Reforming Food Systems with Nancy E. Roman

In this episode of Repast, Diana Winters and Nancy E. Roman, President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), discuss Nancy’s journey to transforming the food landscape, and look at some of PHA’s most significant campaigns.  These include Pass the Love with Waffles + Mochi, a food equity campaign held in conjunction with Michelle Obama’s Netflix show about good food, and its Healthy Hunger Relief initiative, where PHA is working to improve the nutritional profile at our nation’s food banks.

Nancy and Diana also discuss some of the most important food system action items Nancy would like to see happen in both the Biden administration and on a global scale, and look forward to the upcoming PHA Summit as well as the UN’s 2021 Food Systems Summit, a potentially transformative moment in food systems reform.

 
Diana Winters is the Deputy Director of the Resnick Center for Food Law & Policy at UCLA Law.

Nancy E. Roman is the President and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America.

 
You can read Nancy E. Roman’s latest blog post on reforming the food system here.

You can register for the PHA 2021 Summit, to be held virtually on May 12, 2021, at 10am PT/1pm EST, here.

You can find more information about the UN’s 2021 Food Systems Summit here.

Transcript

Michael Roberts 0:07

Hello, welcome to Repast, a food law and policy podcast from the Resident Center for Food Law and Policy at UCLA Law. I'm Michael Roberts, the Executive Director of the Resident Center.

Diana Winters 0:19

And I'm Diana Winters, the assistant director of the Center. The Resnik Center performs cutting-edge legal research and scholarship in food law and policy to improve health and quality of life for humans and the planet.

Michael Roberts 0:33

Each month we'll bring you an interview with thought leaders transforming food law and policy.

Diana Winters 0:43

Hello, welcome to Repast. I would like to introduce our guest this month, Nancy Roman, the president and CEO of Partnership for a Healthier America. Partnership for a Healthier America works with the private sector to transform the food landscape in pursuit of health equity. Before joining PHA, Nancy was the president and CEO of the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, D.C. And she sat on the leadership team of the United Nations World Food Program, overseeing public policy, private partnerships, and communications. Thank you so much for being with us today, Nancy. Thank you, Diana. My pleasure to be here. Can you tell us a little bit about what made you commit yourself to transforming the food landscape and how that became important to you?

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'd love to say that I plan to do so since a small child. But the truth is it really began in a somewhat opportunistic way. You know, I like to say my career, I quote Steve Jobs, you know, my career, you would only make sense looking backwards, you know, back the dots then, because I had worked as a journalist and I had worked in the Council on Foreign Relations and I had run a Wall Street company. But I got a call in 2007 from someone I'd worked with previously who was running the World Food Program, and she said, Nancy, I need a businesswoman with a heart. So on the back of that call, I went with my whole family and was based in Rome, but spending much time in Africa, Asia, South America working uh to really deal with hunger and undernutrition globally. And, you know, once I had that experience, I could never really let go of the issue. You know, as a as a person, I had always been, you know, very focused on food, not just in the obvious way we all are. We eat to stay alive, but I was a cook, I was a gardener, I grew my own food. But once I saw how fundamental food was to health and human potential, and how many people really lacked it, I really just became passionate about that issue. And of course, have stayed with it ever since.

Diana Winters 3:05

What a fantastic opportunity. And then you transitioned from the World Food Program to the Capital Area Food Bank. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 3:15

Yes, uh-huh. And you know, there too, I mean, we're all human beings and we live life and multiple things come together to determine any decision. So I had really loved my time with the United Nations, but my son was going to college. I didn't want to be on a different continent from him. And when the opportunity came up to run the food bank, you know, what I recognized was after being in dozens of African countries and sometimes going from Bangladesh to Pakistan, I was really eager to try some of what I'd learned in a more concentrated area. And so a community approach really felt appealing. Of course, when I left that job, I said to the board how naive I was to think that Prince George's County was any smaller than the world. Because when you're tackling these big social problems, they're difficult on any scale. But it was a fantastic experience.

Diana Winters 4:10

That's amazing. And can you tell us a little bit about PHA's mission and goals and perhaps how your work at the food bank translates now? I know that PHA works specifically with food banks in its healthy hunger relief campaign and other areas.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Sure, sure. Well, PHA is just an amazing organization. It was founded a little more than 10 years ago in partnership with former First Lady Michelle Obama. The thinking at the time was the you we know, of course, Michelle Obama was and is very committed to food and to healthy children, active living. But they recognized that there would need to be some private sector work to really make changes take root. And there needed to be some separation from all the White House activity. So PHA was created very specifically to engage with the private sector on healthy eating, active living. And when I came coming up on four years ago, we really assessed all of our work looking backward and where we thought the opportunity was looking forward and realized food, that there was so much opportunity in and around food and leveraging food for health in this country. And so we set about really refining the mission and came out to transforming the landscape in pursuit of health equity. Why in pursuit of health equity? Because to be perfectly honest, every single area of the country could improve its overall food supply. We have a long way to go in the United States, but the disadvantaged communities are really, you know, really suffering because of lack of access to good food, so much more so. And we saw that very clearly with COVID-19. So PHA really looks at all of our work through two lenses, demand and supply. You know, we're working to get good food into the system and to get bad food out. And um, so of course, coming from a food bank, I saw an opportunity to leverage the learnings we had there at PHA. So maybe just to back up for a minute, you know, when I was at the Capital Area Food Bank, one of the things that surprised me most was walking into the warehouse and seeing all the junk food that was in the warehouse, frankly. And I often tell a story about going in one particular day when the warehouse looked like it was literally exploding with sheet cake. And I asked, what in the world? Where is all the sheet cake coming from? And they said, Well, Nancy, remember you said we shouldn't send more than whatever fixed percentage it was of snacks onto any distribution. So I realized it was our own policy decision that was backing up these sheet cakes. Now that we weren't delivering them here, there and everywhere, they were crowding up the warehouse. So I really realized, wow, we have to look at our inventory. And I can't get into all the details about everything we did, but it involved technology, it involved donor relations, it involved training truck drivers, it involved organizational change and institutional buy-in for strategy, it involved embedding nutrition in the organization strategy. And at PHA, we've built a body of work that really codifies all those lessons and helps other food banks employ them in less time than it took us. Because of course, when you're doing it for the first time, you're making a lot of mistakes and we were able to cull those out. So I'm really proud to say now that we have, you know, nearly three dozen food banks as part of this partnership, which has resulted in, I think, I believe it's 20 million pounds of junk food out of the national food supply and 115 million pounds of good food into the food supply, you know, moving through charitable organizations to people in need.

Diana Winters 8:12

That's fantastic. And I saw that um I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but they you you recently wrote a blog post for PHA's blog about changes needed in the food systems. And one of the changes you specifically advocated for was ridding our nation's food bank inventory of, I think I'm quoting, of junk food and replacing empty calories with nutrient-dense foods. And so this is something moving forward, you're hoping to even expand beyond those three dozen. Is that right?

SPEAKER_02 8:41

Oh, absolutely, 100%. I mean, I think it should be true of anyone doing any charitable food work anywhere. There's a role for treats, and I enjoy treats, and um, no one wants to boil, boil the world free of treats. But when you're in the business of providing food to families who don't have enough food, you know, you really have to recognize that what's most needed are nutrient-dense good foods, and um, treats aren't the priority in that instance.

Diana Winters 9:11

I have to say I'm seeing a little bit of this right now. I have a child in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and they have done a remarkable job providing food during the COVID-19 pandemic. But as children return to school, they're transitioning to sending food home with the children, and their bags of food that they are preparing to send home with children are full of quite a bit of empty calories. And it's something that I, as a mother and a food policy advocate, have focused on quite a bit.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Yeah, well, that's terrific. Because, you know, I think that's uh, you know, some of those backpack programs, you know, really see one of the problems we've got in this country and elsewhere in the developed world is, you know, ever since World War II, we we created what we thought we wanted, which is shelf stable, convenient, long-lasting. And I always say no one was evil. I don't blame the companies. The companies gave the consumer what we wanted. Women were going back into the workforce, they wanted to spend less time cooking, they didn't want things rotting in the refrigerator, they didn't want to spend two hours making a meal. And so convenience was prized and shelf stability was prized. And no one's wrong for prizing that, but we didn't know then what we know now. I, you know, we now have the burden of knowledge. We know that eating, you know, ultra-processed, refined carbohydrates is simply not good for us. And we know that eating more whole foods is good for us. So it's not about blaming anyone, it's about adjusting to the burden of knowledge that we have and making change in a systemic way so that everyone benefits from it, not just those at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid.

Diana Winters 10:56

That makes a lot of sense. I'm thinking now about PHA's Pass the Love campaign in in conjunction with Waffles and Moki, Mrs. Obama's uh new TV show, which to a certain extent seems to build on that philosophy you're talking about making systemic change. Can you describe that campaign a little bit and explain how it's working?

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Sure. Well, I'd be delighted to. Well, Netflix, higher ground, and Mrs. Obama teamed up to produce this television show, which is really it's really entertaining for people of all ages. It was aimed at children three through ten and their parents, young parents. But I can say, having watched it with family members of all ages, that it's entertaining for everyone. And it's about the joy of food and the discovery around food and the adventure of food and sort of discovering and exploring food at home together. I like to say health sort of shimmies in through the back door. Health is not the primary focus of the show. And we were asked to develop a campaign that would amplify the impact and help this show go further and have broader reach and impact. And we we did so in two ways. One way was to team up with for-profit companies that agreed to make healthier, affordable, quick options available in the marketplace at affordable prices for consumers. So we have Walmart and Blue Apron both doing that in different ways. And um, Walmart has a badging experience for children and they go through it and learn about foods. Blue Apron is introducing, you know, a meal kit, and there are details about that to follow. But um, the other part of the campaign is we said, look, we don't want the people most in need left out, right? The people who are served often by food banks of this country. And so we've said, but let's try something different. Um, we're providing meals in a meal kit so they get a whole meal solution, super healthy food, comes together very quickly, that they can prepare at home, like Waffles and Mochi did. And, you know, we're gonna really learn from that because we're gonna collect data on how the consumer responds in terms of is this as tasty as fast food? Is it as fast as fast food? Is it as the overall experience as desirable as picking up McDonald's? Because what I keep pointing out to my team is if we can't compete with fast food in price and overall experience, then it's going to be very hard to shift the culture, right? So this is a pretty exciting opportunity. We're really um looking forward to it. We'll be going into five cities with the highest rates of child poverty soon to be announced. Hopefully, this whole campaign will be something that helps amplify and extend the trend that began during COVID of families enjoying food at home together, which we know is more likely to result in healthy diets.

Diana Winters 14:00

Absolutely. And that's really neat, the meal kit. The emphasis too on education, the ability of meal kits to help teach people too how to prepare and to work with these the produce and fresh food that they may not have had exposure or experience to before. So that's great.

SPEAKER_02 14:18

Yeah. And and, you know, to break down the intimidation factor too, right? Because I think you had generations of food that uh who cooked and spent time cooking. And then, you know, more recently, people are inclined to prize their time over anything and not cook. And I think so many people have in their head a notion about cooking as expensive, time consuming, you know, a lot of heavy lifting. And this whole thing is really designed to help people see, no, it doesn't really have to be like that. It can be easy and fast and fun.

Diana Winters 14:53

That's great. And do you have an idea yet of how the these campaigns will work in these five cities? How will the meal kits be distributed? Or is that still, or is that still being worked at?

SPEAKER_02 15:05

You know, we're working with local partners in each city. And so we're not ready to announce who those partners are, but a part of the PHA model is um we don't replicate capacity. You know, we believe solutions are local and are on the ground. So we find the best local partners positioned to do the last mile delivery, and um, they know the community best, and there's no reason for us to relearn that. We bring our assets to help their efforts go further, faster.

Diana Winters 15:34

That's great. So let's come back to this article you wrote for PHA's blog, um, where you talked about COVID-19 as a wake-up call, and it showed us even more deeply the detriments in our food system. But as you mentioned, it also provided opportunities for families to eat together and to cook together, possibly. And so in this article about reforming the food system, you did. You talked about different ways that the system should be changed and that the new administration can begin to make these adjustments. Can you talk about some of these changes that you hope to see coming?

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Sure, sure, sure. Well, first I want to say I've been pleasantly surprised by by this administration willingness to tackle some of these food issues early. I sit on one of the advisory groups and I can say they're really listening. I feel there's room to do much, much more. I think the first thing we need to do is just prioritize the issue. Because on many, many, many issues, you have huge disagreement across party lines, across rural, urban divides, but really not too many people disagree with the fact that good food connects to good health and that not everybody has access to good food. That's really not in dispute. So the first thing is since we already have an agreement that there's a problem, and we already really pretty much know the basic things we need to address to solve the problem. It's really just an issue of prioritization and will. You know, have you as a nation decided that this is a top-tier issue or not? So I think that's the first and most important thing to do is to prioritize food as a tool to end hunger, build health, and also sustain the planet. The second thing is I've argued for a cabinet-level position that I like to call a food czar, but I do believe that having a single person and part of government that's responsible for food would be better. We currently have it sort of broken into various places, USDA, FDA, you know, and so you don't have a cabinet-level position that's thinking about food every day when they go to work, as you do in many other nations. The third thing I think we can do is really um help raise awareness about food and sustainability. I think one of the big issues that I've been surprised has taken a while to catch on. In other countries, they're they're far ahead of us. But the basic things we need to do to reduce carbon emissions are the same things we need to do to improve human health. It's eating more fruits, more vegetables, more nuts, more seeds, more legumes. And um, those are the foods that we need to be prioritizing. And I think if if people knew that those foods were what I call a twofer, good for the planet and good for the body, you know, you could really build some consumer momentum and citizen momentum around that. Fourth, I think, you know, using the federal nutrition programs to really prioritize those foods would be key. There are some fantastic recommendations issued, I think about three years ago by the bipartisan policy council. It was two leading Republicans and two leading Democrats, Bill Frist, Ann Beneman, Dan Glickman, and Tom Dashel, all came together and agreed across party lines some real changes that could be made to improve STAP. And all of them are first class, so there's no need to redo the work. And then the last thing I really do believe government can and should incentivize cities because cities often have procurement rules and regulations that can really help accelerate this too. So I mean, those are five I could give you 25, but there's a lot of opportunity to do more. And um, I'm excited that we will do more.

Diana Winters 19:44

That is exciting, and it's great that you see this willingness and momentum in the new administration. I'm wondering when thinking back to that, what you just talked about, the connection between sustainability and eating well and health. Do you see room there for labeling? Have you thought about? I know you talked about Walmart and badges. Like, would you, do you see an opportunity?

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Well, I've spent so much time around the whole labeling issue. And put let me put it this way. I don't like to use the word labeling for lots of different reasons. Some people think there are First Amendment issues with labeling, too. That was a fight that was fought like two administrations ago and left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth. And I always think it's important to frame things going forward based on what you've learned and tried before. So, you know, one of the things I really like to think about is consumer transparency. And this is coming up with my work in the UN, that there's a lot of opportunity, just helping the consumer know what's in their food. And there's so much discussion around ways in which you could do this with a virtual label. But I do think if you could get the major players, CPGs and retailers to agree, and perhaps we embrace FDA's coming definition of healthy, but in other words, have a single standard that they can all then use their own different branding and all to communicate transparently with the consumer and reward their executives for doing so. We struck a big partnership with Ajul Del Hayes International, where they agreed that more than 50% of all their total sales would be healthy, and they really incentivized their leadership to get to those targets and goals. You know, there's so much more opportunity for the retail space to really help get us where we need to be. Another thing I want to mention around the space of labeling is our veggies early and often campaign. We've really developed a terrific program that started out as really helping the consumer realize that a lot of what they've been feeding their children and I fed my children that I thought was vegetables was actually. Mostly fruit. You may be surprised to find out that if you buy a bottle of baby food carrots, there's a chance that it's more pears or apples or apples juice than carrots. Why? Because companies have decided to appeal to the mother's sweet palate. And so we really developed a line of work around shaping early palettes. And we've engaged a terrific group of food companies that are producing foods for young children where we're really emphasizing putting vegetables first. And we have a veggie first icon that some of them are using on their product to help consumers know when you know veggies are actually first. So it's a fun area to think about and know about and talk about. You've really got to expose kids over and over and over to the tastes of vegetables to really help them adopt those tastes early on. After the age of two, they're not as interested in trying new foods. So it's really an important window, that zero to two window.

Diana Winters 23:00

And for those of us who may not know, why is it important for children to be exposed to vegetables specifically in contrast to fruits?

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Well, it's a really good question. Um fruits are great for kids. There's nothing wrong with fruits at all. It's just they already like them. Children are born with a palate for sweet. Breast milk is sweet. You're born into the world liking sweet. And any mother of children knows that. You don't have to teach them to like sweet. But the the other tastes and um waffles and mochi get into this, you know, um, Unami and bitter taste, and some of the other taste buds take longer to develop and more exposure to those foods to develop.

Diana Winters 23:47

Absolutely. Yeah. And that makes um a lot of sense, the idea of focusing on consumer transparency and helping the consumer make the best decisions for themselves and their families. Okay, and so we talked about these potential changes the administration could make domestically. What about internationally? And uh, do you have uh specific things you can see levers moving on? And also can you talk a little bit about the upcoming 2021 UN Food System Summit, which will be held, as you noted, in fall of this year, um, and why you think it will be transformative for the food system? Sure.

SPEAKER_02 24:29

Well, on the international scale, I think there's so much, of course, that can be done. There's two areas I would call out. One we already touched on, and that is the consumer transparency. I believe that if nations came together and and the United Nations agreed on we're going to try to make sure every global citizen has access to whole foods, whole affordable foods, it could then be about companies and states and cities to figure out how to get there. So I do believe, just like if you recall with the Paris Agreement, you know, having a goal to reduce global warming by two degrees Celsius really helps people rally towards a common goal. I think some big broad goal coming out of that could be really, really useful. Two, I think on the international stage, you really need to reconnect agriculture to food. And you might say, what do you mean reconnect agriculture to food? Agriculture is food. But I've seen repeatedly that in so many places, um, crops are viewed as commodities, and hence you feature commodities that store well for a long time: maize, dried beans, which are great for you, but things that can sit and stay. And food's thought of as a commodity more than something that nourishes the body. So I think really reconnecting agriculture to food will allow nations and states and cities to make some put some smarter incentive structures in place for what is grown and then marketed and sold and consumed as you move down the chain. I'm thrilled that we have a UN Food System Summit coming up. I really applaud Secretary General Antonio Guterres for calling it. It's really comes at a critical moment, and I'm quite involved with it, you know, wearing a few different hats in an advisory capacity. And I like what I see. The special envoy, Dr. Agnes Calabata, has really succeeded in engaging a broad group of stakeholders. So many countries, NGOs, companies, civic society, youth leaders have been engaged in multiple countries all over the world. In a big dialogue, the reason I think it has potential to be transformative are really two reasons. One, raising awareness. So many people don't know that food contributed, you know, the production of food contributes to about a third of all carbon emissions. And I think if just people knew that, they'd take another look at how things are. Two, as I mentioned earlier, I think people really don't understand the extent to which the sustainability play is the health play, and the health play is the sustainability play. And the more that we get people, however you think of people, as consumers, citizens, friends, children, the more that the people around us understand that, the more we can begin to align our systems to foster what's good for both our body and good for our for the planet. I'm extraordinarily hopeful that we will come out of the summit with a big overarching goal that can rally countries and nations and states. You know, we're not going to deliver the solutions top down. You know, each country is going to have to come up with their own way of getting there. But I think we can come up with common goals, you know, and that will be extremely exciting.

Diana Winters 28:00

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um, and the idea of comparing it to the two-degree goal, also, because that is something that I mean, you can make banners for and all of that. So and there's also the PHA summit coming up, which is earlier than the Food System Summit that's in mid-May. And how do you see the PHA summit bringing together some of the stakeholders to implement some of these changes?

SPEAKER_02 28:27

Well, one of the things I I love about PHA Summit is it brings together such a cool group of people across sectors. I think what makes our summit unique, and I choose that word carefully, unique. There's only one, is we engage corporate, public health, and you know, government officials all in the same place, in the same program, because the solutions require all those sectors. You need the private sector, you need the public health sector, you need the government sector, you need all of them working in tandem to really get change, and they all come together. One of the things I love about the summit, and of course, we have a blockbuster lineup that includes Michelle Obama, it includes, you know, the CEO of Blue Apron, it includes a super engaging group of um young leaders who are just leading the way in food. So many exciting people and organizations represented. But what I love most is what happens after the summit. People listen to the ideas being expressed, and they come to us with their own ideas, um, how they can engage, how they can be part of it. They meet people. And um, in the virtual world, the networking isn't quite the same as it used to be. But what we find is they follow up with us and we help with the networking and pulling together coalitions we might not have been able to imagine.

Diana Winters 29:54

That's great. And we will put a registration link for a PHA summit in the show notes, as well as a link to information about the UN Food System Summit, so that our listeners can engage beyond this podcast. And uh, I guess finally, because we are uh the Resnick Center housed at UCLA Law, we think about our students. And what would do you have any words of advice for students looking to also transform the food landscape and uh do work like you and PHA are doing?

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Well, I do. I I mean, it's just uh, you know, the students are probably the group that's most needed, right? They're the young people with fresh energy coming. Um, I at the risk of being repetitive, I just want to go back. Part of what they can do is just help spread the word about the sustainability and health coming together. Help spread the word about how important food is as a tool for ending hunger, building health, and sustaining the planet. I think part of the reason we have been slow to deliver solutions that exist in the world today is because there just isn't enough awareness about how under-leveraged food is, right? We tackle some of the hard things like carbon sequestration, where we don't know what to do. With food, we do know what to do. We know that people who don't have access to good food need access to good food. We do know that switching to more consumption of legumes and fruits and vegetables, and I'm in no way anti-meat, but all of us should ratchet back the amount of meat we eat because it's not the best thing for our body and it's not the best thing for the earth. I do eat meat, and I again I'm I'm not anti-meat, but I I think we have to quit allowing that to be a divisive issue. We can agree that adding more legumes and fruits and vegetables into the diet is good for the body and good for the planet, and we and we need young people to understand that. And if you happen to be a young person in food and policy, boy, there are so many opportunities. I mean, think tanks care about this issue like never before, companies care about this issue like never before. And I think coming out of COVID, really the whole of society sees, given that we care and understand how important equity is. And of course, we've in 2020 we just began what will be an ongoing process of reckoning around race in this country. Community of color are really disadvantaged when it comes to food. And there's so much opportunity to engage not just with nonprofits, but in government policy that really helps correct some of those problems. So I think it's an exciting time. I've been in the space of food for a lot of years, and I think there's never been a more exciting time to embrace these issues.

Diana Winters 33:01

Thank you. And good students, listen to that, spread the word. And thank you for being on our podcast and helping to spread the word yourself about um these issues and connecting sustainability and food policy and health equity. It's really it's been an honor. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Thank you, Diana. I've really enjoyed the conversation.