Man Versus Food
Food may well be one of the fundamental necessities of life, but our relationship with it is threatening not just our own lives but that of the planet. Fortunately, Henry Dimbleby knows how to get us back in shape
The biggest cause of preventable disease in the developed world is diet-related. Food production leads to a third of global carbon emissions and is the biggest single cause of biodiversity collapse and water pollution. Your new book aims to give nothing less than the solutions to these problems. How do you have the answers?
HD: I was commissioned by the UK government to write a report on our food system. We started in late 2019. It was an incredible privilege because of the convenient power of government. If you have a problem, you could say, ‘Okay, who are the three best brains on this in the world?’ And within three days, you could get them on a Zoom call. To work out what is actually going on and learn how it can be changed is just fantastic. I loved it. But then Covid hit…
HD: It did. In my capacity as lead NED at DEFRA (1), I was on the task force charged with sorting out problems that lockdown brought to the food supply chain. We had a conference call every morning at 8.15am. It was incredible to see how the system changed so brilliantly in about three weeks. In the UK, we eat
30% of our calories out of the home. Children eat up to 50% of their calories at school. When lockdown began, wholesale foods were stuck in warehouses and we didn’t know if we could feed everyone. Then people started buying from the corner shop because no one wanted to go to big supermarkets. I saw that with huge intervention and common purpose, you can change the system, and quickly. After that, the National Food Strategy was published in two parts, in July 2020 and July 2021. My book is the result of being part of all this.
A more palatable version of the National Food Strategy, then?
HD: Yes. We need to change the ideas that people have about food and, in particular, the junk food cycle. So I explain why it is we’re getting so sick: our food kills more people every year than Covid did at its peak. And I also try to convey how destructive the food system is for the planet, because it’s hard to get your head around that. Don’t we need government input to make change at the macro level?
HD: We need both. It happened in Japan. We think the Japanese diet is naturally healthy, but it’s the result of state intervention (2). I’m hopeful that whichever government we get in the next election, they’ll act more decisively. I’m much more hopeful on the environment stuff – things are beginning to go in the right direction now – than I am on health, where I think everyone [in government] has almost completely given up in the face of the food lobby. I think it’s very grim. Do we need another Marcus Rashford to facilitate more change? HD: It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when you need someone like Marcus to do what he did (3), but the reality is that the political system now reacts to that kind of pressure. Part of writing the book was to say, ‘Look, we have an unspoken problem and we need more people speaking about it.’ Marcus Rashford is a deeply impressive man. He hosted a call with all these CEOs of supermarkets and he was so calm. He had an aura to him. And yes, we need more of that, particularly people with his background, who grew up on free school meals and are able to go back and describe what it was like.
Your book is optimistic but realistic. What can the people who read it – or this – do themselves to help get the planet into shape? HD: If you want to make a change, just look at where you are. A local market, food banks, meals on wheels, farms that sell to the public. Find like-minded people and help with what’s good and call out what’s not. If you’re involved with a school or an institution and it’s serving crap food, just say it. Look at what you can affect. Keep it local, because you’re more likely to continue doing it and you’ll get more out of it. But the most immediate thing someone can do is reduce their meat intake and eat more low-calorie-density, high-fibre foods. That means more unprocessed veg with your meals, basically. If you replace a third of your meat with legumes and eat less processed food, you’ll be much healthier and have a lower carbon footprint. If you can give up meat and processed food altogether, all the better.
Okay, we’re taking your lead. What’s for dinner? HD: The easiest, most delicious thing, which I do a lot at home, is a chickpea or broad bean curry. Get onions, garlic and ginger, fry those up, put in the chickpeas or beans. I have a lot of spices at home, but you can use ready-mixed. Tinned tomatoes and that’s basically it. I do think a lot about how we can eat less meat and one way is to force it out of your diet. I get six jars of beans and chickpeas delivered every fortnight, on subscription, so I have to use them.
Anyone coming for supper will likely be getting beans.
(1) Dimbleby has been a non-executive director at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs since 2018. (2) Japan teaches nutrition and provides school lunches up to age 16, tightly controls food industry competition and has mandatory annual measuring of waistlines for 40- to 74-year-olds. (3) In November 2020, the Man Utd and England striker forced the government to provide school meal vouchers for 1.7m children during school holidays.