During a recent interview on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg,” Dorothy Shaver, Global Food Sustainability Director for Unilever discussed the importance of incorporating nutrition into conversations around sustainable food systems.
“Nutrition, even in food businesses, is seen as a separate entity. It’s seen as something that’s outside of [businesses], and it wasn’t integrated enough,” Shaver tells Food Tank. She explains that while nutritionists may inform specific stages of product development, they rarely have the chance to observe the entire process of product development.
But, Shaver argues, to bring nutritious food to the global population, it is essential to transform the food system. “It’s not really [about] an individual food and individual person [or] their individual choices,” Shaver says. “It’s actually about trying to work to create this ecosystem that not only can grow and produce food that’s good for people on the planet, but also provides the accessibility, affordability, and desirability of those things.”
Over the years, Shaver has worked to take a holistic approach to sustainability. In practice, sustainable food production takes different forms depending on the crop and the region it is grown but, Shaver says, “at the end of the day, it’s actually about growing the right food in the right places in the right ways in the right amounts. All foods can be grown in great ways, using minimal resources and actually giving back to the planet, capturing carbon [and] feeding the soil.”
Shaver highlights 50 crops, known as the Future 50 Foods, that can increase the nutrient density of eaters’ diets while decreasing the harmful impacts of food production on the environment. Ranging from fonio and quinoa to algae and Bambara groundnuts, these foods grown around the globe not only help to increase farmers’ livelihoods and support planetary health, but are also delicious. “I also like to think of food as extremely enjoyable and [it can] bring people together.”
Listen to the full conversation with Dorothy Shaver on “Food Talk with Dani Nierenberg” to hear more about bringing joy back into the food system, Shaver’s advice for small and medium sized companies adopting sustainability commitments, and keeping the food system global.
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Photo courtesy of Gabriel Jimenez, Unsplash
