Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food
303 Henry Dimbleby - From designing the National Food Strategy for England to starting a £50M fund focussed on food transition
A wide range conversation of almost two hours- second episode will follow soon- with Henry Dimbleby, founder of Bramble Partners, a venture capital firm, that invests in businesses seeking to improve food security. Before Bramble Partners, Henry co-founded Leon Restaurants and the Sustainable Restaurant Association and also served deep in the heart of the UK government as he was appointed lead non-executive board member of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
In this exchange we discuss everything from Donella Meadows in complex systems to what that means for all of us trying to influence these systems and policies and how you actually change policy. How it was to manage the COVID crisis from within the UK government, keeping food on the shelves of the supermarkets and local shops, and trying to drastically improve school meals and their accessibility for children living in poverty in the UK. Plus, a deep dive into the junk food cycle, the differences between ultra-processed food and junk food, and the crazy ultra-processed food addiction we all, or mostly, have fallen victim to. And finally, how eating lentils can change everything.
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Wow, wow. This is a marathon, and for a really good reason. We sit down for almost two hours, which, on the podcast, we cut in two parts. With Henry Dimbleby, who has not only founded a healthy fast food chain but also served deep in the heart of the UK government. We discuss everything from Donella Meadows on complex systems and what it means for all of us trying to influence these systems and policy, and how you actually change policy and how it was managing in the COVID crisis from within the UK government.
Speaker 1:Keeping food on the shelves in supermarkets and local shops and trying to drastically improve school meals and their accessibility for children living in poverty in the UK and there are many, and for many this is often the only warm and healthy meal they get a day. And a deep dive into the junk food cycle and the differences between ultra processed food and junk food and the crazy UPF, ultra-processed food addiction. We are all, or mostly have, fallen victim to Get a cup of tea and get ready for the marathon. This is the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast investing as if the planet mattered, where we talk to the pioneers in the regenerative food and agriculture space to learn more on how to put our money to work to regenerate soil, people, local communities and ecosystems, while making an appropriate and fair return. Why my focus on soil and regeneration? Because so many of the pressing issues we face today have their roots in how we treat our land and our sea, grow our food, what we eat, wear and consume, and it's time that we as investors big and small and consumers, start paying much more attention to the dirt slash, soil underneath our feet. To make it easy for fans to support our work, we launched our membership community and so many of you have joined us as a member. Thank you. If our work created value for you and if you have the means and only if you have the means consider joining us. Find out more on comradecom slash investing in RegenEgg that is, comradecom slash investing in RegenEgg or find the link below welcome to another interview today, for sure a full one. So let's see how far we get with the co-founder of the healthy fast food chain, leon, the co-author of the national food strategy in the uk, which was absolutely revolutionary but not completely implemented, and we'll get to that. The lead non-executive or the ex-lead non-executive director at DEFRA through Brexit negotiations, covid and the beginning of the Ukraine war.
Speaker 1:The author of Revenus and the co-founder and managing partner of Brembo Partners Welcome, henry. Thank you Good to be here, con, and you know that really, because you listen to our podcast. Thank you for that, by the way. Way, every now and then we start always with a personal question how do you spend? How did it come about? Did you spend most of your awake time, most of your awake hours, on focus on soil, food, the food system in this case, like? How did it lead to had to focus on on food and agriculture for most of the your your time awake?
Speaker 2:so I'd love to say it was, uh, it was a kind of planned thing. My, my, my oldest friend, uh, roly, who's just, he's actually just moved from the city to take a small holding on dartmoor, um, which he's rewilding. But, um, he said to me the other day, he said, henry, the, the, the, uh, the most interesting thing you've ever said to me. At this I was kind of, I, I perked up, I can't tell me how interesting I am. And then he said, is, stuff leads to stuff? And I was like, well, that's a bit disappointing, um, as a maxim, but actually that's so, I've followed my nose.
Speaker 2:So I studied at university of physics and philosophy. Uh, my mother was, I've always been quite interested in both kind of science and word. You know logic and word-based arguments. I, my mother was, I've always been quite interested in both kind of science and word. You know logic and word-based arguments. I, my mother, was a food writer. I loved food.
Speaker 2:My first job out of university, I, I didn't do the milk round, I went to. I met a chef, a michel star, who's a french chef, bruno lube, and he invited me to come and work in his restaurant. So I was a commie chef for a bit. I then at the time we had a family newspaper business in southwest London so I thought I need to. I need to find out how newspapers work. So I went to become a journalist.
Speaker 2:And then I thought I need to understand how business works. So I went to become a management consultant. And then I was out in Japan working in Japan and I realized that actually what I really loved was food. And I rang my Leon eventual Leon co-founder, john Vincent, and said you know, that business that we've been talking about, I'm going to leave this consultancy firm and go and set it up. And he said well, I'm going to do that too, I'll come with you. And then, through Leon, was a very it was essentially a selfish business. It was how can I, the customer, eat fast food that tastes really good but doesn't make me feel terrible and make me sick?
Speaker 1:And this was when, because now we're talking about it like it's a normal thing to say, but that wasn't in the day, because this is not two, three years ago yeah, this was 2004.
Speaker 2:We were actually started a bit early.
Speaker 1:I mean, we almost never didn't survive because we started too early but lesson learned for all startup founders momentum is, I would say, almost more important, or more important than than the idea and the team, because either you're just, you need wind in your sails, otherwise you're gonna have a very absolute momentum.
Speaker 2:Momentum is everything, um so. But then people started asking us, people started saying, like, because of the way we spoke, people started assuming we were organic or this, that and the other. And we started having to train the staff. Say, if you're asked, is it organic? You say no, it's not, because the easiest thing when there's a big queue is to say uh, yes, it is. And then we kind of got more and more into the supply chain and, um, and that kind of began to cause concerns. I was then by, uh, a guy called mark sainsbury, who actually also is a he's now a regenerative farmer and he's a keen listener to this podcast who introduced us shout out to him, yeah yeah, and so he was running a restaurant called morrow.
Speaker 2:At the time he was a chef and he was finding it incredibly difficult to run a restaurant which is a difficult thing and also do everything else, like you know, just trying to hire people, make sure the food is hot and tasty and you're not wasting food. And then, my God, I have to deal with all this sustainable stuff as well. I don't even know where to start. And so he said can you help me set up a not-for-profit sustainable restaurant association which will help restaurants, help people like you and me who are really struggling? Just at least do the basics. So we did that.
Speaker 2:Then I met at the time the secretary of state for education at someone's house and we talked a lot about as one does as one does, and we talked a lot about food and one does, yeah, as one does. And we talked a lot about food and school food and how it worked and why it was so bad. And he then contacted me and said look, you're managing to make relatively cheap good food in a restaurant. Could you help us do it in schools? So that was the first. He asked me to do a government review on school food, which I did with John, my co-founder, and that was the school food plan that led to, among other things, cookery being compulsory on the curriculum for everyone up to the age of 14. It led to universal free school meals for infants in this country, which is massive.
Speaker 1:Let's not forget that for many, many, many people in poverty and children poverty, that's the only proper meal, or even the only meal they a warm meal they get in a day in the uk. So let's, let's really let that sink in.
Speaker 2:It's also in my mind, I mean, might come on to this about change and theories of change, but in my mind, regulations really important, but cultural changes too. And any food system and any vision of a better food system has as part of it children and teachers eating together in school. Eating good food at school, kind of I don't think yeah, and cooking, and we do so. Funny enough, out of the back of that, I then uh, I tweeted about a chef the chef at my kid's school, uh, leaving today more than what to come be chef at my kid's school. An amazing woman called nicole pizzani got in touch, who at the time was the head chef at yotta motolenghi's high-end restaurant Nopi Not bad and she said I'll come and do it, because I'm fed up with cooking for all these rich people.
Speaker 2:I want to cook in a school and she did. And she did it over about three years. We worked out how you do it because it's tough. Anyone who's a parent knows that cooking good food for children and getting them to eat it is not easy. She worked out how to do it. We set up a charity chefs in schools. We now help schools transform their cookery and their food education.
Speaker 2:And then still on this kind of random walk you know, I was still just following my nose thing, thing I then was asked by the same secretary of state who asked me to do the school food work, but seven years later to do the national food strategy. So he said, look, we've got to. I have put into place the beginnings of a regulation that will start paying people in the UK, post Brexit, to farmers to produce public goods, restore nature, sequester biodiversity, rather than paying straightforward subsidies for food. But I am being attacked from all sides by farmers saying you know, we can't eat butterflies. By health campaigners saying what about health. By poverty campaigners saying what about food security? We need something holistic. So I was then asked to create the National Food Strategy. We need something holistic.
Speaker 2:So that I was then asked to create the national food strategy, um, uh, which was, you know, a two-year piece of work. We had I had a team of 20, we had a budget for consultants, we did, uh, citizens dialogues all over the country. It was a massive piece of work and, funny enough, that was where that it wasn't until then that it really cemented my kind of the urgency that I felt for transforming the food system. And I I kind of sometimes I remember my wife after our first son, george, who's now 16. His birth was pretty medieval, you know. It was a long labor in two places, ended up in hospital. In hospital, funnily enough, all they could give her after this 24-hour labor was a Chorley Wood white sliced bread. So I then broke her out of my way.
Speaker 1:And if she doesn't, let's say, the food in the hospitals in Italy is probably okay-ish, but it's not the best thing in there and like after in general, probably together with children, that's the place where you need the best food, the most nourishing, the most, because you just went through I don't know many hours of basically running 10 marathons at the same time and then you get that to recover like that's not gonna fly, that's not gonna go.
Speaker 2:No, I had to sign a waiver saying I accept that I'm taking her out, you know, and I take the risk anyway. Did you smuggle food or not? Did you smuggle? Funny enough, a friend of mine was, uh, was was cooking, had started pop-up cook at the at a pub nearby, so she cooked us food. But I couldn't lean on her too much, uh, and so I broke her out pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:But anyway, after that I remember going for a walk with my wife, uh, in the local park. It was a beautiful spring day and everyone's just like wandering around with their children. It's all very calm. And she was like how can these people all just be wandering around when they know what happens to women in labor? Like how can they? And she were like I want, when they know what happens to women in labor, like how can they? She was like I want to scream. I want to go up to people and say, don't you know what's happening, like this is what the world's like. And, funnily enough, the food strategy did that to me. It really radicalized me on the food system, like when you look at it for two years and you think, oh my God, this is the biggest cause of biodiversity collapse.
Speaker 1:It's the biggest, but you knew that before as well.
Speaker 2:Like I'm not, I don't think yeah, but there's something about why did there's something why did it?
Speaker 2:because I think there's something about when you, when you were looking at it for two years and during that period we had the glasgow cop, uh, and the glasgow cop was the biodiversity cop and food obviously is the biggest cause of biodiversity collapse, and food wasn't at the Glasgow COP, it was on the edges, it wasn't in the centre. So you're basically saying doing it for two years made me think, why is no one talking about this is insane, like this is like literally, as a society, this is willful blindness of an absolutely extreme nature and so that, really, that was.
Speaker 2:You know it's a long answer to your first question, which is how I, you know how I got into this, which is basically I was like you know it was. I was like someone on a uh, you know, going out in to a bar and every so often I'd see a another interesting bar across the street and I'd go there and I'd go there. I followed my nose and I ended up suddenly thinking, actually, well, this is the most important thing and this is what I've got to spend my time, my time doing. I think it also helps being, you know, at the start of it, uh, I think, being a chef loving food, loving cooking. You know, like, outside work, the thing I enjoy doing more than anything else is cooking for friends. So, uh, you know, I think that helps as well, the kind of it being not just a, an academic love, but actually a passion as well.
Speaker 1:I think it has to because otherwise you wouldn't start a lay on. If you just saw the opportunity for, for a healthy or a healthy fast food, you wouldn't do that in 2004. First of all, and and second, like how can you claim things are tasty if you don't like food yourself? Like how can you? And and for a food strategy or school plans as well. Like how do you school meals, how do you change that if you're not interested yourself, like intimately in food and in the food strategy was really focused, obviously because it was commissioned by the government and meant to be implemented. It was a very concrete and in the book as well.
Speaker 1:I definitely highly recommend the book. You turned the strategy into. After it wasn't implemented, it became a book. It's very concrete, very, um, very easy read or very it's. There's a lot of data, of course, etc. But there's not a data overload. But then how soon did you figure out that this wasn't going to be, uh, the the strategy? It was going to be another nice plan, uh, really well written, well documented, well researched and and unfortunately, not fully implemented. I think there are few things that were, but just not at the urgency level that you felt wasn't felt like when you delivered it.
Speaker 2:So I knew when I did it that that was likely. When I took it on I knew that that was likely to be the case. So with the school food plan funnily enough with the Secretary of State who commissioned it, michael Gove school food plan funny enough with the secretary of state who commissioned it, michael gove we said to him we will only do it if you publish it as a plan, not as recommendations. Uh, so you have to. We're going to negotiate, before it gets published, on all of the recommendations and you're going to say these are policy. And he agreed and he did that and he was true to his word. With the national food strategy, it was clear that that wasn't going to be possible. It was too big. You would have to have negotiations with all the different government departments and the prime ministers and the prime minister and you know, while I was doing it, I served under five secretaries of state for environment, food and rural affairs and four prime ministers- yeah, because I was going to ask you.
Speaker 1:You said the same person seven years later was like that's quite, that's a long shot. But after that they changed, like the last few years.
Speaker 2:I said to him when I started look, you're not going to be here when we publish this, you'll be somewhere else. And so I very consciously thought about doing two things with the strategy. One is you create a story, a framework, because policy happens in a very haphazard, tactical way. You never really know Someone will campaign for something, the pressure will build and it'll happen. But you need to provide a framework so that, when the time comes for politicians to intervene, they have something ready made that they can go to. And so that story was actually in my mind, maybe even more important than the specific policies, when we, when we did it, yeah, and funnily enough, when, when we published it, my wife uh, who's a journalist, who had jemima lewis, who'd um, who had helped behind the scenes edit it, the food strategy said look, no one is going to read a government document online. We've got to turn this into a book, and so that's, we wrote the book together and that's, and we wrote it so that our 16 year old son could understand it. So that was the first kind of piece was the story and those kind of big concepts, so the junk food cycle, the invisibility of nature, the three compartment model, those kind of big concepts that we were establishing. And then, secondly, there were there were policies. There's like a list of policies now.
Speaker 2:Now, actually, I think the government on the environmental side, although some of it they're doing quite silently, are doing most of the on the on the environmental side, although some of it they're doing quite silently, are doing most of the on the on the farming side, slowly, surely they're doing most of the policies there. I think the I've spoken to the labour government. People are coming, probably coming in to power this year, and I think that has, that will be, that will continue. They're not doing anything on health. They've gone backwards on health. So I kind of I knew people kind of look at me slightly sadly sometimes and say, oh, poor you, you know you did all this work and I'm like, no, no, I knew that, I knew that was what I. I've done it before. I knew that's what I got in for and I was in it for the long term.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, and we'll get to those pieces, uh, in bit. What do you think is needed? Because you write somewhere in the book as well, like government will act at some point. The question is how much of a mess will be in when they do. When they see the immense health care costs, the immense environmental costs of the current food system, what will be? What is needed? Or have you seen that within government as well, like to to land this urgency to really spark that? Like this is an absolute car, like a train crash waiting to happen and we're driving right into it and we're not doing anything. We're focusing on other stuff. What would be needed We've seen it with pesticides, for instance.
Speaker 1:We had an interview a long time ago or a while ago be needed. We've seen it with pesticides, for instance. We had an interview a long time ago or a while ago and and like, pesticide regulation doesn't really happen very well because of very strong lobbying powers, etc. Etc. And in japan they managed to pass some very strict ones because they tested the palimitarians on pesticide residue. They like to care, they asked them, they took care, they researched that and and specifically, they asked also to test the children of them and once they did that? Suddenly people. It hit home because they noticed that you had quite a bit of exposure to to certain, certain pesticides and herbicides. And what do you think is needed to in the uk? You can only speak, obviously, for the uk, but also other governments, to land that urgency, to have that awakening moment. They're not going to spend two years, like you did, to go deep plus the whole journey yet before so interesting I was.
Speaker 2:I was for for a similar thing. I was tested. I had my hair and blood tested a few weeks back for for pesticide revenues. I'm I'm absolutely riddled with them. Um. So that's that campaign is starting here in the uk, I think in a few weeks time. Um so all right.
Speaker 1:What is it? If you look at…. Sorry, one step back. How does it make you feel?
Speaker 2:it was weird because they said we know this is like, we know we're going to find it and I think it's just like. It makes me feel, I think we're kind of. It's like also the fact my body's full of microplastics. It's just like and I think that we're going, you know, down the line and I talk about this a bit in the book about UPS ultra processed food versus versus junk food and that kind of how you think about the difference. I think down the line with the improvement in computing power, which is going to enable us to understand complex systems more and more, and you know, in a way that we really don't today, I think we will see that so many of the things that beset us, from depression to inflammation to, are going to be caused by these micro pollutants. Um, and I try not to think about it too much personally, to be honest, no, no, otherwise it makes me feel sad. Yeah, it's sad. You, you for sure cook mostly from scratch.
Speaker 1:You, you eat, you try to eat almost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I cook and still and still and still I cook. No process. Hardly the most processed food that I cook will be a tin of mussels, or maybe a sriracha sauce, probably occasionally, that's, I think cattery too, of the ultra-processed level, I think probably the sriracha you could probably argue is ultra-processed, but I now make my own. I make my own kimchi, I make my own. Anyway, going back to the government piece, I interrupted you on the pesticide.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the question is, what do you need to do it? So I think what will happen? The only way this happens is it gets worse and worse, and then there are specific political moments, like the one you described in Japan, that happen to cut through. I don't think you can know in advance what those moments are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we don't know.
Speaker 2:So, to give you an example, with the food strategy we published a part one during COVID about food poverty which had some recommendations on food poverty. I sent that to a wonderful man called Ed Woodward who at the time was the CEO of Manchester United.
Speaker 2:The football team and the Manchester United striker, marcus Rashford, had been doing some campaigning on food poverty and I said could you give this to Marcus? I think he'd be interested in reading it. I expected to hear nothing and then after the summer that year, marcus Rashford's team got in touch and said Ashford's team got in touch and said Marcus wants to campaign for your recommendations because he thinks it's really important. He grew up in a on free school meals, he understands the importance of food and then so he did that. We did a kind of campaign together. Pressure built, pressure built, and in the October of that year the UK government agreed that there would be permanently free school meals and activities available for all children on free school meals during the holidays in the UK. So like there's no way that I could have known that would happen, but it did so in the, in the background.
Speaker 2:When I talk about the kind of things getting worse, I think that that is what do I mean by that. I think it's inevitable. So if you take, for example, climate change, this uh winter has been a real wake up call farmers, I think. I think that farmers had been a group, if you go back historically, who were probably a bit more climate change, you know, skeptical than other groups. But when you're looking out of your window and you're seeing that half your farm's been underwater for for you know, for three, four months, that's pretty hard to do. And then you think at the moment, in the UK, agriculture is responsible for about 12% of greenhouse gas emissions. By 2030, the government estimates that agriculture is going to be responsible for 50% of our emissions because it's the only sector of the economy that is not reducing its emissions. So, as uh, as um, energy and transport reduce, the kind of focus on agriculture is only going to increase. That will happen with biodiversity as we get better at measuring it. So I think we'll have this combination of, like the, the red light on the dashboard is going to be combination of, like the, the red light on the dashboard is going to be bleeping, it's going to be flashing louder and louder and louder, and that will lead at some point to, to, to moments which, um, which will require, will lead to policy intervention.
Speaker 2:And I want to say just one more thing about europe at the moment, because a lot of people say you know, farmer right, farmer protests in Europe. You know, when we were in Brussels together, rfsi, the farmers were in good good spirits, burning tires up the road and and generally, you know, causing merry mayhem and people say, oh yeah, everything is being pulled back on. This is a disaster, this is the end of the environmental transition on food and actually I want to. I don't believe that's the case. If you look at the specifics of what those farming protests have been about, they've actually individual cases.
Speaker 2:There's been quite a lot of bad legislation done with good intentions. So the flashpoints whether it's putting tax on red diesel, on farmer diesel in Germany, or force purchasing Dutch dairy farms and closing them down or not, not creating a land use framework in Wales and saying instead that all farmers need to plant 10% of their farms with trees, regardless of what kind of soil they're on those are all kind of really unnecessary agitants in, you know, unnecessary kind of clumsy moves in the name of doing the right thing. And so I actually think we're in a just a little period and if you look at what's kind of been pulled back on in Europe, there is some important stuff, but I think it's like much more like, you know, a step back to to to better to jump. There's that French expression isn't there. I can't remember. I can't remember you stepped back. You worked in a French restaurant. I expression isn't there.
Speaker 1:I can't remember uh formula, so t I can't remember. Step you, step back. You worked in a french restaurant, I didn't.
Speaker 2:I don't know yeah, so I I am actually think that the tide is going in the right direction.
Speaker 2:I think on health that's not necessarily the case so I think on health it's quite possible that we, that we end up drugging our way out of the problem and I, well, we've maybe come on to health. I don't know, but I but just to say I was speaking to a um to an american consultant the other day and he with big clients in the states and he was reflecting on the three groups who were interested in the health food transition. He said that the fast-moving consumer good companies are absolutely terrified. They've seen the effect of semaglutide, wogovia, zempic on sales of their junk food.
Speaker 1:That's just that that's the, the weight loss drug appetite suppressant from denmark mostly right, it's no exactly at the moment.
Speaker 2:But there are novenaulis, but there are now, which is now the most valuable company in europe, but but there are five or six different. So they've seen already that. So we're making a transition to health. They've seen that simple like they've already seen the decline in wow. Yeah, they've seen the decline in sales. Wait for it. They've. They've tried. They've tried everything. They've tried pricing. It doesn't work. You know, these people aren't hungry. You can't sell them the stuff, so they make them angry to begin with with their junk, with their ultra process?
Speaker 1:yeah, but we'll get to that, yeah yeah, so they are terrified.
Speaker 2:the drugs companies are absolutely licking their lips. They're like this is going to be absolutely also. Literally, the drugs companies think they're going to see the profits that the fast-moving consumer goods companies used to make move across to them, and the only people who are serious in the private sector, who are seriously worried about it are the insurers, because the insurers, if the fast-moving consumer goods companies win, have to pay their health bills and if the drug companies win, they have to pay for the drugs. So the only people in the States who are thinking about how do we change the system, how do we actually get cheaper medicine, are the insurance companies.
Speaker 1:Wow, ok. Ok, so we let's say I'm speaking for the sector, which I don't, but definitely our friends are maybe partly the fast moving consumer goods that are trying to figure out what to sell, but mostly the insurance that either way are going to pick up the bill. And if we can show prevention is cheaper than and prevention is done with real, healthy food, that might be an interesting combination, because these pharma companies, the medicine companies, are not going to sell this cheaply. I think there's no way. If they have gold, they will make sure you pay for it.
Speaker 2:I think it's not just the cost as well. So I think over time, competition will kick in.
Speaker 1:But you mentioned your book prices which were interesting, let's say. I mean, it's really the happy few. These are not cheap prices.
Speaker 2:You can't get a hold of the drugs that were originally to modify insulin for diabetics and there are shortages for those. At the moment we're at the peak of the price, but they will come down. But talking to kind of the doctors in this space, the problem is not the price. The problem is these drugs, effectively, are replicating. It's a bit funny enough that it's a bit like the Green Revolution. So it's a bit like. You know, you take a complex system and you hack it with nitrogen and pesticides and in the short term you get huge yields, but you build up other problems and these drugs are doing exactly the same. They're going into an incredibly complex system of hormones that regulate our bodies and they are replicating one hormone not always the same In the case of semaglutide it's GLP-1, and overriding one bit of the system and overriding one bit of the system. But these hormones have evolved through random mutation and selection and every hormone in our body plays multiple roles. We don't even understand half of what they do.
Speaker 1:Are you saying that we oversimplified the world?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for me there's a real parallel on the health side with what happened in the Green Revolution on the nature side, on the green revolution piece especially, I think it was rice and weed in india and the level of arsenic and the level and the low level of nutrients now in um in the rice crops, etc.
Speaker 1:It's, it's. There are a lot of consequences when you hack a system to its simple form and it might take 60 years, it might take 10 years, it might take five, we don't know um, but this has been experimented such a large scale now and it's doing magic like let's. Let's be honest, like people that couldn't lose weight until now. We've tried everything under the sun and it works, like it really works.
Speaker 2:So let's not underestimate that, no, and so I say I I am not. You know I I am not a purist. So for me, if you have an evolved we all know that 70 percent of of weight is to do with appetite uh, evolved appetite genetics. You can track it through genes. And if you have genes that give you a propensity to react badly to the system and you've got a bmi of over 40 and all your life you've been absolutely miserable and it's affected your mental health. These drugs are fantastic, you know, and I would not. I would suggest if you're in that situation it's worth talking to your doctor about, because it's just. I know people who've been on them and it's completely changed their lives. But they are not the solution. They're not the long-term solution to the to the overall problem of the food system.
Speaker 1:We need simultaneously to to change the system and so we can spend a lot more time on the health side in the junk food cycle. But I know we're also going to cover that in a future interview with an interview made with, with chris, who wrote um, the ultra processed people book, um, and maybe other interviews in that space. But just to to introduce the junk food cycle and why there's a difference and why, why we keep eating what, what we shouldn't be eating or what isn't good for us, like in. Why is the junk food cycle so important and why is it until now? It seems like we have an inflection point, probably also mainly in the uk because of this book, um, but at other places as well. But why until now we we just didn't talk about the junk food cycle enough, especially in governmental like it needs regulation in governmental regions yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think it's worth just yeah. So let me answer that question. I think first of all you have to. Why did we? We use these two phrases, the junk food cycle and the invisibility of nature, and that was driven by the work of jay forrester, danella meadows at mit in the 50s, this creation of system, but the system dynamics, and I was introduced to that by a man called ian boyd who was the chief scientific officer at death at the time. He is a bi, he's a biologist. He looks at energy transfer in complex systems. So literally he looks at how photons come from the sun and then get moved about between animals and plants in biological systems.
Speaker 1:And mycelium. Let's not forget the fungi, sorry.
Speaker 2:And fungi and all the other.
Speaker 1:Otherwise I get emails. There are three Fs Flora, fauna, fungi.
Speaker 2:And all the other things in between. Because you know, again, we're we're foolish to think that there are distinct uh barriers between these various different life life forms. Um, so, so he does that and he said look, the one of the few forms of science that's come from business into biology is this study of system dynamics, because what you notice with complex systems is in any walk of life, the mathematics of them are similar and they break down in similar ways. And what you need to do, rather than just saying oh my god, this is really complicated, you need to identify the, the feedback loops that are going wrong. And in the food system, luckily, there are two feedback loops that are going so badly wrong that we concluded that any policy effort has to try and fix those.
Speaker 2:One was the junk food cycle, and this is the fact that we haven't uh, and this is, you know, you can look at the science of this.
Speaker 2:We have an appetite that evolved a long time ago, at a time when foods were scarce, and we get a disproportionate amount of pleasure from eating foods that are high in sugar, salt, fat. You know, we, our body, wants us to go out and climb the tree to get the honey, to get the beehive down and get stings. It wants us to go out and climb the tree to get the honey, to get the beehive down and get stings. It wants us to go out and risk life and limb to to kill an animal that's got fat on it, because that is the nutritious stuff and that would give us competitive advantage. And when those foods are a two, largely two things that are only really the case in modern foods now. One is low in water, calorie dense, because most ultra processed food has got a lot of the water taken out of it. The other is low and insoluble fiber. They fill us up less. We eat more and uh, uh and food companies know this we eat more and that's where you spend more money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, they spent more and more money on and we eat more, and that's where you spend more money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, they spent more and more money on. And we eat more, they spend more, we get sick. You know, 85 of the of the products produced by the big, fast-moving consumer companies are too unhealthy to market to children. In the uk we spend 2.2 billion pounds a year on fresh fruit and veg and 3.9 billion pounds a year on confectionery on sweets, which is one. So this stuff has completely overtaken the food system.
Speaker 1:It's like and it hacked our system. Like it's made with ingredients. It was already before, but even the last 10, 20 years, like the food science and the palatability and the breaking, and we'll get into that when we have chris like it's so well engineered to like it's not you. You cannot stop eating this because it's engineered to make you fill you up completely.
Speaker 2:And particularly with certain genes. So if you are someone who is naturally doesn't, you just have to imagine what you feel like when you haven't eaten for a day, and that is how someone with different genes might feel if they're eating that kind of food after a few hours. So you can't. It's a drug.
Speaker 1:And we shouldn't stigmatize. I think there's a very important piece there, like obese et cetera, which is now 60% of the US. It's not their fault.
Speaker 2:But, interestingly, what I think is interesting about. So we use the word junk food cycle to describe this. It's what's known in system dynamics terms as an escalating feedback loop. Like you shout, I shout louder, you shout, I shout louder and we end up just yelling our heads off at each other and that's what's gone on. This escalating feedback loop means the food system is almost completely dominated by this stuff. But we talked about ultra processed food in the food strategy. But we use the term junk food cycle because the cycle reflected the feedback loop.
Speaker 2:But what I think is interesting about ultra processed food, the framing of it, is that junk food is in our cultures, is kind of a a slightly guilty treat. It's a naughty little thing. Let's have a cheeky McDonald's and so we feel well, it's our fault because junk food and we love it and all. We're a bit naughty, but you know, let's do it. Ultra processed food yeah, although the mechanisms are the same as I've just described reveals, I think, a fundamental political truth or kind of framing truth, which is it's not a cheeky thing, it is the system, it is the man fucking with you, it is those big companies for the profit motive, destroying the health of large swathes of society, and that's why I think the process is really cut through, because it's no longer uh, oh, it's cheeky junk food. It's oh, my god, this is what these people are are doing to us, and that's why I think we were talking we're talking earlier on about eddie abu. Who's this People?
Speaker 1:are going to be bored because I keep bringing him up in like every interview now. But you made me discover Eddie. Talk about Eddie.
Speaker 2:I introduced you to Eddie Abu, and actually I was introduced to him by Chris Van Tulleken, who wrote Ultra Processed People, and he's basically he's this weightlifter, formal bodybuilder, and all he does is he goes on his Instagram and it's just so obviously true. So the one one of the ones I love most is where he goes down with his camera in a supermarket along an aisle of Mother's Day chocolates. That goes on for meters and meters of Mother's Day chocolates and he's like guys, why are you giving this to your mother for Mother's Day? You're trying to kill her. You know, you're trying to get your. Are you trying to to your mother for Mother's Day? Are you trying to kill her? You know you're trying to get your. Are you trying to get your inheritance early? You know? And then he goes like this is shit. And then he always turns on the camera and goes wake the fuck up.
Speaker 2:And I do think that what people like Chris and Eddie Abu and Tim Spector have done is like it's just like wake up. This is just, this is nuts, is like it's just like wake up. This is just, this is nuts and this is the system messing with us. And so I think that is. That is what I think. You know, the the mechanism is the junk food cycle, the mechanism and escalating feedback loop, but the from a framing point of view, I think is it a better word?
Speaker 1:yeah, would you change the?
Speaker 2:actually, and it's not just, it's not just the UK now. So I was talking, I had I had dinner the other day with a Spanish friend who is the president of a big Spanish food company and they are trying and it's privately owned, but it's big, billions of euros, and they are moving all of that, moving because they can, because they're privately owned, they've got like a five-year, ten-year program to move all of their food away so it's not ultra processed and move into different categories. And he says in spain it's absolutely cut through as well, this idea of ultra processed food, so it's not just is this a moment?
Speaker 1:okay, this is a moment. It's a moment. I think it's a moment. It's one of the things we discussed previously, like with the pesticide law in Japan. Like, is this one of those?
Speaker 2:Exactly, Is it a moment, we don't know. Like everyone thought that COVID would be a moment and then it wasn't and we were all like we can change. This is like you know. We've interfered. We're all interfering at all. Normally this is like this is this is the moment and then it wasn't the moment, you know, and then it's just like we all forgot about it let's talk about it, because you were in that weird fever.
Speaker 1:Dream this memory of the time when we were all locked up but you were in that in that control room almost during covid, because you were non-executive director of defra and you were on these morning calls at 8 30 with the whole food system in the uk to try to keep supermarket shelves open and and food to hospital workers and things like that. How, how was it being in that? And then when did you see that that moment wasn't a moment?
Speaker 2:so I remember it. So so this was so we still I remember going into sitting and observing cobra meetings, which was the kind of the, the, the center of government that was running the covert response in february. Um, I actually thought in february I realized now I caught covid because I got. I got uh, got in February 2, because I got tested and I had the antibodies before I had the vaccine. But at the time in February all my lymph nodes swelled up and we were talking about COVID coming over.
Speaker 1:It's 2020,. Yeah, for the history, yeah, 2020.
Speaker 2:And we now know. It was in the center of government and my lymph nodes swelled up so much that the doctor thought I might have cancer. And I went to have an emergency biopsy and I didn't have a cancer. And the doctor said it's weird, I don't know, it must be some weird virus, and that was February. So we were talking about it, but it wasn't real to us then. So, anyway, so we were kind of talking about COVID, but it wasn't real to us then. So, anyway, so we were kind of talking about COVID but it wasn't real. Like we were living in this kind of slight fantasy land. Richard Pennycook, who was another lead non-exec in government and who had been the CEO of the co-op supermarkets, and he texted me and said Henry, just with your DEFRA hat on, do we know that if we went into lockdown that we would be able to feed everyone in the UK?
Speaker 1:Good question, very good question uk.
Speaker 2:Good question, very good question. So I then texted the our permanent secretary, tamara finkelstein, another amazing woman who, like when the behind the scenes story of covid is written, she will be one of the great heroes. And I said tomorrow I just got this question do we know? And she was like no, I'm not sure we do. And at that point it was like no, I'm not sure we do. And at that point I was like, well, do you think we should? Yeah, I think we probably should.
Speaker 1:So then, with Richard's help, just in case we're going to close everything. Just like in the rare two weeks. Three weeks later, everything was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly it was. It was two, three weeks after this, but it seemed like unimaginable.
Speaker 1:I remember we were talking with and one of our we still make fun of that one of our cousins or aunts was like, yeah, but I don't know, the school trip with children. This was in february or end of january and we were like, of course it's gonna happen, but it's there. This was in italy, and northern italy was already very clear that stuff wasn't, but it was like, oh, sort of contained. Of course it wasn't in a few villages. And we're like, of course this school trip is gonna happen, don't. And we're like, of course this school trip is going to happen, don't worry. And we're like, oh, you're panicking, you're panicking. And then two weeks later the whole country was in lockdown.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so anyway. So we then, richard, recommended a kind of industry veteran called Chris Tyus, who was a stalwart throughout this process, and there was a senior civil servant called David Kennedy who was an absolute hero. We set up this thing called FRIF, the Food Resilience Industry Forum, suspended competition law because there's very strong competition or stop collusion in the UK, and David and Chris ran these 8.30 am conference calls every morning, which were fascinating and they kept the food moving. So the two biggest issues were one was that normally 25% of the calories we eat out of home, so we eat it in restaurants and cafes and coffee shops, and suddenly you had to find a way to get that food, those calories, into the main system, which when you um, uh, when you're, for example, eating uh croissant in a in a coffee shop that's been made in a factory with huge bags of flour, you suddenly have these huge bags of flour everyone's baking at home. You can't sell these huge you know where do you like? There were conversations about how can we get enough small bags to put the flour into small bags, to get it from the. So that was going on.
Speaker 2:And then the other thing that was going on was people stopped eating at the big supermarkets, in buying in the big supermarkets in town and started shopping much more at their corner shops, and and so you and so, literally they were having discussions about how can we get the food from that would normally going to Tesco, sainsbury, etc, morrison's, to the cost cutter in someone's local village, and so that was, and and what you learned from that was that the food system we've got, for all its faults, is pretty amazing. I mean, when you wanted it to shift, it shifted very quickly and there was. You know, if you look at the food shortages that we had, they were all to do with the amount of stock people held and panic buying, you know, and we got food to everyone. Now, it was a man-made locking down, was a man-made intervention and therefore man, women, people, and therefore we could make the changes to make that okay. So you know. So I think it's different. People say, well, if we solve that crisis, we can solve the climate crisis, a different kind of crisis, because we were locking things down. Therefore we could open it up.
Speaker 2:I remember there was this. We talk about it in the book, but there was this very early on, there was a rumor that hit the market that the price of lemons spiked and there was a rumor that hit the market that Spanish had closed the border. And that would have been a nightmare, because at that time of year over 50% of our fruit and veg was coming from Southern Europe, europe. And I rang a man called Sir John Shropshire who runs G's, which is our biggest, one of our biggest horticulture companies, and he has farms in the UK and Spain and Morocco. And I said, john, is it true that the borders closed with Spain? Because this is really problematic if it is, and we need to get the foreign office talking to Spain fast.
Speaker 2:And he said let me have a look. And he looked at the GPS monitors on his trucks. He said no, no, they're still going. I can see them, they're actually going across the border. Now they're not stuck at the border. And what had happened was a Turkish hand sanitizer company because obviously there was a massive boom in hand sanitizer had bought up all the lemons to perfume the hand sanitizer and that had caused the spike. So that's again. That's a great example of how interconnected and how strangely connected the system is and how you never really know what's going to happen when you act on it until you see how it reacts, the system is and how, you never really know what's going to happen when you act on it until you see how it reacts.
Speaker 1:And this is going to be a bridge and and because we we have so much else to discuss and let's see how far we got, but I want to. We talked about the junk food cycle. Did we cover an invisibility of nature enough? Uh, I don't think so yet. Like that as a big piece, no, so I should talk about the other big piece as well, and then we get through the three compartment model, because we have a lot to explore there as well. But let's get to the nature piece and invisibility. Thank you for listening all the way to the end of the first part. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did and are looking forward to the second part, where we dive deep into biodiversity what to farm, where and why. Technology Henry makes a strong case for reducing meat consumption and production. The financial side of things why did he start a fund and how would Henry invest one billion pounds? And, of course, the magic wand question.
