People don’t eat nutrients but foods. A simplistic, reductionist and outdated focus on nutrients obscures the reality of people’s diets and lifestyles on health and plays into the hands of the food industry suggests Dr Gyorgy Scrinis, Associate Professor of Food Politics and Policy in the School of Agriculture and Food, University of Melbourne. In this conversation he explores the reasons why the dominant way malnutrition is divided into three apparently separate types is unhelpful. He suggests it leads to a misguided focus on nutrients rather than the complex factors shaping people’s diets. He discusses the role of ultra processed foods promoted by major food industry players play in undermining people’s health and warns against the new focus on the gut microbiome succumbing to a nutrient reductionism.

It's time to talk foods and diets not nutrients and rethink malnutrition says Dr Gyorgy Scrinis

Prof Guliz Ger on changing consumption for sustainable societies

In this interview Nick Weir, one of the founders of the Open Food Network in the UK, explains what it is, how it works and why it matters for producers, citizens, a fair more resilient food future and greater food security.

The Open Food Network aims for shorter fairer more resilient supply chains - Nick Weir

Emile Frison is senior advisor to the Agroecology coalition, a recently founded group. In this interview he explains their aim to make agroecology mainstream in transforming food systems, the core principles that make agroecology a whole food system approach, how a study of a million Indian farmers shows this approach can improve both productivity and returns for farmers. He also discusses the push back from vested interests as more and more people recognise it as the way forward.

Coalition aims to Make Agroecology mainstream says Emile Frison

In these two talks Harriet first looks at food system transformation from the perspective of food regimes. She defines food regimes and their transitions, then discusses them since since the mid 19th century, and the current contradictions that may lead to a new regime. In her second talk, draws on the example of Southern Ontario. She discusses how in today’s rapidly urbanising world, food systems need to be reconfigured on afro-ecological grounds and reflect new urban, cosmopolitan realities.

2. From food regimes to embedding food in territories - the case of Southern Ontario, by H Friedmann

In these two talks Harriet first looks at food system transformation from the perspective of food regimes. She defines food regimes and their transitions, then discusses them since since the mid 19th century, and the current contradictions that may lead to a new regime. In her second talk, she draws on the example of Southern Ontario. She discusses how in today’s rapidly urbanising world, food systems need to be reconfigured on afro-ecological grounds and reflect new urban, cosmopolitan realities.

1. Food regimes and their transformation, by Harriet Friedmann

Malcolm Dando looks at the challenges of ensuring the potential of modern biotechnology is used for peaceful purposes and does not become a new weapon of war. - See more at: http://www.foodsystemsacademy.org.uk/audio/malcolm-dando.html#sthash.8vzXFtpt.dpuf

Biology and chemistry for peace not war - MalcolmDando

How do you regulate the food system? After a series of major food scandals in the UK in the 1980s and 90s, from salmonella in eggs to mad cow disease, the Food Standards Agency was set up a non-ministerial government department by Act of Parliament in 1999  “to protect public health from risks which may arise in connection with the consumption of food (including risks caused by the way in which it is produced or supplied) and otherwise to protect the interests of consumers in relation to food.”

With a primary focus on food safety and food crime, where the bulk of it’s resources go, it has had to deal with a number of scandals since then including horsemeat in ‘beef ‘ products and poor labeling of foods for sale leading to the deaths of food allergy sufferers. More recently it has had to deal with the fallout of Brexit on the UK food System and the Covid pandemic, amongst other things. In this wide-ranging conversation, Emily Miles, FSA* chief executive since 2019 reflects on these more recent challenges and more in this conversation before she leaves the FSA to return to work in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). She also discusses trade deals, gaps in the Agency’s remit over nutrition, the complex mix of bodies involved in food system regulation, the range of expertise used, conflicts of interest amongst experts, relations with other countries, how independent the FSA can be and her wish list for the future of the FSA.

Safeguarding Food Standards in the UK – Emily Miles, Chief Executive Officer, Food Standards Agency.

For almost 40 years Sheila Dillon has been a leading food journalist and broadcaster and the voice of BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme. Here she talks about what led her from working for glossy magazines in New York City, writing on feminism and women’s health, to a working life devoted, first in the US and then in the UK,  to bringing food journalism out of the features pages and leading the way in thinking of the food on our plates as a lens through which we can see our world more clearly.  As the citation that came with her honorary degree from City, University of London, said, her journalism has “changed the way we think about food.”  
In this conversation she talks about the differences she's found between the USA and the UK, the indifference to food amongst UK policy makers that was finally shaken by the mad cow debacle, and the current challenges within a food system that rests on the gross inequality that’s become embedded in the UK since the Thatcher era. She also talks about what’s hopeful…. a generation of young people who now aspire to farm and produce food, the rise of a network of quality food producers all over the country and our new interest in those European neighbours who value their own food cultures and live richer and healthier lives as a result.

Meet the UK broadcast journalist who "changed the way … we think about food" - Sheila Dillon

I’m talking with philosopher Dr Julian Baggini about the seven pillars of a food system he believes are needed, drawing on a wide range of examples discussed in his book 'How the World Eats: A Global Food Philosophy'. Despite the huge variations in diets, farming and food systems around the world he argues that holism, circularity, plurality, foodcentric, resourcefulness, compassionate and equitable must underlie a global philosophy of food.

How the World Eats: A Global Food Philospohy - a coversation with JulianBaggini

With more and more shocks likely to affect food systems this century the need for citizens and societies to be resilient when these shocks happen is urgent, argues Prof Tim Lang in 'Just in Case: narrowing the UK civil food resilience gap' a report for the UK's National Preparedness Commission. In a detailed and wide-ranging 383 page study, drawing on some 70 interviews with senior people across the food system, 10 country and various regional and local studies, he examines what resilience means, lessons to draw from what others are doing and how this can happen from local, community to national level and the importance of having food stocks and citizen engagement in creating resilience.

UK needs food and civil food resilence in face of coming shocks - Tim Lang

Around a third of people worldwide are malnourished in some way. That is not because the food system isn't working but because it is working and that's the result argues Stuart Gillespie in his very readable book Food Fight. In this conversation he discusses the enormous cost in human lives and financial damage the current food system is doing. To change this needs a radical transformation and addressing the power imbalances in the system  to achieve food justice for all now and for future generations. He looks at ways big food tries to prevent change and suggests a range of ways to change the system in a manifesto for transformation. 

Food Fight - From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet: Stuart Gillespie

In this worrying conversation Harriet Friedmann reflects on the probability that the world is in a 500 years transition in the food  regimes she talked about in the contribution to the Food Systems Academy. She emphasises that food regimes emerge from state power, that that power is changing, with existing rules and institutions that could enable a peaceful transition to a more ecologically sound regime either under threat or collapsing and the likelihood that regime change may come from wars. She posits the possibility that a peaceful change could come about from bottom up actions, not individual changes but such changes within a wider social ecological context. 

Food regimes, states and change by war or peaceful means - Harriet Friedmann

This is a recording of a talk with Q&A afterwards by Prof Robert Thomas, of Bedford and Addenbrooke’s Cambridge University Hospitals and Biological & Exercise Science, Coventry University given near Leeds on December 12th. There are links to a pdf of the accompanying powerpoint on my website at http://tansey.org.uk/food-health/prostate-cancer.html. You can read more about his work at www.cancernet.co.uk 


Lifestyle after prostate cancer: the facts - Prof Robert Thomas

This is an edited version of a wide-ranging interview with M S Swaminathan made during a visit to Chennai, India in 2009

An inteview with M S Swaminathan

Katherine Richardson, one of the core authors on the planetary boundaries initiative, explains just what these are and how livestock consumption affects our capacity to live within them. She is professor in biological oceanography at the University of Copenhagen and leader of the Sustainability Science Centre and was recorded at the Extinction and Livestock conference in London on October 5-6 2017.

Planetary boundaries, sustainability and livestock consumption - Katherine Richardson

An interview with Dr Charlie Clutterbuck, author of 'Bittersweet Brexit - The Future of Food, Farming, Land and Labour' in which he outlines the massive issues facing the UK in dealing with the 17,000 tariffs on food and agricultural products and why a redirection of subsidies from land to labour offers prospects for more food production in the UK

We need a big debate about #Brexit & #Food says author of BitterSweet Brexit

In the first of two interviews, Kazim Gurel, president and CEO of Kutas Food Group takes us on a tour of the world's biggest oregano processing facility in Izmir, Turkey. In the tour he describes the process by which herbs are cleaned and processed ready for use by other businesses, whether in consumer packages or by the food and catering industries.

Take a tour of the world's largest oregano processing plant with Kazim Gurel

In this second of two interviews, Kazim Gurel, president and CEO of Kutas Food Group discusses how the business started, what it does today, the challenges of  avoiding adulteration of products and various trends.

How Kutas Tarim became the world largest oregano processor - interview with CEO Kazim Gurel

Greg Garrett from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) talks to me at the Chatham House conference on a Sustainable Food Future about GAIN's work to help finance nutritious food businesses, especially in Africa.

Financing for nutrition businesses in the developing world - an interview with Greg Garrett

One of the world's leading experts on potatoes, Prof Anton Havercort, author of the 'Potato Handbook - Crop of the Future' discusses potatoes' importance in the world today and prospects for their future in the face of climate change and new genetic technologies.

Potatoes - crop of the future says Anton Haverkort

Joyce D'Silva, emeritus ambassador for Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), discusses how their work has developed over the years, its impact on how animals are kept and treated as sentient beings in this interview. She also discusses the health, climate change and the impacts of new approaches to eating are having and CIWF's work on supporting regenerative agriculture in which livestock are treated humanely.

Compassionate meat eating - less and better respecting sentient animals says Joyce D'Silva

Bob Orskov is a livestock researcher who’s worked with small farmers around the world for decades. He looks at farming holistically to help small farmers and travels extensively to promote sustainable, resource efficient farming systems.

Interview with Dr Bob Orskov

In her wide ranging book 'Sitopia: how food and save the world' Carolyn Steel aims to provide a tool with which to think as she says in this interview. She explains both the meaning of the term sitopia and the philosophical grounding of and why food is such a powerful lens to see society and what makes for a good life - and how using this lens shows a value system that is upside down.

Sitopia: how food can save the world - an interview with Carolyn Steel

Interview with University of Missouri's Bedford Farm supervisor.

Tim Reinbott on soils, weeds in GM crops, composting, diversity and more

What we eat and drink has a history. And when it comes to some ubiquitous things like sugar and coffee, as well as plantation-based commodities, slavery lies at the heart of that history. In this interview historian, professor James Walvin, discusses the role slavery has played in creating today's food systems.

Slavery lies behind today's diets says historian James Walvin

Curator, Food Systems Academy. Working for fair, healthy and sustainable food systems

Geoff Tansey

Popular tracks