August 21, 2024 • 48 mins
One of the nation’s most esteemed journalists on food and food policy, Corby Kummer is Executive Director of Food & Society at the nonprofit Aspen Institute. He spearheads several initiatives, including Food as Medicine, Food Justice and Open Access to support minority -owned startup food businesses. His work has opened conversations about food policy, food insecurity and regenerative farming to raise awareness and foster solutions.
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The Connected Table is broadcast live Wednesdays at 2PM ET and Music on W4CY Radio (www.w4cy.com) part of Talk 4 Radio (www.talk4radio.com) on the Talk 4 Media Network (www.talk4media.com).
The Connected Table Podcast is also available on Talk 4 Media (www.talk4media.com), Talk 4 Podcasting (www.talk4podcasting.com), iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, Audible, and over 100 other podcast outlets.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple. We
travel the world to bring you the dynamic people who
are front and center and behind the scenes and wine,
food spirits, hospitality, ideas and educations, thought leaders who shaped
the world of how we eat and drink. And we
(01:03):
have a great series that we introduced this year called
Behind the Byline. It is because we're journalists and we
support journalism, and we know it's a tough feel these days.
We decided to spotlight journalists who really are leaders in
the industry shaping what we think about the world. Today
in hospitality, wine, food, et cetera. And today our guest
(01:26):
is a journalist we've known for a very long time, Corbycomer.
He is really defines journalism in a way that I
think is losing its definition. You know, he is a journalist,
journalist really deep in depth stories, thoughtful, does his homework.
This is not the journalism of the current day, listicles
and shorts. This is in depth. Corby has had a
(01:48):
long career. He was senior editor of The Atlantic, for
which he was the longtime food columnist and originated a
vertical on food sustainability, policy, food justice. He continues this
as in his current role as Executive Director of Food
and Society at the Aspen Institute and as a senior
(02:08):
lecturer at the Tufts Freeman School of Nutrition Science. In
addition to his journalism work, he has a distinguished career,
and we think it's really incredible how he's taken his
talent for writing and speaking and expanded it to the
world of education, justice, policy, and topics that really are
(02:30):
impacting our nation today. So Corbycomer, welcome to the Connected Table.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's been a long time since we've seen you and connected.
We love to start our show always with our guest's
backstory because we find it shapes who they are today.
So tell us where you were born and raised and
a little bit about young Kirby Kummer.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Not something I like thinking about very often. I was
born and raised in Ellington, Connecticut, thirteen miles northeast of Hartford.
I'm a fourth generation Jewish farmer. My family had come
to Ellington in the eighteen nineties, come to this country
in the eighteen eighties. Both great grandfathers started and mutual
(03:19):
aid societies to bring over more Jewish farmers, and they
have been college these these written about the Jewish farmers
of this town. My family were the first, so it
was very much in my blood and the everyday senior.
I grew up across from dairy farms. It was still
very much a farming community. It's now something of a
(03:42):
bedroom community for Hartford, but farm grown food and the
farm standard across the street were very much a part
of my upbringing.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
You know, I didn't know that about you. Were your
family Ashkenazi or Sephardic, Oh.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Gosh Ashkenazi, of course, I mean it's so exotic Safari
or in other parts of undrialog Turo and various parts
of New England where had lots of Sephardic Jews, but
I was the only Jew in my school assystem, for example.
So the great grandfathers of my schoolmates had farmed with
my great grandfather the town cemetery. My great grandfather bought
(04:22):
the land with a Congregationalist congregation, and when challenged by
his church mates, why would we do that, he said,
we lived with the Jews, we farm with the Jews,
and we can die with the Jews.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Wow, that's so interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
So that is pretty interesting, Corby, Why don't you give
us some a couple of tidbits on your earliest food memories.
You grew up in farming, so obviously food and farm
and produce and animals were part of your life. So
what food memories do you have from you earlier life.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Well, there was a farmstand and we would wait for
the afternoon picking of corn, the five o'clock picking, not
the eleven thirty or noon picking, because it was much sweeter.
So we had access to that kind of food and
tomatoes and all the stuff people love about summer. And
also there was sort of a melding of traditions because
(05:21):
my mother's family in that town, they were the farming family,
had been there so long. There was a certain kind
of you know, dull but good New England quality to
the food, as well as Eastern European influences. My father's
family had been more recently from Hungarian Romanian the nineteen
tens or actually nineteen oh five and six they came over,
(05:44):
so my mother learned how to make pap precaution some
of those dishes in my We would visit my father's
family in another part of Connecticut, Wallingford, south of Hartford,
every or many Sundays, so we would have, you know,
ten typical Eastern European Ashkena's food, but we would go
to restaurants. So my parents were very adventurous eaters. My
(06:07):
mother's brother gave her every issue of Gourmet magazine that
had been published as a wedding gift and an ongoing subscription,
and like so many educated women of the day, she
devoted much too much creative energy to cooking and food
when she probably should have been working. But in any case,
so we were a very food conscious family. Her brother
(06:30):
was a very gifted cook, and he and his wife
entertained and were very adventurous eaters. Also, also, we had
a Japanese woman living with us when I was really little,
and so Japanese food was a big part of my childhood,
and my mother learned many dishes, and so tempor and
sukiyaki were regular appearances on our table, and she would
(06:54):
put into a Barton's butterscotch tin from passover dry fish flakes,
so we would have Benito flakes when we thought we
were going to be able to sneak candy late at night.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You know, you really grew up with a much more
educated palette than most young kids of your generation, and
that's very fortunate and obviously a kinship with farming when
you were young. Did you think about what you wanted
to be when you grew up? Obviously you did, But
I was writing part of it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
No, my father desperately wanted me to be a doctor.
I think I wanted to be a theater director, which
I was in both high school and college, and writing
became a part of it. I guess, I, oh, this
is so dull, But I mean I started college, I
started a newspaper, I revived a magazine at college. So
writing and editing were always part of it. The people
(07:48):
I admired were writers, journalists and editors.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
It's actually very interesting because we find when we interview
people their childhood really does shape who they are to
day in so many ways, and sometimes in unexpected ways.
You at what point in your life did you decide
to pursue a journalism career and how did you get started?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
He was in college and I fell in love with
the esquire of the nineteen sixties, bold, adventurous, excitingly written articles.
I wrote a paper for a chorus on Harold Hayes,
the editor who had made it into a journalistic powerhouse,
went down to interview him. Then is now. I tried
(08:34):
into a way of meeting somebody and making a connection,
and he indeed recommended me for a job. So at
nineteen I had a job at a Hearst magazine called
Sports of Fields, and I never looked back. I loved
being in magazines and editing and working with writers who
had much more interesting minds than I.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It's a really good point we have found going into
more deeply in to interviewing people that were able to
make connections with people who would otherwise never speak to us.
So it's a great way to meet people. My mother
taught me that actually, and she was a writer.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I remember, yeah, yeah, So was that your big break? Corby?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Sure, I guess it was. But you know, as with
so many people in luck, the harder you work, the
luckier you are. Although plenty of hard work doesn't always
result in luck. You kind of have to make your
own luck. I very much admire the people who went
into journalism, the excitement of their lives, the ability to
(09:46):
narrate to other readers your excitement about in my case,
Italian food. I wrote a tremendous amount about Italian food,
which I fell in love with the people who made it.
But in both the US and Italy, the were of
Italy the way so many people fell in love with
France in the sixties and seventies. In the eighties and nineties,
(10:07):
I fell in love with Italy, which plenty of other
people did and did beautifully as well. But it was
incredibly exciting to learn about that food, track down exotic
places to eat, and learn lots about the ingredients and
how they came together into meals and how they grew.
It was a wonderfully exciting time and those were the
(10:28):
days as both of you remember when you could pay
for trips by article fees, and many glossy magazines actually
paid travel. I say this because it's almost unknown today.
It was a very different time.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
It's certainly almost unheard of at this point.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Yeah, and we love Italy too, by the way, Corby,
we'd try to get there as often as possible.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Hard not too.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
We love the people, we love the food, we love
the culture. It's just fabulous. You know, you've had a
long career reporting on food and culture topics and the
intersection of both. Most are long format. What's your approach
to tackling a long format story and.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
How would you advise people listening who are journalists trying
to crack that.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
When you're doing a long form story, you've got to
have an idea in advance of the question you wish
to answer. Say, I was lucky when the New York
Times magazine assigned me a cover story on bottled water,
and what they wondered was why has bottled water caught on?
So it's a must for everybody to be carrying when
(11:37):
municipal water is just fine, what is it about bottled water?
And so it gave me license and they had a
travel budget, so I could go to Avion and the
place where Pellegrino and Pana water, both part of Nesley,
are the springs where they come from and Poland Spring
(12:01):
to get an idea of the marketing mystique behind it,
the health claims for it, the reasons the municipal water
had fallen out of favor. But you've got to have
an idea in advance, and I would say today a
typical idea is how is climate change affecting the regions
where different wine grapes are grown. How are they going
(12:23):
to change the trajectory of what wines come from which
regions probably from. Then you want to focus in on
one area like Santa Barbara, like Canada, like Virginia that's
being affected in a whole, like England that's very much
in the news right now. Places that we're too cold
(12:45):
and too unreliable and uncertain to grow famous wine grapes
and make classic wines we've heard of, how is that
going to change to wine business? Or go to a
traditional powerhouse of Space or Chili, which are big, huge
wine exporters, and find out how are they preparing for
the future when the alcohol level will be too great.
(13:09):
So what is the question you're trying to answer? For example,
how is climate change going to change wine growing and exporting?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
You know what you just described, and as you spoke,
I visualized as a ripple effect. You start with one
drop and it ripples into a bigger question and a larger,
bigger story. I remember that water story, by the way,
and I remember when I was David and I first
started going on. I was working with Fiji Water and
he's like, why are you drinking Fiji? It's being paid
(13:40):
to But you know, now we just get our tap
water and purify it. So it's a one other life now.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Right for you? That's the good for you. I think
that's the way to go.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, Well it saves you know, saves a lot of
plastic bubbles, it saves on plastic bottles, It saves a
lot of money. And we know food costs are expensive,
which we're going to segue into. But before what we
do was what was the toughest topic you tackled in
your journalism career and why.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I don't know quite how to answer that, but I
would say it's what led to my current work at
Aspen Institute, and it was trying to understand how the
food industry could help improve nutrition and the diets people
eat as I began to be increasingly concerned about obesity
(14:27):
and chronic diet related illnesses that were making food into
really an enemy and incredibly worriesome, and so I wanted
to interview people from industry about the work they were doing.
And I did many stories about trying to reduce sodium,
(14:51):
because my public health authorities and guides were saying, sugar
is terrible, but sodium is something that could be solved.
It's an easy target. People habituate themselves to having less salt.
It's not nearly as hard as getting people to eat
(15:13):
less sugar, although there's been huge in roads in getting
people to reduce their sugar and soda consumption. But I
wanted to get my arms around the story of how
industry could help improve diets after they'd done so much
to harm diets. And I found I was sort of
(15:34):
went from pillar to post of constantly being a mouthpiece
for various executives who wanted to say what great work
their company was doing. And I heard such similar messages
that I kept thinking, why can't these people come together
because their work as a group would be so much
(15:57):
more powerful than all of these indi visual kind of
one off efforts I was reporting on that a company
could easily move away from. That's where the idea of
starting a program with the Aspen Institute evolved. How can
I bring some of these people together to make change
in the food industry toward more helpful diets. Then it
(16:19):
became toward more regenerative than sustainable agriculture. How can I
help change the food system instead of just reporting on
admirable people, admirable companies, nice farmers' markets, good farmers who
were helping even young farmers get a lease on land
(16:39):
when farmland was becoming too expensive for young farmers to
get into. So I could never get that story because
it was so fragmented, and so I thought it would
be much more coherent if I could start a program,
And that's what I did.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Well, it's exciting, I mean, the Aspen Institute is really,
you know, a gold standard in the world of ideas
and enlightenment and education and think tanking. And this is
such an exciting role and a perfect career move for
you in terms of adding a dimension to corebycomer's career
(17:18):
As you probably know, nutrition and food is medicine is
near and dear to my heart as a cancer survivor,
and I have written a lot on this topic and
grappled with it when I wrote my own book. And
you know, over ninety percent of cancer can be prevented
or reduced risk reduction through diet and nutrition and exercise.
And that's a fact on the American Institute of Cancer
(17:40):
Research and others. And yet we still have epidemic obesity
and diabetes and heart conditions and cancer in the country.
Talk to us about the programs that you are working on,
starting at the ASPENS, starting with the food is medicine,
And just as a reference, we inter viewed Tulane has
(18:01):
a terrific program here in New Orleans on that, and
we interviewed the founder of that program. So it's really important.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Great, So food is Medicine because I had been a
founding member of a meals program first for people with
HIV and then many diet related chronic illnesses in Boston
called Community Servings, I was very aware of food is medicine,
the term, what it meant, what medically tailored meals for
(18:29):
different illnesses were. Because of my work, my fortunate work
with David Waters, a wonderfully pioneering trailblazer and Food is
Medicine at Community Servings, who worked very closely in hand
in hand with godsil If We Deliver project mana Open
Hand in San Francisco many other meals programs, and also
(18:52):
was a pioneer in academic studies with Seth Berkowitz, who
was then at Harvard and Children's Hospitals. Moved to UNC
a long time ago, but kept working with data from
community serving as clients. How did medically tailored meals and
medically tailored groceries improve people's health, especially people with diabetes,
(19:14):
people with n stage renal disease, people with different forms
of cancer. But there was a need to gather together
all of the peer reviewed research to say, what are
the improvements then that have been shown, and how can
we direct further research to build on those initial peer
(19:37):
reviewed results to build a case for national reimbursement for
nutrition interventions. And that's what we did. It's called the
Food is Medicine Research Action Plan, and it gathers together
in one easy place with easy to read tables, all
of the peer reviewed research into the main nutrition interventions
which are medically tailored meals. They tailor groceries and produce prescriptions.
(20:03):
So what are blood sugar levels, hypertension levels, what are
the improvements that they show.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
It's so important and the education to get it out
into communities even more so. And when we traveled for
almost two years on the road, we were traveling back
roads into rural areas, particularly on the East Coast and
south and there just are food deserts where the only
access to food is Walmart. Thankfully they do surf sell
(20:31):
fresh vegetables, but most of it is you know, bodegas
and gas stations where the food is processed high in
sodium and hidden sugars. So it's the biggest challenge is,
as you said, getting all the special interests together and
then weeding out the special interests funded research and getting
(20:51):
better evidence based to get the facts. Kerbia. There's a big,
you know, hullabaloo right now in the beverage alcohol industry.
As you probably know about the upcoming health and dietary
guidelines probably will be labeling all alcohol is dangerous to
your health and saying no alcohol is safe. There's a
big back There's a lot of obviously marketing and pr
(21:14):
campaigns going on to try to counter this, and everybody's
all in a hullablue about it. Are you and is
the ASPEN is going to be doing anything in that
area to talk about the beverage alcohol aspect of food
is medicine or in food and nutrition and health.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
We haven't started with alcohol. It's never a part of
the discussion about those nutrition interventions, medically tailored meals, medically
tailored groceries which is essentially food boxes easier to distribute,
much cheaper and very effective or produce descriptions. And so
we haven't done work on alcohol. And as with all
(21:53):
nonprofit programs, you kind of go where funders want you
to go through after ringing lots of proposals to them.
But no, our future work involves bringing food is medicine
to many kinds of community based organizations that haven't known
how to get started, where to get started, and making
it easier for them to do. We're not working on alcohol.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
So access is bringing the knowledge is important, but also
bringing the access to healthier options is critical. And as
I said, you know a lot of a lot of
it's just junk, and a lot of it also and
we're going to get into food policy and changes. We
all know one of the biggest issues on the docket
right now with the current election is the cost of
(22:38):
rising cost of food. Everybody is lamenting the rising cost
of food and as a result, it's easier to go
and get a five dollars McDonald's to burgers, frides and
some sodas to feed your family than going to the
grocery store.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Well with infliction is more like ten dollars.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, I mean it's you know, we're even feeling the
bite writers. You know, everything matters what you what is
happening in the food policy initiatives of the Aspen Institute
that you're addressing such as that or other topics of
concern like climate, climate change and sustainability.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
We are going to work on climate change and sustainability.
At the moment, we're doing a lot more work. We're
leaning into food is medicine, into in smaller community based organization,
and we're also thinking a lot about economic access and
(23:36):
help for bipok food entrepreneurs in different cities. One of
our main initiatives is called open Access. It's the country's
only open source, open coded platform that gathers together for
one city, all of the technical assistance, credit and capital
opportunities for bipop food entrepreneurs, and that we're really excited
(24:01):
about because it's been city by city, often working with
small business associations, historically black colleges and universities. Our launch
partner in Washington was Howard University's Small Business program. In
Baltimore was Morgan State University in Philadelphia at Strexo, which
(24:25):
has a new master's in a Restaurant business in NYU.
It's the Stern School of Business. So making it easier
and less thorny and confusing to start a food truck,
a catering service, a market of bodega in an underserved
area is something we're very interested in helping people do.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
That's terrific. I hope you come to New Orleans. There's
some very good colleges with food programs here, and of
course the gold Ring Center for Culinary Medicine is fabulous,
so I hear it really is, and sadly, obesity is
some of the worst we've ever seen in the nation
in New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Very aware of Louisiana statistics.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
It's in the whole South. I think it's great. Right now,
we're on the Aspenfood dot org website, and you have
open access in New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and DC.
Any other markets?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Yeah, did you mention Los Angeles because just six weeks
ago we started with USC and Los Angeles. We're about
to launch in New Haven, Minneapolis, Boston, Chicago. All of
these don't happen instantly. It takes about a year to
work with a partner to say what doesn't exist in
(25:46):
that city, what's needed, what does exist? To make sure
that we fold everything in. We never, in any of
the work we do at Food in Society at the
Aspen Institute, want to recreate the wheel, reduplicate work that's
already been done. We always want to honor other people's work.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
How are these programs funded? And he said you're not.
Then asked an instant is non profit?
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Not only nonprofit, but each program and initiative has to
be entirely self funded. That means that I spend all
of my time fundraising. So we apply to foundations. We're
hoping to apply to the USDA for our open access
bipop food entrepreneur work for Food is Medicine. It's been
the Walmart Foundation for our fabulous food leaders fellowship. It's
(26:36):
been private funders so far, so all of it. Program
directors are responsible for finding all funding.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
And we're on the site about conversations on food justice,
and that is a collaboration between the Food Society and
Asked Institute and Share our Strength, which is an organization
we have great respect for. What are some of these
conversations because I will say for our listeners, you can
find them on the site. But let's talk about some
(27:07):
of the conversations you're addressing and what would you like
to see more of in the future.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I love our conversations on food justice. It began during
the pandemic with our friends and partners at Share our Strength,
No Kid hungry. If we do it on a shoe string,
it's almost entirely virtual. We've had two three in person conversations,
mostly where Share our Strength was going and doing a
(27:33):
meeting or work, and so we kind of piggyback onto that.
But the topics have been returning citizens from prison, having
several politicians who grew up on nutrition assistance and the
difference it made in their lives, women and young mothers,
and how to qualify for WICK. We recently did black
(27:55):
farmers and had actually a dynamite couple from Louisiana. They're white,
and you who are on our site probably can see
their names. They were fantastic because one of our wonderful
Food Leaders fellows named Ebony Woodward, who's begun a lot
of initiatives to help black farming families gain title to
(28:17):
their land to preserve generation and transfer generational wealth. She
founded that family in Louisiana. And David Street in Washington,
who has been at Feeding America and Bread for the
World doing a lot of food access and hunker work,
were organizing that panel, and from now on in the
(28:40):
future we intend to have our Food Leaders Fellows curate
and decide on the subjects for those And given that
we just had our first meeting of our third cohort
last week in Aspen, Colorado, the one meeting we do
per year in Aspen, Colorado on the campus of the
Aspen Institute, which is otherwise headquartered in Washington, we had
(29:02):
so many terrific new fellows, including Seneca Edwards Heron from
the Freedmen Airs Foundation, which also does work on economic
access for black farmers to get the same loan and
equipment loan opportunities that white farmers do. That's going to
(29:23):
be an easy one to start. We have the people
very central to sustainability for both McDonald's and changing helping
change their purchasing requirements and Disney and getting more black
themed menus and more vegetable friendly menus into Disney. It's
(29:43):
all very slow, but it's enormously admirable. And helping all
of these fellows overcome the individual challenges of their job
and come together collectively to make change to its sustainability
and equity is the reason I I started that program
after being frustrated by kind of one off stories one
(30:05):
company after another, and also the cohorts joined together. We
have wonderful people from Walmart's Regenerative Agriculture and a woman
from Pepsi COO Foundation helps women own businesses get footholds
and big industries food hub developers. So that kind of
cross fertilization of our three co works so far is
(30:27):
tremendously exciting for the future.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
It's really a diverse group, Corby, We're looking at it
now and how do they find how do you find
the fellows and how do they find you? What is
the criteria to become a fellow.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
We've been very lucky because in our first year we
had two hundred and thirty applications for eighteen spots. In
this year it was touching three hundred and so there's
a long process of shortlisting. Or shortlisting is about seventy.
We try to do individual zoom interviews with all seventy.
(31:04):
It takes about three months to do that, and we
try to pick fellows who are doing complimentary work, who
have different strengths that will help each other. We don't
want to duplicate strengths. We also think very much in
terms of who could benefit from previous fellows on our
first two cohorts, because this is going to be a
(31:25):
very powerful group going forward. The idea is, although it's
three in person meetings and many virtual meetings over eighteen months,
and an impact project that evolves as to fellows go
through their eighteen months in life and professional changes change
the course of their impact projects, but the work really
(31:45):
begins sort of like college. After the third and final meeting,
our first cohort meets virtually every month without us. They're
having a reunion meeting in Puerto Rico, where one of
our fellows had started a nonprofit Hunger really for organization
and where we administrators and starters start of the program
are cordially not invited. We're very happy about that because
(32:09):
what we want is for these fellows to work together
for their whole careers.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
It's really amazing, really is amazing. I'd like to interview
some of these people they're doing some We tend to
interview founders, and there's some really interesting people in here.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
They're fabulous. They're much more interesting than we are.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
Yeah, that sounds interesting. You know, let's get back to
the food itself for a second. There are a lot
of factors impacting food and how we learn about it,
consume it, serve it, discuss it, grow it, grow it.
If you could prioritize issues corby, what do you feel
this country needs to address through food policy and education.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
I know I should have a prefabricated list ready to go. No.
I still care enormously about reducing sodium. It's an unbelievably
easy target that would greatly reduce strokes and heart attacks.
It's so easy it requires the food industry working in concert.
(33:11):
Voluntary reduction has worked to a point, it's not working
fast enough or well enough, and so I think the
FDA should get involved. I would definitely like to see
animal welfare start being in requirement for especially hog farms,
but also chicken poultry because as anyone who has seen
(33:34):
food Ink and many many documentaries knows, it's perfectly horrifying
that is often determined by the purchasing requirements. McDonald's can
change the chicken and egg industry, as it did overnight
by changing its requirements or no cutting off of tails
(33:55):
for pigs, reducing the over use of antibiotics and vaccines.
So animal welfare and the way animals are raised for
industry huge problematic area that's ripe for change. Helping smaller
and medium sized farmers get toe holds in footholds into
(34:19):
Walmart and PepsiCo, which our fellows have been doing actively.
That matters enormously to me. Getting black farmers the clear
titles to their land so that they can pass on
their land and also access to the same kind of
loans that white farmers have had for generations. Our fellows
(34:42):
are working on that, and I'm very inspired by them.
So there's a whole series of anti hunger and of
course summer feeding programs, feeding families, not just children who
qualify for free school meals, lots and lots of the
extensions that in COVID literally lifted millions of families and
(35:03):
people out of poverty. And then we're discontinued at the
end of COVID, as if the need was no longer,
there reinstituting those programs. That's definitely on a wish list.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
It shouldn't take a pandemic to start caring about your people,
and yet we did. You know, here in Louisiana, the
governor decided to forego funding federal funding for school school lunches,
and it took people like Isaac and Amanda Toops who
(35:38):
owned Tops Eatery, to say, we're going to take this
on and make these meals and deliver them themselves. And
they've been doing that and sometimes, you know, thank goodness,
the food and restaurant community, the for profit does know
that it's important to give back. You know, I think
(36:01):
there's access to food. Good food is so critical. Again,
a lot of these very rural areas that we traveled,
the only fresh food other than what you got at
a fast food chain that it was prepared, but at
least you knew it came from something other and hopefully
than a big was either Dollar Tree, what are those
(36:21):
Dollar stores? They actually had there was a little bitty
fresh food area, and of course Walmart and otherwise there's nothing.
And those packaged foods are the ones that are so
high in sodium.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Packaged foods are and grab and go are enormously important
in all conversations about food access and so called food deserts.
I prefer the newer term food swamps, because there's plenty
of foodish just all terrible, just like you're describing. There's
enormous possibility of improving the nutritional quality of those and
(36:56):
given the time constraints on people us, putting a fresh
produce stand in a neighborhood that doesn't have one is
not going to solve the problems of people who don't
have time or education to prepare foods from scratch.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
That's actually a really great point because a lot of
these people that we're talking about are they have multiple jobs.
You know, these days, a lot of people, a lot
of people, including many journalists we know, are doing three
jobs just to make ends meet. And it's not getting better,
and it's getting worse as people get older. I mean,
the New York Times just did a large article on
(37:33):
how people over sixty, many are living in poverty, and
it's terrible the.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Time constraints on people, especially mothers. And also you always
have to discount the whole idea that these people are
ignorant and don't know what good nutrition is or how
to eat better. They do know, they know that they
don't have time or the money to do it, which
is why more nutritious packaged food offerings, cooked food offerings,
(38:04):
more allowances for SNAP to be able to buy prepared foods,
because that's what is going to feed families fastest. You know,
there are a lot of exceptions that can and should
be made.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, and it has to be affordable. I think that's
a really important point that prepackaged. It's important to have
prepackaged foods and are healthy nutrition and accessible and affordable,
put in greenwall and covered by EBT or SNAP. You know,
here in New New Orleans you can get you can
get a big bag of crawfish and shrip pards of
their Snap. It's amazing what you can buy with Snap
(38:39):
in places around the country these days. But a lot
of people don't realize or they're too embarrassed to apply
for it. And there should be no shame.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Many people who know that they can qualify for SNAP
food stamps don't know if they have children and young
families are pregnant, that they can simultaneously apply for WICK Women,
Infants and Children, which is the country's most successful nutrition
intervention to date. Enormously helpful, and half of those who
(39:10):
are eligible actually apply and many many people don't know
that they are so called dual eligibles, and so one
of the main efforts of a number of gurus I
know is to make it easier for people to apply
for both at the same time and understand they're eligible.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You know, It's like in medicine they have patient navigators
to help navigate the complex true network. They really need
food and nutrition navigators to help these individuals understand what
their options are and help them fill out the mounds
and paperwork that go with it to apply and have
their ducts in a row. That would be a wonderful
(39:52):
service to alp.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
In the Live Navigator. I completely agree. Feel for our
Open Access BIPOLB Food Entrepreneur Project, many resources for loans
for startup flogs for incubator kitchens that are shared kitchen
space to get a business up and running. They exist
in the community, but it's been very hard to impossible
(40:18):
to find a one stop shop where all of them
are available and listen in the same place. That's what
we do. But what is even better is if we
can have office hours with live navigators to say to people,
where are you? Are you just trying to create a
business plan. Have you opened a food truck but you
want to turn it into bricks and mortar? Do you
(40:39):
want to sell us alves and not understand what the
laws are for where you have to make it and
how to get inspected? Are you a small restaurant who
doesn't realize when and how to arrange inspections to make
sure that you pass. Having live navigators is we're applying
for money so that we can have more people's time
(41:01):
to guide people through the options that are in fact
open to them.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
I think that's really great. I mean, you know, because
a lot of times people give up because they don't know,
you know, they can't move forward because they don't know
what to do, and they're just overwhelmed with all the
decisions they have to make or they don't fully understand.
And we're also talking about people that may not that
are bilingual maybe English isn't their primary language and they
want to try something, and so we have to think
(41:27):
about that, So they need to be bilingual. I'm a
big I'm a big pro of coaches and navigators to
help guide people and make informed decisions, because they could
be costly decisions if they're not done correctly. Well, they
could be costly.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Open access New Orleans and tell us where we can
find various live navigators who speak other languages, something we're
always very uh aware we need to do.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, it's really really important. Well, I mean this is
you know, so critical, and I think it's really exciting
that you're working on it and hopefully more attention will
be paid to this. But also do you collaborate with
other major organizations around the country?
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Oh? Gotcha. For example, we were very very flattered when
both Health and Human Services seventeen different agencies federal agencies
working on food is medicine. They have a wonderful group
of coordinators on how to try to think about food
is medicine across seventeen different agencies today HHS. They came
(42:33):
to us and said, we want to sign an MoU
so that going forward with our research and coordination work
to try to streamline new initiatives and imperatives and guiding
principles we can work with you. And the same thing
with Feeding America because the hundreds and hundreds of charitable
food banks are looking to figure out how they can
(42:57):
deliver food is medicine and medically to meals or especially
medically tailored groceries, which would be much more realistic for them.
They came to us and said, we want to sign
an MoU. This doesn't come with funding, but it does
come with the understanding that we will share work going
forward and results, and that's tremendously exciting for us.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Well, you know, the future is now. You know, if
you don't start planning the seeds, nothing is going to happen.
And what you're doing, as I said, creating, you're planning
the seeds and creating the ripple effect, and it's just
creating the network to move these programs for it. Because
we all know there's a lot of bureaucracy and red
tape and detail, and particularly when you're done with corporations
(43:41):
for sure, So I you know, we'd always like to
wrap this up in a few ways. First of all,
we want to just underscore that you are an example
of a journalist that has expanded your horizons, and I
think this is important as a lesson for other journalists
(44:01):
who are grappling with how to move forward and get beyond.
I can't just be a journalist to sustain myself. You've
taken it into policy and education and really back to
your farming roots, which is how it all comes full
circle in the rest of your lifetime. And Patricia Schultz,
who wrote One Thousand Places to Go Before You Die,
(44:22):
just said you probably only have eighty summers left on average.
You only have eighty summers in your life on the
average lifespan to spend it. How would you do it?
And I said, wow, Patricia, it means I have about
fifteen left knowing or probably how would you like to
see those remaining summers or special occasions or milestones in
(44:45):
your life and career to look?
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (44:49):
All I want to do is make more people come
together to make change towards sustainability and equity, especially in
the food system, and the work I can do to
help more people afford to eat better, know how to
eat better, and eat better.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
And also the joy is watching individuals come together who
don't know each other and we've had a lot to
do with their coming to learn about each other's work
and work together. I don't think there's any greater joy,
and that's what I want to spend the rest of
my time helping facilitate.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Well. I think that's terrific and it's true. It kind
of echoes while we created the Connected Table after am
Young Communications, I wanted to take what I love doing
and then connect more people and go back to what
I used to do as a little girl corby, which
is run around with you know, a fountain pen, interviewing
people absolutely and writing stories. So it's amazing how your
(45:49):
child and writing about food and going and trying to
understand food. So it goes full circle. And I think
that this is really exciting the trajectory you're on, and
we're really glad you took your time from your incredibly
busy schedule to join us on our table where we
like to connect our guests to the world of eating
(46:10):
and drinking.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
It's been a privilege, and I want to point out
how you and I first knew each other in helping
draw readers and people's attention to fine dining and wonderful,
very special culinary experiences, and we've both moved so much
toward helping a much broader range of people to eat
(46:35):
better and more healthfully. And I see all of us
as having been on a similar journey and trajectory, and
it's something I think we should all be pleased about it.
I think we can watch similar trajectories among many of
our colleagues from our earlier days of just thinking how
(46:55):
can we go to this new country and find everything
that's happening Openhagen.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Yeah, yeah, well that's why we enjoy traveling the world,
and to me, that's been our extended education to meet
people and learn. Thank you so much, Kirby. How can
our listeners find and follow you in the Aspen Institute.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Oh, you're so nice. It's Aspenfood dot org. That's our program,
Just aspenfood dot org. And we're on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Our people are really on LinkedIn and Instagram under food
in Society or under me it's Cecomer or cs comer.
But it's easy. Just go to Aspenfood dot org.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Fantastic and we will definitely stay in touch, particularly in
this food as medicine. So thank you so much. You've
been listening to the Connected Table live with Kirbycomer. We
hope this inspired you to be active in your own community,
to see how you can facilitate change and enhance education
about better food and access to it. And always, our
(48:02):
message is to you our listeners, stay insatiably curious. Thank you,
The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are
solely those of the hosts and their guests and not
those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We
make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability,
explicit or implied shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio
or its employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should
be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing
(00:21):
W FOURCY Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Welcome to the Connected Table Live. We're your hosts, Melanie
Young and David Ransom. You're insatiably curious culinary couple. We
travel the world to bring you the dynamic people who
are front and center and behind the scenes and wine,
food spirits, hospitality, ideas and educations, thought leaders who shaped
the world of how we eat and drink. And we
(01:03):
have a great series that we introduced this year called
Behind the Byline. It is because we're journalists and we
support journalism, and we know it's a tough feel these days.
We decided to spotlight journalists who really are leaders in
the industry shaping what we think about the world. Today
in hospitality, wine, food, et cetera. And today our guest
(01:26):
is a journalist we've known for a very long time, Corbycomer.
He is really defines journalism in a way that I
think is losing its definition. You know, he is a journalist,
journalist really deep in depth stories, thoughtful, does his homework.
This is not the journalism of the current day, listicles
and shorts. This is in depth. Corby has had a
(01:48):
long career. He was senior editor of The Atlantic, for
which he was the longtime food columnist and originated a
vertical on food sustainability, policy, food justice. He continues this
as in his current role as Executive Director of Food
and Society at the Aspen Institute and as a senior
(02:08):
lecturer at the Tufts Freeman School of Nutrition Science. In
addition to his journalism work, he has a distinguished career,
and we think it's really incredible how he's taken his
talent for writing and speaking and expanded it to the
world of education, justice, policy, and topics that really are
(02:30):
impacting our nation today. So Corbycomer, welcome to the Connected Table.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
It's been a long time since we've seen you and connected.
We love to start our show always with our guest's
backstory because we find it shapes who they are today.
So tell us where you were born and raised and
a little bit about young Kirby Kummer.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Not something I like thinking about very often. I was
born and raised in Ellington, Connecticut, thirteen miles northeast of Hartford.
I'm a fourth generation Jewish farmer. My family had come
to Ellington in the eighteen nineties, come to this country
in the eighteen eighties. Both great grandfathers started and mutual
(03:19):
aid societies to bring over more Jewish farmers, and they
have been college these these written about the Jewish farmers
of this town. My family were the first, so it
was very much in my blood and the everyday senior.
I grew up across from dairy farms. It was still
very much a farming community. It's now something of a
(03:42):
bedroom community for Hartford, but farm grown food and the
farm standard across the street were very much a part
of my upbringing.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
You know, I didn't know that about you. Were your
family Ashkenazi or Sephardic, Oh.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Gosh Ashkenazi, of course, I mean it's so exotic Safari
or in other parts of undrialog Turo and various parts
of New England where had lots of Sephardic Jews, but
I was the only Jew in my school assystem, for example.
So the great grandfathers of my schoolmates had farmed with
my great grandfather the town cemetery. My great grandfather bought
(04:22):
the land with a Congregationalist congregation, and when challenged by
his church mates, why would we do that, he said,
we lived with the Jews, we farm with the Jews,
and we can die with the Jews.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Wow, that's so interesting.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
So that is pretty interesting, Corby, Why don't you give
us some a couple of tidbits on your earliest food memories.
You grew up in farming, so obviously food and farm
and produce and animals were part of your life. So
what food memories do you have from you earlier life.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Well, there was a farmstand and we would wait for
the afternoon picking of corn, the five o'clock picking, not
the eleven thirty or noon picking, because it was much sweeter.
So we had access to that kind of food and
tomatoes and all the stuff people love about summer. And
also there was sort of a melding of traditions because
(05:21):
my mother's family in that town, they were the farming family,
had been there so long. There was a certain kind
of you know, dull but good New England quality to
the food, as well as Eastern European influences. My father's
family had been more recently from Hungarian Romanian the nineteen
tens or actually nineteen oh five and six they came over,
(05:44):
so my mother learned how to make pap precaution some
of those dishes in my We would visit my father's
family in another part of Connecticut, Wallingford, south of Hartford,
every or many Sundays, so we would have, you know,
ten typical Eastern European Ashkena's food, but we would go
to restaurants. So my parents were very adventurous eaters. My
(06:07):
mother's brother gave her every issue of Gourmet magazine that
had been published as a wedding gift and an ongoing subscription,
and like so many educated women of the day, she
devoted much too much creative energy to cooking and food
when she probably should have been working. But in any case,
so we were a very food conscious family. Her brother
(06:30):
was a very gifted cook, and he and his wife
entertained and were very adventurous eaters. Also, also, we had
a Japanese woman living with us when I was really little,
and so Japanese food was a big part of my childhood,
and my mother learned many dishes, and so tempor and
sukiyaki were regular appearances on our table, and she would
(06:54):
put into a Barton's butterscotch tin from passover dry fish flakes,
so we would have Benito flakes when we thought we
were going to be able to sneak candy late at night.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
You know, you really grew up with a much more
educated palette than most young kids of your generation, and
that's very fortunate and obviously a kinship with farming when
you were young. Did you think about what you wanted
to be when you grew up? Obviously you did, But
I was writing part of it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
No, my father desperately wanted me to be a doctor.
I think I wanted to be a theater director, which
I was in both high school and college, and writing
became a part of it. I guess, I, oh, this
is so dull, But I mean I started college, I
started a newspaper, I revived a magazine at college. So
writing and editing were always part of it. The people
(07:48):
I admired were writers, journalists and editors.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
It's actually very interesting because we find when we interview
people their childhood really does shape who they are to
day in so many ways, and sometimes in unexpected ways.
You at what point in your life did you decide
to pursue a journalism career and how did you get started?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
He was in college and I fell in love with
the esquire of the nineteen sixties, bold, adventurous, excitingly written articles.
I wrote a paper for a chorus on Harold Hayes,
the editor who had made it into a journalistic powerhouse,
went down to interview him. Then is now. I tried
(08:34):
into a way of meeting somebody and making a connection,
and he indeed recommended me for a job. So at
nineteen I had a job at a Hearst magazine called
Sports of Fields, and I never looked back. I loved
being in magazines and editing and working with writers who
had much more interesting minds than I.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
It's a really good point we have found going into
more deeply in to interviewing people that were able to
make connections with people who would otherwise never speak to us.
So it's a great way to meet people. My mother
taught me that actually, and she was a writer.
Speaker 4 (09:10):
I remember, yeah, yeah, So was that your big break? Corby?
Speaker 3 (09:22):
Sure, I guess it was. But you know, as with
so many people in luck, the harder you work, the
luckier you are. Although plenty of hard work doesn't always
result in luck. You kind of have to make your
own luck. I very much admire the people who went
into journalism, the excitement of their lives, the ability to
(09:46):
narrate to other readers your excitement about in my case,
Italian food. I wrote a tremendous amount about Italian food,
which I fell in love with the people who made it.
But in both the US and Italy, the were of
Italy the way so many people fell in love with
France in the sixties and seventies. In the eighties and nineties,
(10:07):
I fell in love with Italy, which plenty of other
people did and did beautifully as well. But it was
incredibly exciting to learn about that food, track down exotic
places to eat, and learn lots about the ingredients and
how they came together into meals and how they grew.
It was a wonderfully exciting time and those were the
(10:28):
days as both of you remember when you could pay
for trips by article fees, and many glossy magazines actually
paid travel. I say this because it's almost unknown today.
It was a very different time.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
It's certainly almost unheard of at this point.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
Yeah, and we love Italy too, by the way, Corby,
we'd try to get there as often as possible.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Hard not too.
Speaker 4 (10:53):
We love the people, we love the food, we love
the culture. It's just fabulous. You know, you've had a
long career reporting on food and culture topics and the
intersection of both. Most are long format. What's your approach
to tackling a long format story and.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
How would you advise people listening who are journalists trying
to crack that.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
When you're doing a long form story, you've got to
have an idea in advance of the question you wish
to answer. Say, I was lucky when the New York
Times magazine assigned me a cover story on bottled water,
and what they wondered was why has bottled water caught on?
So it's a must for everybody to be carrying when
(11:37):
municipal water is just fine, what is it about bottled water?
And so it gave me license and they had a
travel budget, so I could go to Avion and the
place where Pellegrino and Pana water, both part of Nesley,
are the springs where they come from and Poland Spring
(12:01):
to get an idea of the marketing mystique behind it,
the health claims for it, the reasons the municipal water
had fallen out of favor. But you've got to have
an idea in advance, and I would say today a
typical idea is how is climate change affecting the regions
where different wine grapes are grown. How are they going
(12:23):
to change the trajectory of what wines come from which
regions probably from. Then you want to focus in on
one area like Santa Barbara, like Canada, like Virginia that's
being affected in a whole, like England that's very much
in the news right now. Places that we're too cold
(12:45):
and too unreliable and uncertain to grow famous wine grapes
and make classic wines we've heard of, how is that
going to change to wine business? Or go to a
traditional powerhouse of Space or Chili, which are big, huge
wine exporters, and find out how are they preparing for
the future when the alcohol level will be too great.
(13:09):
So what is the question you're trying to answer? For example,
how is climate change going to change wine growing and exporting?
Speaker 2 (13:19):
You know what you just described, and as you spoke,
I visualized as a ripple effect. You start with one
drop and it ripples into a bigger question and a larger,
bigger story. I remember that water story, by the way,
and I remember when I was David and I first
started going on. I was working with Fiji Water and
he's like, why are you drinking Fiji? It's being paid
(13:40):
to But you know, now we just get our tap
water and purify it. So it's a one other life now.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
Right for you? That's the good for you. I think
that's the way to go.
Speaker 4 (13:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yeah, Well it saves you know, saves a lot of
plastic bubbles, it saves on plastic bottles, It saves a
lot of money. And we know food costs are expensive,
which we're going to segue into. But before what we
do was what was the toughest topic you tackled in
your journalism career and why.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I don't know quite how to answer that, but I
would say it's what led to my current work at
Aspen Institute, and it was trying to understand how the
food industry could help improve nutrition and the diets people
eat as I began to be increasingly concerned about obesity
(14:27):
and chronic diet related illnesses that were making food into
really an enemy and incredibly worriesome, and so I wanted
to interview people from industry about the work they were doing.
And I did many stories about trying to reduce sodium,
(14:51):
because my public health authorities and guides were saying, sugar
is terrible, but sodium is something that could be solved.
It's an easy target. People habituate themselves to having less salt.
It's not nearly as hard as getting people to eat
(15:13):
less sugar, although there's been huge in roads in getting
people to reduce their sugar and soda consumption. But I
wanted to get my arms around the story of how
industry could help improve diets after they'd done so much
to harm diets. And I found I was sort of
(15:34):
went from pillar to post of constantly being a mouthpiece
for various executives who wanted to say what great work
their company was doing. And I heard such similar messages
that I kept thinking, why can't these people come together
because their work as a group would be so much
(15:57):
more powerful than all of these indi visual kind of
one off efforts I was reporting on that a company
could easily move away from. That's where the idea of
starting a program with the Aspen Institute evolved. How can
I bring some of these people together to make change
in the food industry toward more helpful diets. Then it
(16:19):
became toward more regenerative than sustainable agriculture. How can I
help change the food system instead of just reporting on
admirable people, admirable companies, nice farmers' markets, good farmers who
were helping even young farmers get a lease on land
(16:39):
when farmland was becoming too expensive for young farmers to
get into. So I could never get that story because
it was so fragmented, and so I thought it would
be much more coherent if I could start a program,
And that's what I did.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Well, it's exciting, I mean, the Aspen Institute is really,
you know, a gold standard in the world of ideas
and enlightenment and education and think tanking. And this is
such an exciting role and a perfect career move for
you in terms of adding a dimension to corebycomer's career
(17:18):
As you probably know, nutrition and food is medicine is
near and dear to my heart as a cancer survivor,
and I have written a lot on this topic and
grappled with it when I wrote my own book. And
you know, over ninety percent of cancer can be prevented
or reduced risk reduction through diet and nutrition and exercise.
And that's a fact on the American Institute of Cancer
(17:40):
Research and others. And yet we still have epidemic obesity
and diabetes and heart conditions and cancer in the country.
Talk to us about the programs that you are working on,
starting at the ASPENS, starting with the food is medicine,
And just as a reference, we inter viewed Tulane has
(18:01):
a terrific program here in New Orleans on that, and
we interviewed the founder of that program. So it's really important.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Great, So food is Medicine because I had been a
founding member of a meals program first for people with
HIV and then many diet related chronic illnesses in Boston
called Community Servings, I was very aware of food is medicine,
the term, what it meant, what medically tailored meals for
(18:29):
different illnesses were. Because of my work, my fortunate work
with David Waters, a wonderfully pioneering trailblazer and Food is
Medicine at Community Servings, who worked very closely in hand
in hand with godsil If We Deliver project mana Open
Hand in San Francisco many other meals programs, and also
(18:52):
was a pioneer in academic studies with Seth Berkowitz, who
was then at Harvard and Children's Hospitals. Moved to UNC
a long time ago, but kept working with data from
community serving as clients. How did medically tailored meals and
medically tailored groceries improve people's health, especially people with diabetes,
(19:14):
people with n stage renal disease, people with different forms
of cancer. But there was a need to gather together
all of the peer reviewed research to say, what are
the improvements then that have been shown, and how can
we direct further research to build on those initial peer
(19:37):
reviewed results to build a case for national reimbursement for
nutrition interventions. And that's what we did. It's called the
Food is Medicine Research Action Plan, and it gathers together
in one easy place with easy to read tables, all
of the peer reviewed research into the main nutrition interventions
which are medically tailored meals. They tailor groceries and produce prescriptions.
(20:03):
So what are blood sugar levels, hypertension levels, what are
the improvements that they show.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
It's so important and the education to get it out
into communities even more so. And when we traveled for
almost two years on the road, we were traveling back
roads into rural areas, particularly on the East Coast and
south and there just are food deserts where the only
access to food is Walmart. Thankfully they do surf sell
(20:31):
fresh vegetables, but most of it is you know, bodegas
and gas stations where the food is processed high in
sodium and hidden sugars. So it's the biggest challenge is,
as you said, getting all the special interests together and
then weeding out the special interests funded research and getting
(20:51):
better evidence based to get the facts. Kerbia. There's a big,
you know, hullabaloo right now in the beverage alcohol industry.
As you probably know about the upcoming health and dietary
guidelines probably will be labeling all alcohol is dangerous to
your health and saying no alcohol is safe. There's a
big back There's a lot of obviously marketing and pr
(21:14):
campaigns going on to try to counter this, and everybody's
all in a hullablue about it. Are you and is
the ASPEN is going to be doing anything in that
area to talk about the beverage alcohol aspect of food
is medicine or in food and nutrition and health.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
We haven't started with alcohol. It's never a part of
the discussion about those nutrition interventions, medically tailored meals, medically
tailored groceries which is essentially food boxes easier to distribute,
much cheaper and very effective or produce descriptions. And so
we haven't done work on alcohol. And as with all
(21:53):
nonprofit programs, you kind of go where funders want you
to go through after ringing lots of proposals to them.
But no, our future work involves bringing food is medicine
to many kinds of community based organizations that haven't known
how to get started, where to get started, and making
it easier for them to do. We're not working on alcohol.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
So access is bringing the knowledge is important, but also
bringing the access to healthier options is critical. And as
I said, you know a lot of a lot of
it's just junk, and a lot of it also and
we're going to get into food policy and changes. We
all know one of the biggest issues on the docket
right now with the current election is the cost of
(22:38):
rising cost of food. Everybody is lamenting the rising cost
of food and as a result, it's easier to go
and get a five dollars McDonald's to burgers, frides and
some sodas to feed your family than going to the
grocery store.
Speaker 4 (22:52):
Well with infliction is more like ten dollars.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Yeah, I mean it's you know, we're even feeling the
bite writers. You know, everything matters what you what is
happening in the food policy initiatives of the Aspen Institute
that you're addressing such as that or other topics of
concern like climate, climate change and sustainability.
Speaker 3 (23:14):
We are going to work on climate change and sustainability.
At the moment, we're doing a lot more work. We're
leaning into food is medicine, into in smaller community based organization,
and we're also thinking a lot about economic access and
(23:36):
help for bipok food entrepreneurs in different cities. One of
our main initiatives is called open Access. It's the country's
only open source, open coded platform that gathers together for
one city, all of the technical assistance, credit and capital
opportunities for bipop food entrepreneurs, and that we're really excited
(24:01):
about because it's been city by city, often working with
small business associations, historically black colleges and universities. Our launch
partner in Washington was Howard University's Small Business program. In
Baltimore was Morgan State University in Philadelphia at Strexo, which
(24:25):
has a new master's in a Restaurant business in NYU.
It's the Stern School of Business. So making it easier
and less thorny and confusing to start a food truck,
a catering service, a market of bodega in an underserved
area is something we're very interested in helping people do.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
That's terrific. I hope you come to New Orleans. There's
some very good colleges with food programs here, and of
course the gold Ring Center for Culinary Medicine is fabulous,
so I hear it really is, and sadly, obesity is
some of the worst we've ever seen in the nation
in New Orleans.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
Very aware of Louisiana statistics.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
It's in the whole South. I think it's great. Right now,
we're on the Aspenfood dot org website, and you have
open access in New York, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and DC.
Any other markets?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Yeah, did you mention Los Angeles because just six weeks
ago we started with USC and Los Angeles. We're about
to launch in New Haven, Minneapolis, Boston, Chicago. All of
these don't happen instantly. It takes about a year to
work with a partner to say what doesn't exist in
(25:46):
that city, what's needed, what does exist? To make sure
that we fold everything in. We never, in any of
the work we do at Food in Society at the
Aspen Institute, want to recreate the wheel, reduplicate work that's
already been done. We always want to honor other people's work.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
How are these programs funded? And he said you're not.
Then asked an instant is non profit?
Speaker 3 (26:10):
Not only nonprofit, but each program and initiative has to
be entirely self funded. That means that I spend all
of my time fundraising. So we apply to foundations. We're
hoping to apply to the USDA for our open access
bipop food entrepreneur work for Food is Medicine. It's been
the Walmart Foundation for our fabulous food leaders fellowship. It's
(26:36):
been private funders so far, so all of it. Program
directors are responsible for finding all funding.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
And we're on the site about conversations on food justice,
and that is a collaboration between the Food Society and
Asked Institute and Share our Strength, which is an organization
we have great respect for. What are some of these
conversations because I will say for our listeners, you can
find them on the site. But let's talk about some
(27:07):
of the conversations you're addressing and what would you like
to see more of in the future.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
I love our conversations on food justice. It began during
the pandemic with our friends and partners at Share our Strength,
No Kid hungry. If we do it on a shoe string,
it's almost entirely virtual. We've had two three in person conversations,
mostly where Share our Strength was going and doing a
(27:33):
meeting or work, and so we kind of piggyback onto that.
But the topics have been returning citizens from prison, having
several politicians who grew up on nutrition assistance and the
difference it made in their lives, women and young mothers,
and how to qualify for WICK. We recently did black
(27:55):
farmers and had actually a dynamite couple from Louisiana. They're white,
and you who are on our site probably can see
their names. They were fantastic because one of our wonderful
Food Leaders fellows named Ebony Woodward, who's begun a lot
of initiatives to help black farming families gain title to
(28:17):
their land to preserve generation and transfer generational wealth. She
founded that family in Louisiana. And David Street in Washington,
who has been at Feeding America and Bread for the
World doing a lot of food access and hunker work,
were organizing that panel, and from now on in the
(28:40):
future we intend to have our Food Leaders Fellows curate
and decide on the subjects for those And given that
we just had our first meeting of our third cohort
last week in Aspen, Colorado, the one meeting we do
per year in Aspen, Colorado on the campus of the
Aspen Institute, which is otherwise headquartered in Washington, we had
(29:02):
so many terrific new fellows, including Seneca Edwards Heron from
the Freedmen Airs Foundation, which also does work on economic
access for black farmers to get the same loan and
equipment loan opportunities that white farmers do. That's going to
(29:23):
be an easy one to start. We have the people
very central to sustainability for both McDonald's and changing helping
change their purchasing requirements and Disney and getting more black
themed menus and more vegetable friendly menus into Disney. It's
(29:43):
all very slow, but it's enormously admirable. And helping all
of these fellows overcome the individual challenges of their job
and come together collectively to make change to its sustainability
and equity is the reason I I started that program
after being frustrated by kind of one off stories one
(30:05):
company after another, and also the cohorts joined together. We
have wonderful people from Walmart's Regenerative Agriculture and a woman
from Pepsi COO Foundation helps women own businesses get footholds
and big industries food hub developers. So that kind of
cross fertilization of our three co works so far is
(30:27):
tremendously exciting for the future.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
It's really a diverse group, Corby, We're looking at it
now and how do they find how do you find
the fellows and how do they find you? What is
the criteria to become a fellow.
Speaker 3 (30:42):
We've been very lucky because in our first year we
had two hundred and thirty applications for eighteen spots. In
this year it was touching three hundred and so there's
a long process of shortlisting. Or shortlisting is about seventy.
We try to do individual zoom interviews with all seventy.
(31:04):
It takes about three months to do that, and we
try to pick fellows who are doing complimentary work, who
have different strengths that will help each other. We don't
want to duplicate strengths. We also think very much in
terms of who could benefit from previous fellows on our
first two cohorts, because this is going to be a
(31:25):
very powerful group going forward. The idea is, although it's
three in person meetings and many virtual meetings over eighteen months,
and an impact project that evolves as to fellows go
through their eighteen months in life and professional changes change
the course of their impact projects, but the work really
(31:45):
begins sort of like college. After the third and final meeting,
our first cohort meets virtually every month without us. They're
having a reunion meeting in Puerto Rico, where one of
our fellows had started a nonprofit Hunger really for organization
and where we administrators and starters start of the program
are cordially not invited. We're very happy about that because
(32:09):
what we want is for these fellows to work together
for their whole careers.
Speaker 2 (32:15):
It's really amazing, really is amazing. I'd like to interview
some of these people they're doing some We tend to
interview founders, and there's some really interesting people in here.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
They're fabulous. They're much more interesting than we are.
Speaker 4 (32:27):
Yeah, that sounds interesting. You know, let's get back to
the food itself for a second. There are a lot
of factors impacting food and how we learn about it,
consume it, serve it, discuss it, grow it, grow it.
If you could prioritize issues corby, what do you feel
this country needs to address through food policy and education.
Speaker 3 (32:48):
I know I should have a prefabricated list ready to go. No.
I still care enormously about reducing sodium. It's an unbelievably
easy target that would greatly reduce strokes and heart attacks.
It's so easy it requires the food industry working in concert.
(33:11):
Voluntary reduction has worked to a point, it's not working
fast enough or well enough, and so I think the
FDA should get involved. I would definitely like to see
animal welfare start being in requirement for especially hog farms,
but also chicken poultry because as anyone who has seen
(33:34):
food Ink and many many documentaries knows, it's perfectly horrifying
that is often determined by the purchasing requirements. McDonald's can
change the chicken and egg industry, as it did overnight
by changing its requirements or no cutting off of tails
(33:55):
for pigs, reducing the over use of antibiotics and vaccines.
So animal welfare and the way animals are raised for
industry huge problematic area that's ripe for change. Helping smaller
and medium sized farmers get toe holds in footholds into
(34:19):
Walmart and PepsiCo, which our fellows have been doing actively.
That matters enormously to me. Getting black farmers the clear
titles to their land so that they can pass on
their land and also access to the same kind of
loans that white farmers have had for generations. Our fellows
(34:42):
are working on that, and I'm very inspired by them.
So there's a whole series of anti hunger and of
course summer feeding programs, feeding families, not just children who
qualify for free school meals, lots and lots of the
extensions that in COVID literally lifted millions of families and
(35:03):
people out of poverty. And then we're discontinued at the
end of COVID, as if the need was no longer,
there reinstituting those programs. That's definitely on a wish list.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
It shouldn't take a pandemic to start caring about your people,
and yet we did. You know, here in Louisiana, the
governor decided to forego funding federal funding for school school lunches,
and it took people like Isaac and Amanda Toops who
(35:38):
owned Tops Eatery, to say, we're going to take this
on and make these meals and deliver them themselves. And
they've been doing that and sometimes, you know, thank goodness,
the food and restaurant community, the for profit does know
that it's important to give back. You know, I think
(36:01):
there's access to food. Good food is so critical. Again,
a lot of these very rural areas that we traveled,
the only fresh food other than what you got at
a fast food chain that it was prepared, but at
least you knew it came from something other and hopefully
than a big was either Dollar Tree, what are those
(36:21):
Dollar stores? They actually had there was a little bitty
fresh food area, and of course Walmart and otherwise there's nothing.
And those packaged foods are the ones that are so
high in sodium.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Packaged foods are and grab and go are enormously important
in all conversations about food access and so called food deserts.
I prefer the newer term food swamps, because there's plenty
of foodish just all terrible, just like you're describing. There's
enormous possibility of improving the nutritional quality of those and
(36:56):
given the time constraints on people us, putting a fresh
produce stand in a neighborhood that doesn't have one is
not going to solve the problems of people who don't
have time or education to prepare foods from scratch.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
That's actually a really great point because a lot of
these people that we're talking about are they have multiple jobs.
You know, these days, a lot of people, a lot
of people, including many journalists we know, are doing three
jobs just to make ends meet. And it's not getting better,
and it's getting worse as people get older. I mean,
the New York Times just did a large article on
(37:33):
how people over sixty, many are living in poverty, and
it's terrible the.
Speaker 3 (37:40):
Time constraints on people, especially mothers. And also you always
have to discount the whole idea that these people are
ignorant and don't know what good nutrition is or how
to eat better. They do know, they know that they
don't have time or the money to do it, which
is why more nutritious packaged food offerings, cooked food offerings,
(38:04):
more allowances for SNAP to be able to buy prepared foods,
because that's what is going to feed families fastest. You know,
there are a lot of exceptions that can and should
be made.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, and it has to be affordable. I think that's
a really important point that prepackaged. It's important to have
prepackaged foods and are healthy nutrition and accessible and affordable,
put in greenwall and covered by EBT or SNAP. You know,
here in New New Orleans you can get you can
get a big bag of crawfish and shrip pards of
their Snap. It's amazing what you can buy with Snap
(38:39):
in places around the country these days. But a lot
of people don't realize or they're too embarrassed to apply
for it. And there should be no shame.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Many people who know that they can qualify for SNAP
food stamps don't know if they have children and young
families are pregnant, that they can simultaneously apply for WICK Women,
Infants and Children, which is the country's most successful nutrition
intervention to date. Enormously helpful, and half of those who
(39:10):
are eligible actually apply and many many people don't know
that they are so called dual eligibles, and so one
of the main efforts of a number of gurus I
know is to make it easier for people to apply
for both at the same time and understand they're eligible.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You know, It's like in medicine they have patient navigators
to help navigate the complex true network. They really need
food and nutrition navigators to help these individuals understand what
their options are and help them fill out the mounds
and paperwork that go with it to apply and have
their ducts in a row. That would be a wonderful
(39:52):
service to alp.
Speaker 3 (39:55):
In the Live Navigator. I completely agree. Feel for our
Open Access BIPOLB Food Entrepreneur Project, many resources for loans
for startup flogs for incubator kitchens that are shared kitchen
space to get a business up and running. They exist
in the community, but it's been very hard to impossible
(40:18):
to find a one stop shop where all of them
are available and listen in the same place. That's what
we do. But what is even better is if we
can have office hours with live navigators to say to people,
where are you? Are you just trying to create a
business plan. Have you opened a food truck but you
want to turn it into bricks and mortar? Do you
(40:39):
want to sell us alves and not understand what the
laws are for where you have to make it and
how to get inspected? Are you a small restaurant who
doesn't realize when and how to arrange inspections to make
sure that you pass. Having live navigators is we're applying
for money so that we can have more people's time
(41:01):
to guide people through the options that are in fact
open to them.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
I think that's really great. I mean, you know, because
a lot of times people give up because they don't know,
you know, they can't move forward because they don't know
what to do, and they're just overwhelmed with all the
decisions they have to make or they don't fully understand.
And we're also talking about people that may not that
are bilingual maybe English isn't their primary language and they
want to try something, and so we have to think
(41:27):
about that, So they need to be bilingual. I'm a
big I'm a big pro of coaches and navigators to
help guide people and make informed decisions, because they could
be costly decisions if they're not done correctly. Well, they
could be costly.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Open access New Orleans and tell us where we can
find various live navigators who speak other languages, something we're
always very uh aware we need to do.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Yeah, it's really really important. Well, I mean this is
you know, so critical, and I think it's really exciting
that you're working on it and hopefully more attention will
be paid to this. But also do you collaborate with
other major organizations around the country?
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Oh? Gotcha. For example, we were very very flattered when
both Health and Human Services seventeen different agencies federal agencies
working on food is medicine. They have a wonderful group
of coordinators on how to try to think about food
is medicine across seventeen different agencies today HHS. They came
(42:33):
to us and said, we want to sign an MoU
so that going forward with our research and coordination work
to try to streamline new initiatives and imperatives and guiding
principles we can work with you. And the same thing
with Feeding America because the hundreds and hundreds of charitable
food banks are looking to figure out how they can
(42:57):
deliver food is medicine and medically to meals or especially
medically tailored groceries, which would be much more realistic for them.
They came to us and said, we want to sign
an MoU. This doesn't come with funding, but it does
come with the understanding that we will share work going
forward and results, and that's tremendously exciting for us.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Well, you know, the future is now. You know, if
you don't start planning the seeds, nothing is going to happen.
And what you're doing, as I said, creating, you're planning
the seeds and creating the ripple effect, and it's just
creating the network to move these programs for it. Because
we all know there's a lot of bureaucracy and red
tape and detail, and particularly when you're done with corporations
(43:41):
for sure, So I you know, we'd always like to
wrap this up in a few ways. First of all,
we want to just underscore that you are an example
of a journalist that has expanded your horizons, and I
think this is important as a lesson for other journalists
(44:01):
who are grappling with how to move forward and get beyond.
I can't just be a journalist to sustain myself. You've
taken it into policy and education and really back to
your farming roots, which is how it all comes full
circle in the rest of your lifetime. And Patricia Schultz,
who wrote One Thousand Places to Go Before You Die,
(44:22):
just said you probably only have eighty summers left on average.
You only have eighty summers in your life on the
average lifespan to spend it. How would you do it?
And I said, wow, Patricia, it means I have about
fifteen left knowing or probably how would you like to
see those remaining summers or special occasions or milestones in
(44:45):
your life and career to look?
Speaker 3 (44:48):
Oh.
Speaker 5 (44:49):
All I want to do is make more people come
together to make change towards sustainability and equity, especially in
the food system, and the work I can do to
help more people afford to eat better, know how to
eat better, and eat better.
Speaker 3 (45:06):
And also the joy is watching individuals come together who
don't know each other and we've had a lot to
do with their coming to learn about each other's work
and work together. I don't think there's any greater joy,
and that's what I want to spend the rest of
my time helping facilitate.
Speaker 2 (45:27):
Well. I think that's terrific and it's true. It kind
of echoes while we created the Connected Table after am
Young Communications, I wanted to take what I love doing
and then connect more people and go back to what
I used to do as a little girl corby, which
is run around with you know, a fountain pen, interviewing
people absolutely and writing stories. So it's amazing how your
(45:49):
child and writing about food and going and trying to
understand food. So it goes full circle. And I think
that this is really exciting the trajectory you're on, and
we're really glad you took your time from your incredibly
busy schedule to join us on our table where we
like to connect our guests to the world of eating
(46:10):
and drinking.
Speaker 3 (46:11):
It's been a privilege, and I want to point out
how you and I first knew each other in helping
draw readers and people's attention to fine dining and wonderful,
very special culinary experiences, and we've both moved so much
toward helping a much broader range of people to eat
(46:35):
better and more healthfully. And I see all of us
as having been on a similar journey and trajectory, and
it's something I think we should all be pleased about it.
I think we can watch similar trajectories among many of
our colleagues from our earlier days of just thinking how
(46:55):
can we go to this new country and find everything
that's happening Openhagen.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Yeah, yeah, well that's why we enjoy traveling the world,
and to me, that's been our extended education to meet
people and learn. Thank you so much, Kirby. How can
our listeners find and follow you in the Aspen Institute.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
Oh, you're so nice. It's Aspenfood dot org. That's our program,
Just aspenfood dot org. And we're on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
Our people are really on LinkedIn and Instagram under food
in Society or under me it's Cecomer or cs comer.
But it's easy. Just go to Aspenfood dot org.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
Fantastic and we will definitely stay in touch, particularly in
this food as medicine. So thank you so much. You've
been listening to the Connected Table live with Kirbycomer. We
hope this inspired you to be active in your own community,
to see how you can facilitate change and enhance education
about better food and access to it. And always, our
(48:02):
message is to you our listeners, stay insatiably curious. Thank you,
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