The Leading Voices in Food

Duke World Food Policy Center
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  • Social Sciences
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The Leading Voices in Food podcast series features real people, scientists, farmers, policy experts and world leaders all working to improve our food system and food policy. You'll learn about issues across the food system spectrum such as food insecurity, obesity, agriculture, access and equity, food safety, food defense, and food policy. Produced by the Duke World Food Policy Center at wfpc.sanford.duke.edu.

  1. 1d ago

    E304: Captain and Cat's Explorasaurus on Healthy Food

    Today we're talking with Kevin Hoban and Jordie Simkovic, the creators and starring characters of Captain & Cat, a popular YouTube kids show with 200,000 subscribers and over 200 million views. The educational show for preschoolers tells stories using entertaining songs and narratives. They've just launched a new series called Explorasaurus: Healthy Food and You, aimed at teaching kids about healthy food and how it's grown. Their first episode about SugarBee apple growers in Washington State has over 500,000 views on YouTube. Interview Summary So, for people who aren't familiar with your show, for those few people out there who may not be, tell us about Captain & Cat, the characters, what they do, and how did you guys get started doing this? Kevin - Gotcha. Well, Jordan and I have been best friends since college. We went to Northwestern University in Chicago, and we were in a band together. We would perform live on campus, in the streets. And we realized that kids would stop and really enjoyed what we were doing. And I think that was the seed of the whole thing was, "Hey, maybe our act that we have, this two-man show is something for kids." And then we graduated. We both moved out to LA. Jordan came out here to act. I moved out here to produce TV shows, and on the weekends, we started performing for kids. Jordie - Yeah. Actually, we did a show called The Bubble Show. And we were doing probably six to eight shows a weekend for about 10 years. And then during the pandemic we started putting our stuff online because all live performances stopped. And for about three years it was nothing and crickets, and really just our parents watching. And then we won the award for best kid song of the year in 2023. And then that kinda put us on the radar of YouTube Kids who invited us to be one of the featured channels on their platform. And for a while we were doing jingles and music and educational songs and stuff like that. And then towards the end of last summer, we had connected with SugarBee Apples and that whole kind of growing cooperative out there about doing an apple song. And they actually were like, "You know what would be even cooler than that? Why don't you come out here and meet the farmers and see the harvest in action?" And we're like, "Whoa, this is really cool." And honestly, it was a life-changing experience. We now say that we have aunts, uncles, and cousins out in Central Washington. And honestly, I grew up in Miami, I went to college in Chicago, and then I've lived in Los Angeles ever since. I had never stepped foot on a farm, really, in any significant way. And just to be able to get exposure to this incredible pocket of people that otherwise I would have never had a chance to see and meet was completely eye-opening. Kevin - I would say I went out there thinking, "This is a huge apple company. They sell them all across the country in every grocery store." I went out there thinking, "Well, this is sort of like a big industrial corporate farm," right? Must be just one giant farm with robots harvesting apples. And what we found was it was a co-op of family-owned farms. Smaller families. We met the families. We met the grandparents, the parents, the kids, the grandkids. And we learned so much about apples and how you grow them. That every apple is picked by hand, first and foremost. Jordie - We honestly expected there was going to be like a machine just going around and shaking the apples off, you know. Because you have no idea. And there's been so much dialogue around factory farming, which has become kind of like the negative word. And honestly, yeah, as Kevin was saying, we expected just a giant faceless corporation there. And it was the exact opposite. Can I ask you guys a question? I'd like to dive in a little deeper than this, because you're saying something that resonates with me very personally. When I moved to North Carolina from Connecticut, I was offered the opportunity through the North Carolina Farm Bureau to do a tour of farms. Two-day intensive tour of farms in Eastern North Carolina. And we went to a blueberry farm that harvests millions of pounds of blueberries a year. Soybeans, corn, hog farmers, chicken. I mean, we did everything. And it was incredibly interesting. And there was the technology part of it, or the lack of technology that I was learning about, just as you related. But there was also a very moving human part of this. The people, I thought, were really interesting. And the generational nature of farming and all. So, tell me a little bit more about the people part of it. How much that affected you. Jordie - We met the farmer who like seven generations back, their family introduced the Granny Smith apple to the United States, you know? It's going back and we literally see it's a whole family working and living very close to where they farm. And so, kind of just, it's Uncle Farmer Peoples now, you know? And so, we were kinda talking to him about chemicals and pesticides and stuff like that off the record because we're like, "All right, so now tell us how much you spraying on these?" He's like, "Why would I ever do anything destructive to this land? This is where my family and I live." Kevin - Yeah. And I think you also picked up on the pressure that these farmers feel to carry on the farm itself. It's been in their family for generations. They need to keep it running. And all of the pressures and anxieties that come with that just to keep this farm afloat. Because again, it's not some huge corporation, it's a family farm that's part of this co-op of other family farms. And they've all kind of banded together to pool their resources to keep everything going, which is just a wonderful... It's a wonderful lesson, I think. These farms rely on people working together day in and day out for their own collective good. Jordie - The guy who runs the packaging facility is the brother-in-law of one of the growers. So, we thought that they were pranking us, because literally every car that drove by, they're like, "Oh, that's my brother-in-law. Oh, that's my aunt. That's my niece," in this little town right off Lake Chelan. And you really see the impact. We actually were just there last week again to film a new segment about apple blossoms and pollination and stuff like that. And one of the coolest experiences we had there was we went to an elementary school. One of the families in the co-op had donated shoes to a lot of the kids in the elementary school, and we helped go distribute them there. It's honestly so cool to see that the same way that LA is built around the film industry, there they're literally built around the apple and cherry industry, and pears. Ever since we went there, I off-camera would not, you would not catch me eating anything other than a SugarBee. And that's the truth. You know, so interesting to hear you talk about this and your experience with the apple production facility and the people being related to one another. It's exactly what I found on a sweet potato farm here. North Carolina's the largest producer of sweet potatoes, and I visited a very large farm owned by a man and his daughter. I mean, they really ran this business. And they were farmers at their heart, but this was $100 million a year business. And they're looking at international trade markets and deciding when to release the sweet potato. I mean highly sophisticated financial decisions they were making. But at the end of the day, they were related to their land, and that's what this was all about. I mean, to say it was a spiritual relationship doesn't... I don't know what word captures it. But it was something very special in that sometimes you think about farmers exploiting the land, and that happens with the big factory farms. But in these cases, you find farmers want to be at peace with their land. And I heard it many times, that they wanted to turn the land over in better condition to their children than it was turned over to them. It's obvious from affectively and emotionally the way you're talking about it and the way I'm talking about it, something very special is occurring here. How do you communicate that in a video, especially to children? Kevin - Well, I think for us, we always lead with the enthusiasm that we have, but then also trying to tease out the enthusiasm that the farmers have themselves. Because some of them are not used to being on camera, and certainly not on a YouTube Kids show. But once we ask the right questions and probe a little bit of, for an example, we just shot with them last week. And we asked for students that we work with around the country to submit questions. And one of the questions was, "Does the farmer talk to his apples?" And we asked one of the farmers that, and he lit up, and you just saw all the sudden that passion that he really does have for his apples. And I think the more that we can bring that out of the farmers, show kids and families how passionate and excited they are about the fruit, that hopefully that will get the kids excited as well. You can imagine the farmer talking to an apple when it's falls from 30 feet on his head. Jordie - They're pretty sturdy up there, honestly. And I think another way to kinda communicate the care is to show how much work goes into it. Because literally, this was informative for us just because going from the blossoms, they go through and prune by hand. And hand select it because there are so many variables involved. And what we found is the confluence of this incredible intergenerational wisdom and technique and craft that has been passed down and honed. Also, kind of meeting within the packaging facility. The technology there is honestly mind-blowing. And I think it's only getting more and more advanced. We shot an episode at a dairy farm. And one of the farms we visited recently had AI milkers - AI robotic milkers. And we're like, "Oh, does this make it so that the cows have a different and negativ

    30 min

  2. 1d ago

    Amy Beros on centering community in food banking

    North Carolina is one of the nation's top agricultural producing states. And it is also a state where one in seven residents don't have the resources to provide food on their table every day. Today, I'm talking with Amy Beros, president and CEO of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina - the state's largest food bank. Each year, this organization provides 95 million meals distributed through more than 700 partner agencies, food pantries, congregate meal sites, backpack programs. And they do this in 34 counties in the state. In our conversation today, we will explore the policy issues that this food bank and many food banks face. Interview Transcript Amy, I want to ask a really simple question about what got you to this place. So how in the world did you get involved in food banking? Oh, gosh. Well, you know, when I was growing up, I didn't know what food banking was. But I knew that it was our responsibility to make sure that neighbors helped neighbors. So, I grew up volunteering what I know now is a partner agency of the local food bank in my hometown. And as I moved across the country, I found ways to get involved. When I moved here to North Carolina about 16 years ago, I found food banks. I've been working professionally in food banking for a little over 12 years now. But I believe that food is a basic human right, and it has been my life's work to make sure that we're doing everything we can to ensure everyone has what they need. Thank you for sharing that. And I can imagine over the years, as I've also been involved in food banking but on the board side or as a volunteer, that this is a work that we sometimes think it's just about moving food and providing that. However, there's a whole policy framework that, sort of, surrounds and influences and shapes what food banking and what the work of the partner agencies, the food pantries on the ground, what they do. I wonder if you could help make this a little bit more real for us. Could you tell us a little bit about how policy becomes personal in your work? Can you share a moment when that really came true for you? Oh, I think the most recent blinding moment was last year during the government shutdown. Well, one, there's a lot of noise on TV right now, right, and in the media, but you hear of these massive numbers, and we know that our elected leaders are looking at these numbers on spreadsheets. And we see the humans behind those numbers and their stories. And these are thousands and thousands of stories like the ones that we hear about each day. Last year, during the shutdown, a father of five reached out to me and said, "I have five children. I work at the federal prison. I'm missing my second paycheck. For the first time in my life, I don't know how I'm going to put food on the table." Or the SNAP delay and disruption that we had. For the first time in our history during that shutdown, a mother reaching out and saying, "I don't know what to do. I've told my children to eat everything they can at school because I don't know what we're going to have when we get home, if we don't have these benefits." And that's just two stories and one crisis. And so many of our neighbors are living a crisis every day. These systemic issues. And we see those humans and hear their stories each day. And I think that's when it becomes personal. These decisions, one stroke of a pen, impacts food for hundreds of thousands of neighbors. Thank you for sharing that. I teach a class called the Economics of the Public Sector, and we often talk about policies that provide support to individuals. And it can be easy to talk about these policies as if they're just decisions that policymakers make, but there are real people who are dependent on these policies. And when they don't work or when rules change, it has significant implications for how people navigate. And so, I appreciate the work that you all are doing. I want to take a step back and talk about food banking. And while I know a lot of our listeners are familiar with food banking and food pantries, I do know that people kind of mix those two terms up. Amy, would you just tell us, broadly speaking, what's a food bank, and then what are the partner agencies. And how do they relate to one another? Yes, absolutely. Our food bank serves 34 counties in North Carolina. And as you shared, we work with over 700 partners. We work with growers. We work with over 80 local farmers in North Carolina. We work with manufacturers in North Carolina. We work with all of the retail chains to get food out into the community. And we do that primarily through those partners because they are embedded into the community. And what we're really proud of here, and I think something of how food banking has changed, you know, many people still think of a food bank as a dimly lit church basement pantry. And that maybe was food banking 30 years ago. But today it is part of the modern food system. We are a critical piece of infrastructure within the food system as part of the charitable food system. And one of the things that I'm most proud of is we live in North Carolina, this beautiful agriculture state, and over half of what we distribute each year is produce and protein. And that is what neighbors are asking for, too. Because neighbors want the healthy fresh foods, and it's also the most expensive to buy. And food banking today is not just focused on moving calories and getting pounds of food out to the community. It's focused on meals and nutritious meals and how to provide that nutrition education to make meals healthier. To use the types of foods you would get in a food pantry. For instance, I just learned at one of our nutrition demos this past weekend, you can leave the peel on a sweet potato, blend it up, and make it into a pancake. You never notice that you left it on there, but you get so much more fiber. And we're doing these types of trainings to help people make meals more nutritious, make meals go further, too, that they're getting. It's really a holistic approach. It's about being alongside community partners that are embedded into the community that are providing holistic supports like workforce development, job training, housing support. And we're that food portion as part of those agencies and making sure they have the right food and enough food to get out into the community. It's really helpful to hear the ways that food banking is adjusting. This idea you're no longer just this big organization that takes in a bunch of food and then distributes it through, you know, food pantries and what used to be called soup kitchens. But rather you're working with other community partners, you're working with farmers to find ways of moving food, but also providing opportunities and thinking about this almost as wraparound services. Are there other things that are being provided than just meals? I know I've been in pantries where there have been nurses, and there have been other support services like ways to sign up to SNAP. This is a sort of a series of overlapping and intersecting opportunities to help families meet their food needs, but more than that, their sort of broader set of needs. And I think this is a really critical way of understanding that food banking looks different than, like you said, grandmothers working in a church basement. I know that the work that food banks can serve as shock absorbers. When things go down, when things are problematic, food banks are there to sort of meet needs in a real way. We've seen a great deal of breakdown in policies over the last several months, and both at the state and at the national level. What does this shock look like to you and your partner agencies on the ground? It has been a tough year. You know, our budget went from 27% government funding and support to less than 10% in one year just because of decisions that were made in an instant. And there was no feedback structure. And I think that's one thing that I really pride our food bank on is the community feedback. We're constantly trying to engage with neighbors facing hunger, understand nobody knows what people facing hunger need more than the people who are literally experiencing it every single day. We try to ground all of our decisions in what is the community saying they need of us. And I think that is one of the things that's been so frustrating to see the decisions made this past year at the federal level. There's been no feedback. It's just numbers on a paper. And within, you know, a stroke of a pen, North Carolina lost $30 million for food purchased from North Carolina farmers for schools and food banks. And that was just North Carolina. It was one billion across the nation. And we're impacting people facing hunger, we're impacting farmers at the same time, and we have farmers who are saying, "I don't know if I'm gonna keep my family farm open." With SNAP, you know, we have cuts coming this year for SNAP and changes that are going to be detrimental for so many of our neighbors. And the cost shift to the states that are not prepared to take that. There's not a transition plan place. And SNAP is an economic driver. For every one meal a food bank provides, SNAP provides nine. We can't replace SNAP if we lose those meals. There's no possible way for us to charitable food our way out of that. But I don't think people realize the ripple impact of those decisions. So yes, it's going to impact people facing hunger. And eight out of 10 of those people on SNAP are working families, seniors, people with disabilities, our most vulnerable neighbors. And at the same time, we're going to see rural grocery stores close. We're going to see more farms close because for every dollar of SNAP, it means $1.50 to $1.60 back into the local economy. And that's going to be a detrimental effect that we can't turn around quickly. It's going to be long-term health impacts for neighbors because of the loss of this nutritious food and the los

    18 min
  3. E302: Do GLP-1 drugs reduce overall healthcare spending?

    2d ago

    E302: Do GLP-1 drugs reduce overall healthcare spending?

    For many people, the FDA-approved drug class called GLP-1s has been a game changer for managing type 2 diabetes and weight loss. An estimated one in eight US adults is using this type of drug, which mimics a natural gut hormone to regulate blood sugar, slow stomach emptying, and suppress appetite. Researchers and the public have been scrutinizing the pros and cons of taking these drugs for many years. One critical question that remains is does the use of GLP-1s translate into lower medical expenses for consumers, healthcare providers, insurance companies, and the government? Today, we're speaking with Duke University health economist Jonathan Zhang on the answer to these questions from his multi-year study of veterans who use GLP-1s. The results are surprising. Interview Summary Jonathan, first, let's talk broadly. Would you briefly describe the kinds of health benefits people are experiencing with GLP-1s, particularly in terms of changes in behavior and overall health? Yes. So GLP-1s are medications that manage body weight and improve metabolic health. The primary health benefits are via better blood sugar regulation and weight loss via reducing appetite. But there's larger health benefits that are much broader. So, trials have also shown that they lower blood pressure, reduce strokes and heart attacks, among other cardiovascular benefits. Overall also improves, so things like obstructive sleep apnea, improvements in inflammation-related measures. And recently it was FDA approved to treat MASH, which is a form of fatty liver disease. Finally, people also report feeling less hungry. They get full faster, fewer cravings, and reduction in what is often called food noise, which can potentially help people make a range of better behavior decisions and changes relating to food and perhaps even beyond food. However, the evidence on that seems to be promising, but new and less strong. Thank you for sharing those. I know a lot of our listeners have heard some of those issues and some of those points about how GLP-1s could change the way we behave, and some of the health outcomes. So, let's dig into your particular study. In your working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) you and your co-authors describe a natural experiment involving patients and doctors in the Department of Veteran Affairs, and their access to and use of GLP-1s. Would you lay out the general parameters of your study for our listeners? Yes, absolutely. So, like many medications, what we know about GLP-1s primarily comes from randomized controlled trials, which have small sample sizes and often select for quite sick patients. As GLP-1s reach a broader population, the population becomes less pro-comparable to those in trials, so the real-world impacts become less obvious. Moreover, there are some outcomes such as healthcare utilization or spending costs that are incredibly important for policy but not directly studied in trials. We were interested in studying in a very large healthcare system, that is the VA, the Veterans Health Administration, the real-world impacts of GLP-1s using readily collected data from the healthcare system and a quasi-experiment. So that is we try to emulate a real experiment where some patients get GLP-1s from their primary care doctor and others do not. And the reason one patient might get it while the other doesn't is because their doctors differ in their likelihood or propensity to prescribe these drugs. And we focus on the Veterans Health Administration, the VHA, because the veteran population is quite diverse, at least in terms of comorbidities relative to the trials per se and also in age, say, compared to Medicare. And GLP-1s are provided in the VA to eligible patients at a pretty affordable cost. So, sort of a nice policy playground for us to think about what outcomes might look like when GLP-1s become readily available and affordable to all Americans. Great. Thank you for sharing that because now we have a good sense of the quasi experiment that you all were able to exploit. That there were providers who had a high tendency to prescribe GLP-1s versus those who didn't. And looking at that difference, you were able to see how GLP-1s may have affected the outcomes that you were interested in. So now tell us a bit about the findings, and I think there's some surprising results here. So, first we replicate many of the findings from the randomized trials for this diverse, veteran population. We see reductions in body weight, we see hemoglobin A1C blood glucose levels improve and blood pressure improvements as well. Even a reduction in heart attacks and strokes for patients with existing cardiovascular conditions, and even a small reduction in moderate drinking risk as well. The trial evidence seems to hold up in this large and diverse population of we have 1.4 million patients that we're studying. Second, despite these improvements though, we do not see a reduction in healthcare spending. This is actually excluding the cost of the medication, the GLP-1. It's not because GLP-1s are expensive. We're taking that out of the equation. Over four years, this is how long we're able to track these patients for, we're able to rule out reductions of more than 7% in healthcare spending. And we see no reductions in whether that's outpatient clinic or in inpatient hospitalization. We also don't see any reductions in emergency department visits more generally, despite seeing a reduction in heart attack and strokes for those patients with existing cardiovascular condition. Jonathan, that sounds great, but it's a little hard to understand. So why is it that you're seeing no real changes in the consumer healthcare spending? What's going on? Yes, we were a little surprised as well. We think there could be a myriad of potential reasons. But first, I want to note that there's also at least three other studies that use real-world data to look at a similar question, and all the studies find no statistically significant spending reductions. And in fact, all of us, we all find a slight positive increase. I think the first explanation is that while heart attacks and strokes are very expensive and obviously, very serious events, they are still thankfully quite rare and thus are not very common in our three to five-year period in which these studies are looking at. But perhaps over ten or twenty years, you could start seeing some healthcare spending materialize. I think that's totally possible. Most cost projection models, whether that's from the CBO or other organizations, they project healthcare spending reductions to accumulate over time. But these models also project immediate spending reduction, which is not yet supported by the data. Another potential explanation is what I would call these behavioral responses. So, you can imagine that a patient sees some improvement in their health, and that changes their expectation of, "Oh, wow, I could actually make some changes to my health." And they actually go and get some more care. This can also be driven by the physician as well. So, sort of, "Look, things are working. This patient's seeing improvements. Maybe we should treat some of your other health problems and issues." This is what I would call sort of a behavioral response. A third explanation could be that some of these patients have conditions that have progressed to be irreversible even with metabolic health gains. So, for example, late-stage kidney disease would be a good example. We find some suggestive evidence that this might be happening in our study. In other words, for these patients where they have some potentially irreversible health conditions, the metabolic health improvements - that's not a primary reason for their healthcare spending. This is helpful. That explains why we're seeing some of these challenges with healthcare spending. And I appreciate your point of taking a longer view may actually reveal some differences. And also, the responses of doctors and patients to the benefits that they gain and how that might expand opportunities for healthcare. So, thank you for sharing that. I want to shift focus a little bit. And it is taking a step beyond the paper, but I think it's a natural extension of the work. As you know, I'm an agricultural economist, and I've been interested in obviously food policy issues. And the fact that we're seeing weight loss, the fact that we're seeing better management of A1C suggests that there's something probably happening with food consumption and food patterns. I'd be interested to learn from you if you have any ideas about what this work suggests about the impact of GLP-1s on consumer food choices. Yes, I think there's a fair amount of both trial and real-world grocery purchase evidence that GLP-1s are impacting consumer food choices. In the randomized trials, GLP-1s reduce, calories consumed, reduce the desire to eat sweet, salty, and savory foods and high fat fast foods in their meals. For example, these trials will look at what people eat for lunch. In real world data, there's a study out of Denmark that found that after patients' first GLP-1 prescription, their grocery store purchases went on to have fewer calories, sugars, saturated fats, carbohydrates, and more protein over the one-year period after they initiate GLP-1s. The share of ultra-processed foods also decreased. The effects were actually quite modest, so there was only about a one percent reduction in calories and a four percent reduction in sugar and a five percent increase in protein in the year after versus the year before in this Danish study. In the US, there's a similar study using kind of this transactional level data as well. And they find that households after they start GLP-1s also reduce caloric intake, fast food consumption, caloric dense processed foods. And there it's a little larger in the US by about five to ten percent. Then the question is, you know, are they shifting towards

    19 min
  4. E301: Greg Jaffe on Food and Ag Policy Trends

    3d ago

    E301: Greg Jaffe on Food and Ag Policy Trends

    Interview Transcript Kate - Welcome to the Leading Voices in Food podcast. I'm Kate Stanley, a researcher at the World Food Policy Center at Duke University. I'm joined today by my co-host, Katariina Koivusaari, a researcher at North Carolina State University. Together, we collaborate on policy research for the Bezos Center for Sustainable Proteins at NC State. Katariina - Great to have you. Greg, you have been involved in food and agriculture policy in Washington, D.C. for several decades and have worked with both Democratic and Republican administrations. Are food policy politics caught up in party differences depending on which political party is running the executive branch? A very relevant question right now. I guess it would be wrong to say that the political party in office doesn't make a big difference in the policies being carried out by the executive branch. However, in the food and agricultural space, and especially in the areas that I focus on, which is really around these new technologies in food and Ag and how do those get into the marketplace and adopted, that difference hasn't been so big. Let me give you an example or two. I'll take you back first to about 2000, and we had the Clinton administration. We have the regulation at FDA of biotech crops, and they had a voluntary consultation process and there were a number of stakeholders and others who felt that that wasn't sufficient. The Clinton administration interpreted the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to try to turn that into what they called a mandatory consultation, and they proposed a pre-market notification rule. It didn't get finished in, before the end of the administration in January of 2001. Then we had the Bush administration come in, so we went from a Democrat to a Republican. And the Bush administration looked at the same law and looked at that same proposed regulation and said, "We don't have the legal authority to do that." And they withdrew that proposal, and so we still have to this day this voluntary consultation. And I give you that example for two reasons. One, I think what we've seen when it comes to food and policy regulation by different administrations is how they interpret the law. And I can say this in very general, the Democrats have tended to be a little more expansive in how they interpreted the law to try to find more legal authority to do things that they might want to do. And the Republicans have tended to look at that language much more restrictively or look at just exactly what that language said and not try to interpret anything into it. And so, you see that difference here between what happened in the Clinton administration versus what happened in the Bush administration. I mention this example because as many of your listeners may know, right now in this administration, we have the question about voluntary GRAS and whether that's going to become mandatory or not. And some of us who have followed that know that the current FDA has submitted to OMB, to the White House, a proposed rule to make GRAS mandatory. Well, that is-- the regulatory process for those biotech crops is also a GRAS process. It's interesting now that we have a Republican administration who's finding the authority to do that, and we'll see what actually comes out and what the courts do with it. But I think this shows that sort of difference in policies between Democrats and Republicans. But overall, we haven't seen a lot of difference. In this new administration, I think one of the questions people had was what would happen with a technology like cell-cultivated meat? Where would the regulation of it go forward? There's many in the MAHA movement, I think, that felt that that wasn't consistent with what they wanted. But we've seen that those approvals continue to happen. Similarly, pesticides have been an issue in many administrations. Sometimes Democrats have argued to be much more restrictive in the use of pesticides and to make the regulations much harder. And Republicans have oftentimes said to make those easier for the agencies. But what we see is pesticides have moved forward under both administrations. People understand the need for pesticides to produce agriculture. We have some differences in policy, but on the whole, in this area, I think, whether it's Democratic or Republican, they have generally supported following the law. Kate - Greg, you shared some interesting examples of across administrations how we've seen different actions be taken. And I'm curious. Under this administration, for some of these areas you work in, like these novel technologies, what do you see as driving the new federal legislative actions in food policy? The legislative area has generally always been more partisan than the executive branch to some extent. I mean, the executive branch is interpreting laws from Congress; the Congress is setting those. But I think again, in the area of food policy, we've seen many good laws come out that have been bipartisan. And when I look at how did those laws come to be, I sort of see a couple different scenarios. One, and I don't think this is unique to food policy or ag policy, we tend to see legislation when some crisis has occurred. The example I would give in the food space was the establishment of the Food Safety Modernization Act more than a dozen years ago. And to a large extent, that was reaction to a number of outbreaks: spinach outbreaks, peanut butter outbreaks, egg outbreaks. And people getting sick, and some people even dying from those outbreaks. And so that brought a bipartisan coalition together to say, "We need to give more authority to FDA to address our food supply and ensure it's as safe as it could be." So that's one way we've seen that. A second way we see policy change is when a policy is old or that is no longer in favor. And the example I give there is most recently, in this Congress passed the whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, and that is a definite change in policy from the Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. This changes what milks, whether they're flavored, and how much fat they can have and be in the school programs. And I think in both cases, those bills were relatively partisan at the time, and yet they do opposite things. So that would be another reason that we see changes in laws. But the third way, and I wanted to focus a little more on this, is one way the federal government gets involved and Congress gets involved is when states start regulating an area, and we start getting different standards. And then there's a push at the national level to have some sort of uniformity, some sort of have national standard for markets to work properly, for efficiency's sake and so forth. And I can give several different examples. We can go all the way back to the National Organic Law that was passed back in 1990. You had a number of states who had defined organic; they had different organic labels. Congress came together and said, "Hey, let's set up a national organic standard." We had the same thing happen with the National Bioengineered Disclosure Law, that I think happened around 2017 or 2016. In which case you had a number of states proposing legislation. You had Vermont that had passed legislation requiring mandatory labeling of genetically engineered ingredients. And in fact, the law that was passed by Congress was passed, I think, within a week or two of when the Vermont law was about to go into effect. And people felt it was better to come together and have a national standard than have different states doing different things. Because the reality is, consumers and manufacturers don't just purchase things in one state or produce things for one state. They produce it for the nation. We're a nationwide market. And then we see even those kinds of things happening today, and I go back to the pesticide area as another example. We've had different states having pesticide laws or regulations that have been different than the federal situation. We have a Supreme Court case now that the Supreme Court is going to hear in April of this year about whether that's those state regulations are preempted by the federal law. But Congress and the Farm Bill has also put in language that would ensure that the federal standard is the standard that is applied, not having multiple different state standards. So that's been a way that we've seen a lot of things happen in this food and Ag space. Kate - We've seen a lot of food policy action at the state level in the past few years. Katariina and I were on this podcast not long ago talking about state legislation aiming to restrict how cell-cultivated meat products are labeled or even banning those products altogether. We've seen action in a variety of other areas as well. Are there issues that states have started regulating where you think we could see federal action in the near future? I do. I think that the MAHA movement in particular has really set up a situation where we see states taking the lead on a number of issues, and we'll see whether the federal government decides to come in, and particularly Congress, to address those at a national level. For example, in the area of synthetic dyes and food additives, I think there's some 30 states that have introduced bills. And a number of which have passed, either restricting those use at all in any foods, restricting their use in school lunches, having different labeling associated with many of those ingredients. And we've seen some of those laws pass, and we've already seen some court cases. A court case in West Virginia which said that those laws are preempted by federal law. One could envision either something at FDA or in Congress that would set some uniform standard for how this moves forward federally. You mentioned cell-cultivated meat and the three of us were involved in a paper that looked at the state regulation in that area, especially around labeling. And again, if we don't have a lot of those products

    22 min
  5. E300: Tackling Food and Nutrition Systems Change at the Kellogg Foundation

    Jun 2

    E300: Tackling Food and Nutrition Systems Change at the Kellogg Foundation

    Kelly Brownell interviews Jon-Paul Bianchi, Director of Systems Change at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, about the foundation's systems-change approach linking food, health, early childhood, and family economic security to address inequities affecting children and families. Bianchi describes his path from PhD research to policy work and then to Kellogg, and explains how integrated grantmaking focuses upstream on policies, practices, resource flows, narratives, and long-term investment in people and relationships rather than isolated programs. He highlights Vermont's inclusion of food quality in childcare ratings and the foundation's Farm to Early Childhood efforts connecting procurement, regional food systems, and state policy, with examples from states like North Carolina, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and notes Brazil's national local purchasing policy as a model for success. Transcript As I was mentioning before we got started, I've long admired the work of the Kellogg Foundation. Working with the concept of food systems or connecting agriculture with nutrition and thinking about regenerative agricultures. There are a lot of places where your foundation was out front. So, I salute you and your colleagues for that. And it'll be interesting to find out what's happening right now. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and how did you get into the philanthropic work and your work with Kellogg in particular? I'm Jon-Paul Bianchi. I'm the director of the Systems Change team at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. And what that essentially means is I'm the director of national programs at the foundation. But we call it systems change because we really do see in the different areas of work that we focus on- health, family economic security, food, and early childhood- that these things are all interconnected by some distinct systems. But also, common systems that overlap across them. And so, that's the approach that we take. And I'll spend some time sort of diving into that today. You know, to answer the question of how I got here... you know, a master stroke of luck. I was set to be an academic researcher. I was working on my PhD at the University of Wisconsin. I was ABD and decided that I didn't want to be a researcher and I wanted to work in policy. And I moved to Colorado to take a job sort of sight unseen, being the policy director of an organization that worked in K-12 and children's health, and food and early childhood education. And did that for a few years and learned to translate research into practice; into policy. And was giving a presentation and got a tap on a shoulder from somebody that worked at the Kellogg Foundation who was interested in what I was saying. And we had one conversation, and six months later, I wound up having a new job and leaving Colorado and moving to Michigan. That was 15 years ago. Well, you went into this with a great background having done the science as a graduate student and then into the policy world. And you're right, the intersection of those two is really where the magic can occur. You began talking about this, but let's talk about it a little bit more. So, when you say that there are systems that cut across different problems like food and health and economic security, etc., and I know you structured your team to reflect that cross-cutting kind of view of things. But tell us a little bit more about that. And how is this different than what's usually done, and how does it affect the way your work gets carried out? So, big picture at the Kellogg Foundation, we envision a society where every child can thrive. But we know that there's too many kids and families that still can't access good food or quality childcare, or their parents can't find quality jobs because of inequities that are embedded in the policies and the practices and narratives that shape our systems. And so, having a multi-issue integrated grant making team, it's made us more effective by better understanding the points of intersection and collaboration across those bodies of work. So, our food systems program officers are in the same team, and they work closely with our program officers in early childhood and family economic security and health. And those collaborations strengthen the work in a variety of ways. We have experts in each of those areas, but because they're spending time with each other and working in the same team, they're exposed to, and they learn about each other's work and each other's worlds. And that creates powerful collaborations in the foundation, but more importantly, out in the field. And it helps us to see that we can't fix any of these systems, including food systems, with surface level or patch kinds of solutions. We really have to work together to get upstream and focus on policies, focus on practices, focus on resource flows and narratives that really sustain the inequities that we see. And so, the foundation partners with organizations to dismantle barriers in food systems in the other areas so that children and families can access quality food. But I think we also recognize that's about investing in people. And it's about investing in people over time to drive transformational change in any of these systems, including food. For people listening to this who aren't in the world of philanthropy or academics or science or policy they might be saying, "Well, this kind of makes common sense. Isn't this the way it's usually done?" And in fact, it's not usually done to have this cross-cutting work accomplished the way you're doing it. It's actually a pretty impressive thing. Yes, thank you. And I have a lot of respect for our philanthropic partners and peers, and we work very closely with a lot of large and small foundations. And I think the adage in philanthropy is you know one foundation you know one foundation. So, we do it this way and somebody else will do it differently. And I think there's a lot of connection for us back to our founder. You mentioned Will Keith Kellogg at the top of the call. He was ahead of his time in terms of understanding the interconnectedness between food and the land and opportunity and people's education. And a lot of that came out of his tradition as a Seventh Day Adventist. But also, I think just as a person coming up in the Depression and seeing what happened afterwards and really beginning to understand in his own community of how these things were sort of connected to one another. And so, for us, both inside and outside the foundation, systems change really means betting on people long term to reshape those systems from the outside in. But also, from the inside out. And that's really what we're striving for. You mentioned the history of Dr. Kellogg. The history of that family is so interesting, and what went on in, you know, the sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, and how the concept of breakfast cereals came about. And how the focus on natural foods was so important. It's worth spending a little time even on just Wikipedia to try to find out what that history is, because I find it fascinating. So, let's go back to food and go a little bit deeper and talk about what this systems approach looks like in practice. You're a philanthropic organization. You exist in the context of a capitalist society where businesses are out to do as well as they can. How is the foundation's work different from, say, funding a food pantry, launching a single nutrition program somewhere, which is what typically might be done? Yes, I think what we intend to do and how I think our systems approach is a little different from, say, you know, funding a single nutrition program, is that we mean to design and redesign practice and policy based on how kids and families actually live their lives. Right? So, where food and health and early childhood and family economic security show up together in a community, right? Families experience these things simultaneously in their everyday lives. They don't experience these things in silos. And so, we try to have our team and our work reflect that. So, instead of treating food as a narrow problem to fix with one program, we try to think about how the entire system around a child and their caregivers works or doesn't work and find those opportunities and levers to move that whole system. I'll give you a concrete example that will bring in our colleague Linda Jo Doctor, who you mentioned at the top of the conversation. Early in my time at the foundation, I was a reviewer for the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant. This was an Obama era competitive grant process for building early childhood systems in states. And the state of Vermont did something really interesting that I had the good fortune to review as part of that team. They included the quality of food and access to fresh, healthy food in childcare centers as part of their quality rating and improvement system for childcare. They didn't just talk about teacher quality or curriculum or reflective practice. They actually said, "If we care about child development, then what children are eating every day in those childcare centers is part of what quality means." That's a systems approach. They connected food policy and procurement directly into early childhood policy and practice so that nutrition and education and child wellbeing were all being advanced simultaneously. I brought that back to the foundation and brought it back to Linda. And we had a really great conversation about it, and then another, and then another, and then another. And that experience helped shape how I think and how many people think about our work at the foundation. And it led to things like the expansion of our Farm to Early Childhood work, which again, leans heavily on procurement as the strategy to drive systems change, but connects it into early childhood policy. Tell us about that. You know, the Vermont example you gave is a terrific one. And you talked about Farm to Early Childhood. What does that m

    28 min

  6. Apr 30

    E299: Culinary Medicine and connecting med students with patients

    I'm delighted today to be joined by Dr. Joseph Skelton, professor of Pediatrics, founder and director of Brenner Fit, a program at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. FIT stands for Families in Training, which is a family-based pediatric obesity program. He's the author of a new book on children and their weight, a topic we discussed in a separate podcast. But in this podcast, we're talking about something he teaches at Wake Forest, a course in culinary medicine. This is a fascinating, pioneering area of focus, so let's dig in. Interview Transcript There's a lot of language about medicine and nutrition now, so people talk about food as medicine. There's a move afoot to get more training and nutrition and medical education, and here you are doing culinary medicine. Tell me how all these things differ from one another. Our interest in this here at Wake Forest School Medicine started a little organically with our program. A lot of what we do is focus on family meals. There are decades of research showing the benefits of family meals, not only for the nutrition and obesity risk, but the quality of nutrition, time spent together, parent child communication. Kids are less likely to get pregnant or do drugs and alcohol. All these things from just spending that time together over the meal. And I inherited a small teaching kitchen that was at a local organization that someone before me had gotten funding for. And we, sort of, took it over and used this opportunity to teach families how to cook. And a lot of families know how to cook but trying foods in different ways and to get kids involved and things like that. Then a couple years after that, the local YMCA approached us. They had some space and wanted to do this as a partnership. So I became a fundraising machine for a year or two and took a lot of dinners to raise the funds. And we built this gorgeous teaching kitchen, and we were mainly doing it in the efforts of sort childhood obesity treatment or prevention, getting families, teaching them new recipes, which then kind of extended to that whole key thing of getting families just to be comfortable in the kitchen and spending that time together. And we just started seeing these amazing things. We always say we've converted more kids to Brussels sprouts than I think any other effort of just getting them cooking it a different way. You and I were both probably raised with steamed Brussels sprouts, which I think is an abomination. If you really want to highlight the sulfur smell of a food, then you're going to steam it. And so, we really started to do that. And then students started volunteering. Actually, it was a student, Josh Patman, he's an emergency medicine physician now at East Carolina University, and he was a cook in a professional kitchen college. And he said, hey, could I help volunteer with that? And then more student medical students wanted to do it. And then we all found that you, much like I did, I'm a self-taught cook myself, and the more time you spend in that, the more you learn, the more comfortable you are. And the more you start to know, you know, I can teach med students nutrition all day, but that doesn't teach them how to get nutrition on their patients' plates, into their mouth. And so it really grew from there. And then I, kind of, stumbled upon what other people were doing. It started in New York, but the biggest program started was really Tulane School of Medicine that had it as a very focused way about teaching nutrition through cooking. Not just on a blackboard through PowerPoint slides and stuff like that of like hey, let's teach it in a different way. And the old-fashioned analogy, and actually the medical educators hate this, it used to be see one, do one, teach one. That was sort of the old surgical thing. And so, it's really you got to see how to make a recipe and you got to do it yourself. And what we found that when students start then teaching each other, or teaching patients or teaching community members, it really drives home and gives them a much deeper understanding of what nutrition in the real world is. Let's talk about the need for this. If we go back in time and we think about your parents or my parents, you know, the likelihood is that meals were being prepared from the real foods rather than from a package, let's say, or in a micro. How are things different now for the modern parent that has kept people distanced from their food and where it comes from, and that's led families to be distant because they're not having meals together as much? What does that look like now? Yeah, pulling from our own history, you know, Home Ec is not really a thing anymore. We did this study in our own med students. You know, most of their cooking, nutrition, the nutrition education they're getting tends to be the popular media. They're learning it from social media. Very few students have a degree in nutrition or took a nutrition class. And as much as we have to cram into medical student's education, there's not much room for it. They mainly learn to cook from their families. And what we know is families are cooking less and less for multiple reasons. They're much busier. Especially parents, actually parents of kids of all ages with that. And again, the marketing of food, you know, it's much easier to get ready made meals. And I'm not badmouthing those, you know. We're in talks right now of actually writing a cookbook for families, and one of the things that we promise is we're going to have a chapter on assembled meals. You know, having a pre-made salad with a rotisserie chicken, that's still going to be a better thing to do if you bring that home, sit at a table or at a bar or around a coffee table and eat that meal together. It's still going to be better for your family in multiple ways on multiple levels than eating out. And what I see, it really with families right now when it comes to actually raising "healthy eaters" or raising good eaters is when we... and again, I love a good restaurant, I'm not trying to badmouth that... but when you're going out to eat a lot of kids have endless choices and there's two issues. One is a paradox of choice. Whatever they get, they're always going to think that other thing might have been better. And it doesn't allow them to spread their palate and try different foods and get exposed to different things. And we always laugh... whenever in this field we want to play a drinking game where every time you say complex or complexity, you take a drink because, but it is such a complex issue with parents. You know, with kids and getting meals on the table. And hopefully finding some time, whether it's a breakfast or it's a dinner, but finding that time to come together around a meal. You mentioned the paradox of choice. I was reminded at one point I downloaded this cute app called You Choose or something like that. And it would help you make a decision if you were undecided. It would flip a coin, it would roll a dice. It would do, yes, no, it would do rock, paper, scissors, it would do all these things. And I was at a restaurant once. I couldn't decide between two entrees, so I used it. I did rock, paper, scissors, or something, and I then it said, okay you should choose X. So I ordered X and the second I ordered it, I immediately thought I should have ordered Y. Alright, so tell us about culinary medicine. What does this course look like that you teach? Yeah, the best way to think about it is applied nutrition. Because again, you can understand a ton about nutrition, but if that doesn't change into you getting the foods that you want in front of you, to me it's almost theoretical or scientific. It's applied nutrition. It's this idea of teaching some very basic cooking skills, and then including within that very core elements of nutrition. And for us, we tend to do it by the balanced plate. We think that works really well for families. But having it be very real world. You know, so again, we have recipes... in two weeks, I'm doing one... we're doing a rotisserie chicken and you're breaking it apart and making a chicken salad out of it. We were always teaching using microwavable rice and a couple of the students cornered me and said, this is very offensive to my culture. You need to teach people how to make real rice. But what it looks like for us is about a quarter, almost a third of med students will rotate through these classes. So, it's voluntary. Next year we're actually hopefully going to surpass half of the first-year med school class. That's unbelievable. That's very impressive. Well, especially up until last year I was doing this in my free time and paying for it with fundraising money. But yeah, Wake Forest is really behind this now. But about a quarter to a third of med students. They do five classes. And it's set up and again, that sort of theme of that family meal. They come in and we get stuff cooking. We get stuff in the oven; we get stuff on the stove top. We usually take some time out for a very short lecture. Again, tends to be very practical stuff. We include a lot about social determinants of health and food insecurity. Given what I do, we talk about picky eating. Very little do we go into details about Mediterranean diet and Dash diet and some of the really core things with that. We really just try to keep it about getting that balanced plate of a protein, a starch and a fruit or vegetable on the plate in front of you. They come back and usually finish what they're cooking, and then they sit down to eat together. And unlike when I was in med school and you were in grad school, or when you were teaching, a lot of students don't go to class anymore. A lot of students, they record the lectures so they can listen to them at one and a quarter speed and study in the best way for them. I love getting to know my students on a different level of sitting down. And that's what my really own exposure to medical student education a

    20 min

  7. Apr 27

    E298: Your child is not their weight - a parent's guide

    So going back more than 30 years, I was involved in work on childhood obesity. It was a prevalent problem at the time, but little attention was being devoted to children and weight issues. And it was fair to say that the field, as it were, was an academic backwater. Little was known about short and long-term effects of childhood obesity. The social and emotional lives experienced by the children hadn't really been documented or studied much. There was very little known about treatment or strategies for parents, but thankfully, things are different now. Thanks in part to the work of a number of really innovative people in the field, and one of the most innovative is our guest today, Dr. Joseph Skelton. He's a professor of pediatrics and founder and director of Brenner Fit. FIT stands for Families in Training, which is the family-based pediatric obesity program at Wake Forest University School of Medicine. He's also editor of the Journal of Childhood Obesity is involved in clinical care, research, education, and community outreach. Dr. Skelton has just published what I think is a really important book through the American Academy of Pediatrics, entitled Your Child Is Not Their Weight: Parenting in a Size Obsessed World. I was asked to review the book and was delighted to see it before it was published and just was so happy to see that such a book existed at all, but such a good quality book at entering the picture. Really a very important advance in our field. Interview Transcript There have been some books about pediatric weight issues in the past. Who is this book for and how is it different than what's been out there? I feel overall the big audience for this book is any parent, especially of my generation, that were raised during some really toxic diet culture in the '70s, '80s, and '90s. And so, I think the main folks that that's for is that parent: I want my kids to eat healthy, to be active, to lead healthy lives. But I don't want them to become concerned about their weight to feed into our culture's focus on the ideal body image. I don't want to feed into that. But you know I do want to pay attention to the health habits. How can I do this in a healthy way? How can I focus on health habits with my kid that's not a focus on weight and do it in a way that's backed up by science. You know, that's what parents always want to know. Am I doing this right? Am I causing harm? And it is actually who the book is dedicated to, you know, all those parents that were raised in a toxic diet culture and want to do things differently with their children. So, in modern day America, what is life like for a child whose weight exceeds the standards that we know might be healthy, and for the parents who are raising those children? From personal experience and 20 years of running a program, as well as what the research shows, it can be kind of rough. Despite a lot of the advances that we've made around weight bias we're still in a place that kids are trying to live up to this idealized body image. And then they have all these toxic messages when it comes to nutrition and body image. I think it's rough. We know that kids in bigger bodies tend to have a lower quality life. They tend to have more symptoms of depression, anxiety; and it's because of this world that we live in. You mentioned messages that they might be getting from places like the media, but what are interactions like with peers and teachers and doctors and others in their lives that are affecting how they feel? Yes. So, the adults in their life were raised in that toxic culture. They're my generation and the generation behind me that was raised in that. You know, there's the myth that a smaller body is healthier than a bigger body. And I think we can't break away from that. And I think that still sort of comes through. We still see this as a lifestyle issue, and everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a thought of, you know, well, I did this... and I lowered my cholesterol... I did this and I lost weight, you need to do it too. And I think in the medical profession, because of a lack of understanding, a lack of training - I think that still occurs. I don't do a ton of medical education. I'm getting more and more into it, especially when it comes to areas around nutrition. But that's what I'm trying to avoid in the next generation of healthcare providers and even actually a lot of our community collaborators, teachers, and stuff like that. To get away from that. This is not a simple issue, so don't share advice because sometimes that advice can be damaging or could be wrong. You know, good lord how much I hear about carbs on a weekly basis. And not the carbs I like to talk about, which is around dessert and Carolina Gold rice and all these other food stuff. But it tends to be around sort of demonizing certain foods and just really bad messages that still are floating around out there. Let's dive in a little deeper about what you refer to as toxic diet culture that was especially pronounced in previous generations. What does that mean? Does it affect standards for what the ideal body looks like? What about messages about how much control you have over that yourself, and how responsible you are for your weight? How your self-image should be influenced by how you look? But tell us more about what you mean by that. We wanted this to be a book that didn't necessarily dwell on weight so much, but actually one of the first chapters is to say let's cover how complex weight really is. We know that 50% or more of someone's weight is heavily, heavily influenced by their genetics. Where they live, you know. The amount that our lifestyle affects that is much, much smaller. It's the minority of what goes into our body size. And even that, our habits are so influenced by the world around us. But it's, you know, trying to get people to understand that, hey, body sizes are just different. I love this picture from the Olympics and it was a medalist in gymnastics- it was Simone Biles; you know, the huge media personality of Ilona Maher who is a bronze medalist in rugby; and then one of the women's basketball players. You're talking 4'9", 5'10" and pure muscle and six foot seven, all people at the top of their game. And not only different heights, different body types. And, you know, body type is a hard thing to talk about because there's not standard body types. We're all just built differently. And starting that message at a young age that people are just oftentimes built differently. There's very little control that we have over our weight. And even though there are things that we can do about weight, what you can do is you can focus on your habits for health. And that has just gotten lost. We talk about in the book the, we call it veiled weight talk, and it's basically where you're just substituting the word health for the word weight. And kids pick up on that. They know when their parents and others are talking about weight. And so, a really big thing we want to accomplish is like, Hey, you know, eating for health is important. Being active for health is important. In my world, and I did one part of my early research in this, and we always try to have that message as there's so much more to health than weight. In our medical world right now, our primary outcome on these lifestyle changes that people are making is weight. You mentioned genetics as a contributing factor to who is affected by the problem. Tell me how you look at the food environment out there that people are exposed to now, and things like food marketing and the processing of foods. The availability of all these foods that are contributing to obesity and things. And the reason I ask is, you know, there was a time in our country when the prevalence of childhood obesity was probably close to zero. And there are plenty of countries around the world where that's still the case. But now in many countries there's large amounts of childhood obesity. And it's not as if the genetics have changed. When people move from other countries to the United States, their weight tends to go up. Their genes obviously don't change. There's something pretty toxic about the food environment that's driving this. So, thinking about things that way, does that help parents by shifting some of the blame from them and their children to an environment that they might be able to manage in some way? Absolutely. Because parents…they blame themselves oftentimes. You know, how did I let this happen? What did I do to sort of cause it happen and it's not. So, we do try to shift that of looking at ourselves as the reason blame. But you can kind of look at the - and I'm just going to focus on nutrition as the focus - the broader food environment and how that impacts. We tend to get a lot of buy-in or understanding when you talk about how they are trying to market to kids. And so, for any parent, all you have to do is bring up the checkout line at a grocery store, you know? And all the things that are at the kids' level that is just made to make your life as a parent hard when you're trying to feed your kids well-balanced regular meals but you're just kind of constantly walking through this landmine. It's the same thing with electronics and social media. There are so many things that they have a lot more money than you do to market to you than you do to protect yourself against it. And it absolutely influences it. And the way I talk about this is really when it comes down to snack foods, and using the parenting language that snacks get you between long periods of time between meals, but that got co-opted by companies marketing snack foods. And when you see food, smell food or hear about food, you kind of want that food. And that's what parents have every day to now the point is. Snacks always have to be crunchy, salty, and sweet, and we're supposed to give kids snacks when they ask for it, because that's what these companies tell us about hun

    31 min
  8. Behind the Scenes of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives

    Apr 14

    Behind the Scenes of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives

    It's the story of a guy on a road trip across the country, checking out America's classic greasy spoons. And the adventure is all about finding the restaurant owners and creative cooks serving up the very best of down-home style food. That's the premise of the hit series Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives starring everyman chef Guy Fieri. Today we're going to talk with the show's creator, two-time Emmy Award winning food journalist and executive producer David Page. Interview Transcript David, I can't wait to talk to you about the show. But before we dive in and talk about the specifics, how long did the show run and how many episodes were done? My impression it's still on and it's always been there. Yes. I created it in 2006, 2007. I did the first 11 seasons and moved on. And funny story, in the first month of the show we had a couple of strong initial outings. And everyone was all excited thinking maybe this will be a hit. A food network executive called me up to tamp down my expectations and said, look, this is all fine and dandy, but this thing isn't gonna go more than a season or two. There's just not that many restaurants. And you know, to quote the great screenwriter William Goldman whose rule of Hollywood is 'no one knows anything.' I did 11 seasons. It's now in season 40 or something, I think. Holy cow. I could just think of enough restaurants around me to do a couple of seasons worth. So, tell us the origin story. How did Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives come about? Well, I had left a career in network news and moved to the Twin Cities because I thought I wanted to be in business for a public corporation. And I took a job as the Senior Vice president at a home shopping channel, and I was all excited, and I hated it. It was just horrible. I did not want to sell second rate gold jewelry to shut ins. So, I quit, and I opened a production company and began to starve because I wasn't selling anything. Then I called Al Roker, who has a production company and who had technically worked for me, although stars don't work for executive producers in the real world. When I was the co-producer of the Weekend Editions of the Today Show. Al was on the weekend show at the time. He hadn't yet moved up to the big show. And I said, hey, Al, I'm starving. You got any work you could throw me? And he said, yeah, I'm doing a lot of stuff for the Food Network. I'll subcontract some of it to you. Which was good for both of us. I got to work, and Al got to take a cut without doing anything. So, that hooked me up with the Food Network. I started working for them and Al and I both knew I wasn't gonna get rich doing a pass-through deal, so I started pitching them directly. And I was getting nowhere. There was this very nice development exec who would talk to me on the phone. And everything I proposed she would shoot down. And one day I'm on the phone with her and we're going through a pitch call and I'm proposing this and proposing that, and she's saying, no, no, no. Finally, the Food Network had asked Al to do a documentary on diners and the history of diners and such. And Al had subcontracted it to me. So, this development exec had a frustration and I think pity for me and finally said to me on this call, don't you have another thing on diners? And I immediately, I said, oh, absolutely. I'm developing a show called Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. And I told her all about it. And this was like late on a Thursday or Friday afternoon. And she said, 'you know, that sounds good. We have a development meeting Tuesday. Get me a writeup on Monday.' And I got off the phone elated because it was the first time she'd expressed interest in anything. But also, I'd kind of put myself in a jam because I was not developing a show called that. I had literally pulled the title out of thin air. Or a body part, depending upon how scatological you want to get. And that gave me the weekend to try to put a pitch together. So, this was in the old days when you didn't email people, you called them. I did as much research as I could, and I started calling restaurants around the country. And on Monday I sent her a pitch for a one-hour special with, I think, it had seven restaurants in it. And, they had their meeting on Tuesday and here here's, you know, you get lucky. Guy Fieri had just won their second Food Network Star competition. Back then they naively believed that that contest was gonna generate them a new star every year. Someone who would be a big deal for it. In fact, Guy is the only one who ever made it and, when I'm drunk and immodest, I take a lot of credit for having taught him how to make it. But he has immense natural talent. Anyway, they wanted to make Guy a star. And they were trying to get a primetime show for him. And big deal, major league production companies had been asked to come up with proposals, which had not come back yet. They figured, what the hell, let's do a special with Guy just to keep on the air so people wouldn't forget about him. So, they picked up this special from me. It was gonna be a one-shot deal. We did it. I think they were kind of stunned by how well it did. And then something really great happened for me. They looked at the proposals from the big boys and didn't like them. And they were kind of stuck. They were desperate to get Guy on the air in prime time. So, they figured, well, you know, let's pick up a very short season of this thing. And they bought, I don't know if it was eight or 10 episodes, but they committed to that. And very quickly, we became a hit and off we went. It's an amazing story. So many people have seen so many episodes of that show. But nobody would have any idea that's how it got started. It's wonderful to hear about that. Once you got going and got your feet on the ground with this, what were you hoping to accomplish through this show? Well, look, TV's about storytelling. I've been a storyteller, hell, for 50 some odd years now as a mostly broadcast journalist. You learn, if you're any good, that the best stories come from and are about people. I conceive this not as a food show, but as an opportunity for the viewer to meet really cool, passionate people doing something they cared about. You know, independent restaurant owners make a buck 3.80 at best. They're passionate about making good food. If they're any good. They're often trying to keep family legacies alive. And more than anything else to succeed in the food biz you gotta wanna serve people. You gotta wanna make people happy. So, I went out to document the stories of some of the coolest people in America. Now, it was in the food world, which is a world of shared experience. We all eat. Most of us have favorite foods. Most of our favorite foods are the kinds of foods that I featured on Diners. TV is about one thing: hanging out with someone you want to hang out with. That's why Tom Selleck remains a star; whatever crappy TV show you put him in. That's why for your older audience, Tyne Daly kept getting series after series, or James Garner. There are just people you want to hang out with and that's all television is. Guy is someone people want to hang out with. His personality comes through the screen in a particular way. And you know, I said earlier, frankly or implied, that I taught him a lot about how to make TV. I did, but that's because at heart, he is the most naturally talented performer I've ever worked with in 50 years in the business. And was brilliantly able to soak up anything he learned along the way. I mean, it's like a chef. If you're a good chef, a better chef can make you better. But if you're not a good chef, you'll never be a good chef. To be good on TV, you have to have it. I can't define IT, but to quote the Supreme Court justice about pornography, I know it when I see it. And Guy has IT. So basically, this show put together people you wanted to hang out with and brought them into your living room or your bedroom or whatever room you watch in. The show is very compelling and you're right, you get to know the chefs, the restaurant owners in these little places, and there's something wonderfully wholesome about it. It's so good that you came up with this idea. You know, I was reminded as you were talking about a conversation you and I had when we first got to know each other by Zoom a few weeks ago. And I was mentioning I was going to do a self-guided drive called the Blues Triangle Tour. Starting in Memphis going down to Tupelo, over to Mussell Shoals, ending up in Nashville. And immediately you started telling me about places I needed to go. You said, oh, there's this wonderful place in Memphis. It's down an alley and down these stairs. Yeah, the rendezvous. Yes. They have the best Memphis dry rub ribs. I thought, oh my God, I'm, I can't tell you how grateful I am for that recommendation. Well, did you go? I'm going plan my trip around that. And then as I was reading your book, Food Americana, which we've discussed in a separate podcast, you mentioned the hot wings in Nashville. You mentioned former Mayor of Nashville, Bill Purcell, who was an inspiration for the hot wing festival they have there. Well, I happen to know him. And because our professional paths intersected around some health and wellness things, and he's a wonderful guy. So, you inspire me to get back in touch with him. You know, I wrote to him, I said, I'm going to be in Nashville. Let's go out for some hot wings. You know, at the place where they were invented. How wonderful is all this? Well, the story behind them is phenomenal. Apparently, the guy, Prince I guess was his last name... he was not a real faithful husband or boyfriend. I'm not sure if he was married to the woman. But he came in one night after gallivanting around and told his partner, told apparently, didn't ask, to make him some wings. And she was so teed off at him that she made them hotter than hell and he liked them. And you know, an industry is born. Or so the story goe

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About

The Leading Voices in Food podcast series features real people, scientists, farmers, policy experts and world leaders all working to improve our food system and food policy. You'll learn about issues across the food system spectrum such as food insecurity, obesity, agriculture, access and equity, food safety, food defense, and food policy. Produced by the Duke World Food Policy Center at wfpc.sanford.duke.edu.

Information

  • Creator
    Duke World Food Policy Center
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodes
    293
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Duke World Food Policy Center
  • Show Website
    The Leading Voices in Food

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