Stuart Gillespie has four decades of experience in food, nutrition, and development. He has worked for the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition in Geneva, UNICEF in India, co-founded the Regional Network on AIDS, Livelihoods, and Food Security (RENWAL), was director of the International Conference on HIV/AIDS, Food and Nutrition Security in South Africa in 2005, and led the Stories of Change project for the International Food Policy Research Institute. These are some of the many roles he has held at the intersection of food and policy.
What’s the big idea?
We now have enough knowledge and experience of what works and how to drive change to redesign our food system so that it serves people and the planet. The way things stand, Big Food is a machine of plunder and profit that robs billions of lives of health and well-being for the sake of fattening a few wallets. An ethical, sustainable food future is within reach—but we all have to reach out and grab it from the clutches of greedy corporations.
Below, Stuart shares five key insights from his new book, Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet. Listen to the audio version—read by Stuart himself—below, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Our global food system destroys more than it creates.
Food is life, but our food system is killing us and consuming the planet. As we head into the second quarter of the 21st century, it’s a system that’s destroying a lot more than it produces. The damage has been calculated at $15 trillion per year (12 percent of global GDP)
Malnutrition in all its forms—undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, obesity—is, by far, the biggest cause of ill-health in the world, affecting one in three people on the planet. A quarter of all adult deaths (over 12 million every year) are due to malnutrition and unhealthy diets. Every country is affected. Obesity prevalence has tripled in the last thirty years. Such a change in just over a generation is unprecedented in history.
These harms are not shared equally. The poorest, most marginalized people are most likely to become malnourished, get sick, and die too soon. And it’s not just people suffering. Our food system is also making the planet sick, generating one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions and driving a raft of environmental harms, including deforestation, biodiversity loss, plastic and water pollution, and a heightened pandemic risk.
2. Our global food system is a giant anachronism.
The system we have now was built 80 years ago, after the Second World War, to mass-produce cheap calories to prevent famine, and—through a strategic and deliberate use of food aid—to buffer the West from the spread of communism.
During the last 50 years of neoliberalism, food has morphed from a basic need or right into a commodity. The system has become heavily financialized and captured by a handful of rapacious transnational corporations. At every stage from production to consumption, just four to five companies control at least two-thirds of the market share. At the retail end, it’s Nestle, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, and General Mills.
“The system has become heavily financialized and captured by a handful of rapacious transnational corporations.”
The primary purpose of this system is not to nourish us, but rather to maximize profit. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are simultaneously the most profitable and the least healthy—for us and the planet. UPFs are industrial formulations. They’re not real foods. Many are addictive. We are programmed to eat high-fat/sugar/salty foods to store energy during periods of scarcity, so we have an instinct to consume these types of foods whenever possible. This basic biology, evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, has been hijacked and subverted by transnational corporations to get us addicted to products that make them rich and us sick.
Big Food uses its market and financial power to drive down prices it pays to producers, further impoverishing frontline workers, while also controlling prices it charges to consumers. It uses its global reach to shift tax liabilities to low-tax havens.
The large-scale damage done to people and planet is a feature of our food system, not a bug. Corporations don’t pay the price for these harms. We do. We have become hostages to this system.
3. Corporations infiltrate politics to stop governments from getting in their way.
Big Food uses its huge commercial power to leverage political power by adapting a set of tactics first used by the tobacco industry in the last century. I call these The Deadly Ds.
- Doubt: Companies sow doubt on the harms caused by their products by buying scientists and infiltrating dietary guideline committees. Conflicts of interest are rife, and they’re a big deal. Independent studies have shown that industry-funded science is significantly biased toward industry, which again means profit is prioritized over people.
- Distortion: Companies distort the evidence base in numerous lobby meetings with politicians. This is where epistemic power is wielded—the power of the narrative—as evidence is cherry-picked and politicians are wooed in meetings, on golf courses, and at cocktail receptions.
- Distraction: Big Food distracts public (and governmental) attention through corporate social responsibility campaigns and projects, funding a few good causes, here and there. High-profile boutique projects and the media froth they generate are performative gestures designed to confer legitimacy on core business practices that run in a very different direction. Most corporate social responsibility initiatives are tax-deductible public relations exercises aimed at laundering reputations and burnishing corporate images. It’s the small-scale good that seeks to distract attention from the large-scale bad. This is how large corporations attempt to establish and maintain a social license to operate.
- Disguise: Corporations disguise themselves by hiding within front groups and trade associations, which often have names that include words such as “global,” “sustainable,” or “development.” They’re effectively Trojan Horses, designed to help the industry get closer to the policy table.
4. Governments have the power to rein in harmful industry.
Everyone has a role in turning things around, but first and foremost, we need governments to set the rules of the game. There are four big actions (four “Ins”).
- Institutions: Governments have budgets to procure healthy foods (and restrict ultra-processed foods) for government institutions, including schools, hospitals, and clinics. School feeding is a potential “win-win-win.” It’s both a nutritional and an educational intervention. Kids who are not hungry are better able to learn and engage. Additionally, when linked to local farmers who practice organic, low-carbon farming, it can help protect the planet and support local livelihoods.
- Incentives: Governments have the power to tax harmful products and practices, including taxes on soda and junk foods. Taxes work. But it is crucial for the government to earmark the tax dividend to subsidize healthy diets for low-income families. For example, by using vouchers, food stamps or cash transfers.
- Information: Governments can use informational interventions (physical and digital), including labels and ingredient lists on products, while also reining in predatory marketing of unhealthy foods, especially to children.
- Interests: Governments need to banish conflicts of interest from advisory and regulatory bodies, as well as their dietary guideline committees. And they need to clean up lobbying by enforcing detailed and transparent disclosure.
5. Citizens need to use our agency to pressure governments to act.
To the food industry, we are consumers. But first and foremost, we are citizens. We have power and agency that we sometimes forget we have.
Citizens and civil society organizations have the power to expose and oppose harmful products and practices, to educate the public, advocate for stronger governmental action, monitor what’s happening, and to hold industry and government accountable. Citizens have the power to mobilize people and build social movements to disrupt business as usual.
“People are fed up, and politicians are waking up.”
As a society, we need a big conversation about values. We need to ask if we are okay with a system inexorably driven to maximize profit at all costs. The good news is that the popular and political will for change is beginning to grow. People are fed up, and politicians are waking up. We need to harness this new energy to propel us into a new era, one in which power is better balanced, where plunder and profit give way to people and the planet.
To drive this transformation, there’s a role for everyone. Creating a better food future is an ethical imperative and shared responsibility. Ultimately, it’s about ensuring the freedom to choose a healthy diet for us and for generations to come.
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