke back in 2016 when she was professor of food policy at City University in 10 00:01:12,110 --> 00:01:17,420 London, developing the idea of the complete food environment. 11 00:01:17,630 --> 00:01:26,480 Her group's research in the years since has now resulted in a paper in Nature Food with a nice, bold title. 12 00:01:26,900 --> 00:01:36,410 "The full picture of people's realities must be considered to deliver better diets for all." And that's a far 13 00:01:36,410 --> 00:01:39,410 cry from simple solutions. 14 00:01:39,440 --> 00:01:42,050 CORINNA: I got into this because, for a couple of reasons. 15 00:01:42,050 --> 00:01:50,180 One was because I was doing a lot of work on food environment policies -- restricting marketing to kids, taxes, nutrition labelling, 16 00:01:50,180 --> 00:01:55,010 school meals programmes -- and wanting to understand how they could have more impact. 17 00:01:55,040 --> 00:01:58,880 The other aspect was just like we need to ... 18 00:01:58,910 --> 00:02:07,130 was from a food environments perspective, and I was convinced it was all about like, if we got the food environment policy sorted, it was 19 00:02:07,130 --> 00:02:08,270 going to solve the problem. 20 00:02:08,270 --> 00:02:12,020 Just take the unhealthy food away, it's fine. 21 00:02:12,020 --> 00:02:19,610 But then you realize that when you are doing that, you are actually, in a strange way, undermining women's agency because they've no longer 22 00:02:19,610 --> 00:02:25,820 got a choice to choose something that's convenient, that helps solve other problems, like energy poverty. 23 00:02:26,120 --> 00:02:32,030 So in a way, the multinational food industry is providing solutions for women. 24 00:02:32,420 --> 00:02:35,570 And so we have to think, okay, what ... 25 00:02:35,570 --> 00:02:44,870 let's embrace that complexity rather than just saying this is just a single cause and it's evil, let's actually embrace that complexity and 26 00:02:44,870 --> 00:02:48,290 see what we need to work with in order to make change. 27 00:02:48,740 --> 00:02:58,110 JEREMY: In your paper, you say that despite all the policies and 28 00:02:58,110 --> 00:03:06,810 interventions and initiatives, most people still are not eating according 29 00:03:07,500 --> 00:03:12,090 to government-approved guidelines. 30 00:03:13,140 --> 00:03:15,090 But why is that? 31 00:03:15,930 --> 00:03:25,560 CORINNA: There are many different elements that influence what people eat, and collectively they are not aligned to help people eat 32 00:03:25,560 --> 00:03:34,050 well. Well, the starting point of the paper, the starting point of the ideas that went into the paper, was that the reason for that was 33 00:03:34,050 --> 00:03:38,790 because we live in an unhealthy food environment in which the ... 34 00:03:38,820 --> 00:03:46,560 When we're walking down the street or whatever we're doing, we're not surrounded by foods that help us be healthy. 35 00:03:46,830 --> 00:03:54,780 But what we discovered through the research that I was doing at that time was that it's really an interaction between a whole range of 36 00:03:54,780 --> 00:03:56,740 different realities of people's lives. 37 00:03:56,980 --> 00:04:06,070 So I can live in the same food environment as somebody else and interact with it in a different way, depending on how much money I 38 00:04:06,070 --> 00:04:14,320 have, what kind of material resources, what my health is like, what my mental health is like, the kind of social relations that I have, 39 00:04:14,380 --> 00:04:16,600 whether there's gender equity. 40 00:04:17,200 --> 00:04:20,680 There's so many different elements that shape what we eat. 41 00:04:20,830 --> 00:04:24,250 And we as a world haven't taken that seriously. 42 00:04:24,250 --> 00:04:27,760 We just think that somehow people just decide what they eat. 43 00:04:27,790 --> 00:04:34,840 That's not the reality of how people make decisions about what to eat. 44 00:04:35,440 --> 00:04:44,290 JEREMY: So if you take an example like, oh, I don't know, ultra-processed food or convenience foods, 45 00:04:45,700 --> 00:04:53,710 there does seem to be more evidence than ever that they're not really very good for us, but people choose them nevertheless. 46 00:04:53,710 --> 00:04:55,830 And that's despite even ... 47 00:04:56,040 --> 00:05:03,330 I mean, there's not much advice to avoid them yet, but people choose them for good reasons. 48 00:05:03,360 --> 00:05:12,360 CORINNA: That's right. I mean, the really important finding of the work that we were doing at that time was that it's actually very logical to choose 49 00:05:12,390 --> 00:05:13,950 ultra-processed foods. 50 00:05:14,160 --> 00:05:15,420 And sensible. 51 00:05:15,420 --> 00:05:19,260 We were doing some work in South Africa, in really low income communities. 52 00:05:20,790 --> 00:05:29,850 And in those communities, people are living in very difficult housing, tiny little places that are very vulnerable 53 00:05:30,150 --> 00:05:33,750 and -- shacks really, to be absolutely honest. 54 00:05:33,780 --> 00:05:38,620 And if you are in that circumstance and you're ... 55 00:05:38,620 --> 00:05:43,980 you've got someone saying, yes, you should cook a really nice meal with lots of vegetables and so on. 56 00:05:44,280 --> 00:05:45,510 Well, yes. 57 00:05:45,510 --> 00:05:54,150 You know, actually that that's what you want to do, but then you have instant noodles and you think, I'm going to save money on energy -- 58 00:05:54,150 --> 00:06:02,760 and by the way, my energy supply is completely unreliable -- so I can make myself and my kids instant noodles. 59 00:06:02,760 --> 00:06:09,960 Or I can put on a dodgy gas stove which might not even be reliable, and prepare some food. 60 00:06:09,960 --> 00:06:12,480 It's actually very logical and it's also safer. 61 00:06:12,510 --> 00:06:19,890 These are places where gas means that if something sets alight, the whole place burns down and then you have no home. 62 00:06:20,130 --> 00:06:22,650 So why not eat instant noodles? 63 00:06:22,650 --> 00:06:24,030 It's sensible. 64 00:06:24,030 --> 00:06:24,990 It makes sense. 65 00:06:24,990 --> 00:06:34,560 JEREMY: But that's also true, people are also eating instant noodles in countries where their houses are not going to burn down, their energy 66 00:06:34,560 --> 00:06:35,040 supply is OK. 67 00:06:35,040 --> 00:06:40,710 CORINNA: There's always many different realities, and one of them is time and labor. 68 00:06:41,730 --> 00:06:50,160 So in many industrialized countries, women, because it is still typically women, often work a lot of jobs 69 00:06:50,850 --> 00:06:52,980 And they're often low pay jobs. 70 00:06:52,980 --> 00:06:54,450 So they have to work a lot of them. 71 00:06:54,450 --> 00:07:04,260 And if they're living in households where there's gender inequity, where they're still responsible for feeding their kids, and when they 72 00:07:04,260 --> 00:07:10,410 come back from a busy day, it's the middle of the night or whatever it is when their shift finishes, or where they have to leave food out 73 00:07:10,410 --> 00:07:11,520 for their kids. 74 00:07:12,150 --> 00:07:15,540 Well, of course, ultra-processed food is convenient and packaged. 75 00:07:15,960 --> 00:07:22,350 And another circumstance, you might have lots of time, you might not even be working, but you might experience mental health problems -- we 76 00:07:22,350 --> 00:07:29,430 live in a difficult world -- and find it really difficult to cope with all of the different aspects of our lives. 77 00:07:29,460 --> 00:07:34,020 And the idea of then preparing food just becomes too much. 78 00:07:34,050 --> 00:07:43,950 Or you may be having a sense of identity as a mother where you say, I want to be a 79 00:07:43,950 --> 00:07:50,700 good mother, so I'm going to make my kids some nice food, and then the child doesn't like the food. 80 00:07:50,700 --> 00:07:55,200 And so you feel like a bad mother because you're feeding your kids some bad food. 81 00:07:55,200 --> 00:07:58,380 So you say, I'm going to feed my kid the food that they like. 82 00:07:58,380 --> 00:08:03,900 And as a mother, I am doing the right thing by feeding my children the food that they like. 83 00:08:03,900 --> 00:08:09,480 So there's just so many reasons that drive people towards ultra -processed foods. 84 00:08:09,510 --> 00:08:18,030 And because we are treating people as atomized individuals with responsibility for feeding their children, rather than it being a 85 00:08:18,030 --> 00:08:27,930 social project, that we should help the world, you know, whether it's children, ourselves or whatever (it's not only about children) eat 86 00:08:27,930 --> 00:08:35,040 better, and that collectively we need to be saying, how in the world can we help us all eat better, as opposed to that individual should be 87 00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:36,630 doing better to feed their children? 88 00:08:36,630 --> 00:08:38,070 Very judgmental. 89 00:08:38,100 --> 00:08:39,810 We need to get away from that. 90 00:08:39,870 --> 00:08:49,780 JEREMY: That's an incredible observation that actually, if you're dealing with a difficult toddler, the food industry's 91 00:08:49,780 --> 00:08:55,510 got you covered because they know how to make stuff that even toddlers will like. 92 00:08:55,540 --> 00:08:58,090 CORINNA: They know how to make things that toddlers will like. 93 00:08:58,090 --> 00:09:00,460 And they also understand what it's ... 94 00:09:00,460 --> 00:09:02,140 how hard it is to be a parent. 95 00:09:02,140 --> 00:09:12,010 And they understand that if you are finding it difficult to be a parent and you go into a place 96 00:09:12,010 --> 00:09:21,730 that's selling these foods, they understand the psychology so that they say they know that mothers want to have a bonding moment with 97 00:09:21,730 --> 00:09:30,790 their child, and you're more likely to have a bonding moment over something that a child immediately brings a smile to their face rather 98 00:09:30,790 --> 00:09:34,480 than a carrot. It's just, they know that. 99 00:09:34,750 --> 00:09:37,240 And so what happens is they exploit them. 100 00:09:37,390 --> 00:09:39,130 They don't say, you know what? 101 00:09:39,160 --> 00:09:41,050 We get that, but it's not really right. 102 00:09:41,080 --> 00:09:47,560 How do we create bonding moments over food that's really going to to help kids be healthy, help families be healthy? 103 00:09:47,590 --> 00:09:49,480 They say we're going to exploit that. 104 00:09:49,690 --> 00:09:57,580 And because we can and there is a need, there is an emotional need, and we will exploit that. 105 00:09:57,580 --> 00:10:05,230 And even though they might not use that term and they might just say we're just giving people what they want, it's kind of weird because 106 00:10:05,230 --> 00:10:09,850 they are giving people what they want, and they're also exploiting them at the same time. 107 00:10:09,850 --> 00:10:10,930 So it's not simple. 108 00:10:10,930 --> 00:10:12,730 It's quite a complex picture. 109 00:10:12,730 --> 00:10:20,740 JEREMY: But when the toddler gets older and goes to school, that's when they sort of have less choice over what they're going to eat. 110 00:10:20,740 --> 00:10:30,490 And that's an opportunity maybe -- maybe -- to step in and say, okay, when you're at school, at least once a day, you're going to eat 111 00:10:30,490 --> 00:10:36,730 healthy. So why don't school feeding programmes work so well? 112 00:10:37,060 --> 00:10:38,530 CORINNA: They can work well. 113 00:10:38,530 --> 00:10:47,890 And I think there's a lot of evidence that they should be in place, but they don't work well when they don't take take into account 114 00:10:47,920 --> 00:10:49,270 children's realities. 115 00:10:49,270 --> 00:10:55,900 So if they say, I know I've got a great idea, I'm going to put healthy food and I'm going to just change the menu and put ... 116 00:10:55,930 --> 00:11:03,580 They don't take into account that children might not be accustomed to that food, especially if you're from a from a more marginalized, more 117 00:11:03,670 --> 00:11:08,050 vulnerable family, where you haven't been exposed to healthy foods so much. 118 00:11:08,350 --> 00:11:11,260 Then you've got this food on the table and you're like, I don't like it. 119 00:11:11,410 --> 00:11:14,560 And so people ... The kids haven't got accustomed to it, so it takes time. 120 00:11:15,190 --> 00:11:19,060 So that means that you have to do extra measures to help kids learn how to like it. 121 00:11:19,060 --> 00:11:22,480 But the other key element here is the social element. 122 00:11:22,900 --> 00:11:32,320 If you're with other kids who are laughing at you for eating that food as opposed to being with you, then you're not going to do it. 123 00:11:32,350 --> 00:11:39,430 If you're in a social space that is unpleasant, that you don't want to be in, and you're a teenager, you're just going to leave the 124 00:11:39,430 --> 00:11:49,270 school, and all over the world, whether it be India or the UK or whatever, and you find that unhealthy food grows up around the school. 125 00:11:49,270 --> 00:11:53,710 And what happens is that the kids say, I want to take some autonomy. 126 00:11:53,710 --> 00:11:56,020 I want to enjoy time with my friends. 127 00:11:56,170 --> 00:12:04,900 I'm going to exert my identity by going out and showing that I'm independent and going and buying this unhealthy food, as opposed to 128 00:12:04,930 --> 00:12:08,050 eating the potentially healthy food in schools. 129 00:12:08,050 --> 00:12:13,180 Or the food in schools just tastes terrible, and nobody's modeling it. 130 00:12:13,210 --> 00:12:15,040 Teachers disown it. 131 00:12:15,070 --> 00:12:16,930 You know, they're not interested in it. 132 00:12:17,020 --> 00:12:26,170 So what the evidence says is very clear, that you can design a school meal programme with kids co-created with kids and young people, put it 133 00:12:26,170 --> 00:12:29,320 in a nice environment, make it socially acceptable. 134 00:12:29,320 --> 00:12:32,380 It works. If you don't, it doesn't work. 135 00:12:32,560 --> 00:12:40,870 JEREMY: But there may well be a problem then, with some kids who are having to pay for their meals because their parents are relatively well off, and 136 00:12:40,870 --> 00:12:45,670 others who are getting free meals, and there's a stigma associated with that. 137 00:12:45,700 --> 00:12:48,880 CORINNA: Yeah, certainly in Western contexts that's very widespread. 138 00:12:48,910 --> 00:12:52,090 I can't talk for all contexts, but certainly in Western contexts. 139 00:12:52,090 --> 00:13:01,000 And so this is again understanding the reality of social relations that you can say, right, okay, we're going to give the kids ... 140 00:13:01,000 --> 00:13:04,210 it's, we're just going to see it as purely as an economic thing. 141 00:13:04,240 --> 00:13:05,860 So there's a narrative. 142 00:13:05,860 --> 00:13:07,300 It's all about food prices. 143 00:13:07,300 --> 00:13:09,640 Food prices is incredibly important. 144 00:13:09,850 --> 00:13:19,300 But you can make something free for someone and if you don't take into account social relations, then you're missing this picture, which 145 00:13:19,300 --> 00:13:20,680 is that it's stigmatised. 146 00:13:20,710 --> 00:13:26,680 It's like, oh, they're the free -- it was like this when I was at school -- they're the kind of kids with the free school meals. 147 00:13:26,680 --> 00:13:32,050 And then if you're in that free school meals place, you're like, I don't want to be here. 148 00:13:32,050 --> 00:13:34,270 I'm not going to go and get that meal. 149 00:13:34,420 --> 00:13:40,660 And then overall, there is a sense that, you know, these are not meals that are desirable. 150 00:13:40,960 --> 00:13:47,470 So the point is that when you're designing an intervention and a policy, you need to take into account all of these different elements; 151 00:13:47,470 --> 00:13:49,510 the quality of the food, yes. 152 00:13:49,510 --> 00:13:50,590 Create access. 153 00:13:50,590 --> 00:13:54,580 But if you only make healthy food accessible, it's not enough. 154 00:13:54,580 --> 00:13:56,680 If you only make it affordable, it's not enough. 155 00:13:56,710 --> 00:13:58,570 You need to think about the social aspects. 156 00:13:58,570 --> 00:14:02,290 You need to think about the identity aspects, the meaning, all of these different things. 157 00:14:02,290 --> 00:14:12,040 JEREMY: So the kids, the kids who are getting free meals and don't want free meals, in a way that kind of relates to the people who probably 158 00:14:12,040 --> 00:14:21,550 can't afford it, but see processed food as modern and upper class, maybe higher status. 159 00:14:21,550 --> 00:14:31,390 CORINNA: This is particularly the case in lower and middle income countries where new foods, new processed foods have come in and are 160 00:14:31,390 --> 00:14:40,660 seen as modern and desirable because they upset the the standard social, very often very hierarchical, social relations. 161 00:14:40,690 --> 00:14:43,610 Now, I'm not saying that that isn't the case in Western cultures. 162 00:14:43,610 --> 00:14:50,600 I'm saying that, and the combination of these new foods coming in, which have been around in other places for a longer time. 163 00:14:50,600 --> 00:14:59,600 And so in places like India, for example, and many Asian countries, the new foods come in and you think, I want to be modern, I want to 164 00:14:59,630 --> 00:15:03,830 identify with the future and this is my future. 165 00:15:03,860 --> 00:15:09,770 Going back to, you know, adobo or, you know, kind of fish or whatever, like rice. 166 00:15:09,800 --> 00:15:11,840 That's the past. 167 00:15:11,870 --> 00:15:17,570 And for some people who are living in more impoverished circumstances, that past is associated with hunger. 168 00:15:18,110 --> 00:15:23,360 So even though the food might have been healthy, there wasn't enough of it -- healthier -- there wasn't enough of it. 169 00:15:23,360 --> 00:15:30,020 So you might have had rice, you might have had, you know, protein if you were lucky, you know, a bit of vegetables and you didn't have 170 00:15:30,020 --> 00:15:34,090 enough. So you when you think about the future, you think ... 171 00:15:34,090 --> 00:15:35,960 you want to associate with having enough food. 172 00:15:36,050 --> 00:15:41,240 And then what happens again is that the modern food industry understands that. 173 00:15:41,240 --> 00:15:51,110 And they come in with advertising, and they advertise these foods in a way that says, if you want to be modern, if you want to aspire to 174 00:15:51,140 --> 00:15:56,060 be better -- which everybody does, we all do -- eat these foods. 175 00:15:56,180 --> 00:16:05,270 And so it's a combination of something that's really genuine in people about wanting something better, a frustration with perhaps kind 176 00:16:05,270 --> 00:16:14,750 of very structured social relations but particularly gender inequities and where young people are kind of kept down, with the 177 00:16:14,750 --> 00:16:16,310 advertising companies coming in. 178 00:16:16,310 --> 00:16:23,750 So it's this combination of things that then flip people, and then we see dietary change as a result of that. 179 00:16:23,840 --> 00:16:28,070 JEREMY: When you consider people who are growing their own food ... 180 00:16:28,100 --> 00:16:36,890 I mean, there's been a lot of noise over the past decade or so about so-called nutrition-sensitive agriculture, which is persuading people 181 00:16:36,890 --> 00:16:45,050 to grow more nutritionally interesting things rather than what they were growing before. 182 00:16:45,110 --> 00:16:47,960 That seems like a good idea. 183 00:16:47,990 --> 00:16:49,520 Does that work? 184 00:16:49,550 --> 00:16:51,770 CORINNA: Well, look, everything can work. 185 00:16:52,280 --> 00:16:56,120 It all depends on whether you take people's daily realities into account. 186 00:16:56,750 --> 00:17:00,680 So that's a really good example of how absolutely it makes intuitive sense. 187 00:17:02,240 --> 00:17:05,030 People are growing, just growing too many staple foods. 188 00:17:05,030 --> 00:17:06,500 And that's an important part of the diet. 189 00:17:06,500 --> 00:17:07,700 But it's not diverse enough. 190 00:17:07,700 --> 00:17:10,430 We know that dietary diversity is associated with good nutrition. 191 00:17:10,460 --> 00:17:12,410 The science is very clear on that. 192 00:17:12,410 --> 00:17:15,440 So how do we improve nutrition diversity for these really low income families? 193 00:17:16,130 --> 00:17:21,260 Let's do nutrition-sensitive agriculture, have them grow more nutritious foods. 194 00:17:21,290 --> 00:17:29,270 But if you do that without taking into account social relations, in particular gender relations, in these contexts, you wouldn't be 195 00:17:29,270 --> 00:17:35,540 successful because it's the women who feed themselves, feed their families and feed their children. 196 00:17:35,690 --> 00:17:41,540 And it is women who are often responsible for growing foods for the family. 197 00:17:42,470 --> 00:17:51,740 So if you say, okay, get families growing, growing this, this food, and you don't take into account the labour 198 00:17:51,770 --> 00:17:54,650 demand of what is required. 199 00:17:55,190 --> 00:18:00,530 And women are running around doing a hundred and one other things, then it's just not going to be successful. 200 00:18:00,560 --> 00:18:08,150 But if you're encouraging women to grow in order to generate income, in other words, they have to sell at markets in order to generate 201 00:18:08,150 --> 00:18:16,460 income, and it is men who control the income, then you end up with a situation where women are still having to do the work, but then men 202 00:18:16,460 --> 00:18:19,160 take the income and that doesn't improve the nutrition at all. 203 00:18:19,430 --> 00:18:29,360 JEREMY: Coming away from poverty in a way, people in people in rich countries, rich people, are also not 204 00:18:29,360 --> 00:18:31,910 eating as well as they might. 205 00:18:31,910 --> 00:18:38,420 And one of the great examples in the paper is about trying to reduce the consumption of meat, especially red meat. 206 00:18:38,450 --> 00:18:40,070 You'ld think that would be ... 207 00:18:40,100 --> 00:18:42,830 I mean, once people agree to it ... 208 00:18:43,490 --> 00:18:48,920 that would be a kind of easy one, meatless mondays, whatever it might be. 209 00:18:49,760 --> 00:18:55,580 But even that doesn't work on a kind of institutional level. 210 00:18:55,610 --> 00:19:01,910 CORINNA: And that, again, I mean, there's a range of reasons for that, but that comes back to the identity and meaning that we associate with food. 211 00:19:01,910 --> 00:19:04,580 And meat is a high status food in pretty much ... 212 00:19:04,730 --> 00:19:07,580 not every culture, but in many cultures. 213 00:19:07,580 --> 00:19:16,340 And in the example that I give in the paper, it's an example which is a well-reported, well-evidenced association between masculinity and 214 00:19:16,340 --> 00:19:21,170 meat, in this case in the military, in the armed forces. 215 00:19:21,350 --> 00:19:30,560 But it could be any situation where masculinity is important and where taking away meat was viewed 216 00:19:30,560 --> 00:19:39,550 as, but hang on, you know, I associate that with being masculine, with being strong, and you're taking it away from me. 217 00:19:39,550 --> 00:19:44,280 And you're basically saying, I'm taking that away from you, and that's taking away someone's masculinity. 218 00:19:44,280 --> 00:19:49,860 And you're also taking away, in this case, the idea of a comfort food that people really enjoy. 219 00:19:50,070 --> 00:19:57,570 So people have these very strong senses of associations with food, and that's fine. 220 00:19:57,570 --> 00:19:58,980 That's reasonable. 221 00:19:58,980 --> 00:20:03,360 Again, it's not this, oh, these stupid people, they don't understand that meat is damaging the planet. 222 00:20:03,360 --> 00:20:07,350 It's let's understand why people are coming from, you know, why is this? 223 00:20:08,490 --> 00:20:09,510 Why is this? 224 00:20:09,510 --> 00:20:16,500 And actually, if you work with that, you probably can work with communities to move them away from meat. 225 00:20:16,530 --> 00:20:18,600 It's perfectly possible. 226 00:20:18,720 --> 00:20:24,630 And you should do that because the fact is, high meat consuming populations, it's neither healthy nor good for the planet. 227 00:20:24,630 --> 00:20:26,910 And but let's not do it in a patronizing way. 228 00:20:26,910 --> 00:20:30,660 Let's understand where people are coming from and see how we can work with that. 229 00:20:30,690 --> 00:20:39,510 JEREMY: You list in the paper, you and your colleagues list twelve different things that you ought to 230 00:20:39,570 --> 00:20:43,590 consider in developing food policy. 231 00:20:43,650 --> 00:20:46,920 That that's a lot of things to consider. 232 00:20:47,430 --> 00:20:51,570 But I mean, do you have any advice for policy makers? 233 00:20:51,600 --> 00:20:57,430 Are they supposed to consider all twelve or can they focus on one or two? 234 00:20:57,840 --> 00:20:59,580 How does that work? 235 00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:01,500 CORINNA: Yeah. You can't focus on twelve. 236 00:21:01,530 --> 00:21:03,570 It's too many. It's unrealistic. 237 00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:11,250 So what we try, and the point that we make in the paper, is actually a process of prioritization that will vary between contexts. 238 00:21:11,670 --> 00:21:18,840 And so, we were talking about gender earlier, in certain contexts, you'ld say look I'm putting this policy into place. 239 00:21:18,840 --> 00:21:24,240 If I don't take into account gender relations, I'm really, really not going to have much impact. 240 00:21:24,240 --> 00:21:26,430 So it's just going to be inefficient to do it. 241 00:21:26,430 --> 00:21:30,720 So if I want something, if I want to get bang for my buck, I just need to take this into account. 242 00:21:30,750 --> 00:21:37,050 Now there's all of these other things around here too, but in this context, they're just not as important. 243 00:21:37,590 --> 00:21:42,240 The idea is that you step into people's shoes. 244 00:21:42,240 --> 00:21:48,510 So in the work that we were doing in other publications, we were tracing the daily lives of people. 245 00:21:48,540 --> 00:21:58,530 So if as a policy maker, you remove yourself from it's just because they can't cook, they're just not educated or it's just that, you 246 00:21:58,530 --> 00:22:07,950 know, the food prices or whatever, and you actually try and stand in someone else's shoes and you might actually begin to understand what 247 00:22:07,950 --> 00:22:09,060 the issues are. 248 00:22:09,210 --> 00:22:11,310 So that's really what we're saying. 249 00:22:11,310 --> 00:22:18,870 And then you can think, in this community, in this place, these are the areas that are really we really need to focus on. 250 00:22:19,110 --> 00:22:25,650 JEREMY: The big problem with that is that every community, every situation is different. 251 00:22:26,460 --> 00:22:33,210 And all you hear from people in big policy think tanks and whatever is: it has to work at scale. 252 00:22:33,660 --> 00:22:38,010 If you want it to work at scale, you can't take account of communities. 253 00:22:40,020 --> 00:22:42,870 CORINNA: The question that you raise is one that I struggle with. 254 00:22:43,020 --> 00:22:52,680 I mean, I began and I worked for many years on national policies, and that's, as I said earlier, that was my entry point 255 00:22:53,190 --> 00:22:59,070 in the sense that, like, no one should have exposure to junk food marketing and so on. 256 00:22:59,100 --> 00:23:01,350 And I still adhere to that. 257 00:23:02,040 --> 00:23:11,910 So what we're really talking about is deciding on what the biggest problem is 258 00:23:11,940 --> 00:23:17,520 and among who and saying for that, what do we need to do? 259 00:23:17,550 --> 00:23:21,810 And then understanding the situation in those communities. 260 00:23:21,810 --> 00:23:25,860 You can't solve all of these problems all differently. 261 00:23:26,460 --> 00:23:35,220 But just let me give you an example again, of a situation that we were -- I think it was in the Philippines -- that we were, I was working 262 00:23:35,220 --> 00:23:45,120 with Unicef on this, where there was a situation of people living in rural, more rural communities, 263 00:23:45,120 --> 00:23:53,340 of not having accessible transport to markets that sold food at affordable prices. 264 00:23:53,340 --> 00:23:56,490 The local markets were, the local stores were very expensive. 265 00:23:56,490 --> 00:23:59,070 So this is very inherently local. 266 00:24:00,030 --> 00:24:05,580 But when you think about it, that's really about a rural transportation issue. 267 00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:11,400 So then you think, okay, how does this then connect in with the people who are looking at rural transportation? 268 00:24:11,430 --> 00:24:13,740 There were people who were looking at that issue. 269 00:24:13,740 --> 00:24:23,400 So we should get out of the idea that all of the solutions lie in the Ministry of Health and think about who it is that we need to work 270 00:24:23,400 --> 00:24:28,590 with in order to scale these solutions, to think, well, rural transportation, it's not just about food, it's about a whole load of 271 00:24:28,590 --> 00:24:30,570 things, about employment, livelihoods. 272 00:24:30,570 --> 00:24:32,160 So there's other people looking at that. 273 00:24:32,430 --> 00:24:37,110 Let's connect in with other people looking at other issues. 274 00:24:37,230 --> 00:24:43,950 Because if we just say, this is just from the Ministry of Health, looking at health problems in our little community, then you're not 275 00:24:43,950 --> 00:24:46,320 able to start to see the bigger picture. 276 00:24:46,350 --> 00:24:48,960 So that's that's that's good policy making. 277 00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:50,190 But you are right. 278 00:24:50,190 --> 00:24:55,020 And I get, you know, get stuck in this sometimes in the process. 279 00:24:55,020 --> 00:24:56,520 Like how do you actually, you know ... 280 00:24:56,550 --> 00:24:58,440 We call it evidence of lived experience. 281 00:24:58,440 --> 00:25:02,070 How do you gather this evidence of lived experience, you know. 282 00:25:02,100 --> 00:25:11,640 We agree that this is difficult, but we say at the end of the paper that the least that can happen is for policy makers 283 00:25:11,970 --> 00:25:17,650 to come into communities and actually to try and get a sense of the ... 284 00:25:20,370 --> 00:25:22,260 of, you know, how these things are. 285 00:25:22,290 --> 00:25:24,570 I remember giving a talk when I was first ... 286 00:25:25,020 --> 00:25:30,850 quite soon after starting this work, to some policy makers, and they were really ... 287 00:25:31,060 --> 00:25:34,360 They said to me afterwards, they said, I'm really taken with what you've said. 288 00:25:34,390 --> 00:25:38,890 We're going to arrange some walks through this, through this neighbourhood. 289 00:25:40,060 --> 00:25:44,290 And just that is a move in the right direction. 290 00:25:44,500 --> 00:25:52,150 JEREMY: Corinna Hawkes on how food policy makers can begin to address the reality of people's lives. 291 00:25:53,890 --> 00:25:59,110 I'll put a link to her paper in the show notes at EatThisPodcast.com. 292 00:25:59,140 --> 00:26:04,990 It is behind a paywall, but I'm sure if you ask nicely I can find you a copy. 293 00:26:05,260 --> 00:26:14,980 I'll also link to the 2016 episode, which marked a turning point in the high level food policy conversation, from hunger 294 00:26:14,980 --> 00:26:17,380 to diet and nutrition. 295 00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:22,090 And here's a thing. 296 00:26:22,090 --> 00:26:32,020 When I went looking for that episode, I realized with a bit of a shock that there are now almost 300 past episodes in the archive. 297 00:26:32,050 --> 00:26:38,890 If you're a relatively new listener, there's a lot there that you might want to dig into. 298 00:26:41,860 --> 00:26:43,480 And a final question. 299 00:26:43,480 --> 00:26:50,290 Last year I offered a little quiz, one question per episode, and some people seem to find that fun. 300 00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:52,690 So should I do that again this year? 301 00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:53,890 Yes or no? 302 00:26:53,920 --> 00:26:55,030 Let me know. 303 00:26:55,030 --> 00:26:58,660 Jeremy at EatThisPodcast.com. 304 00:27:05,620 --> 00:27:07,630 Okay, that'll do for now. 305 00:27:07,630 --> 00:27:24,940 So from me, Jeremy Cherfas and Eat This Podcast, goodbye and thanks for listening.