An acclaimed US food politics expert, visiting Edinburgh, said that she was shocked at the levels of food poverty and the demand at food banks in Scotland.
Professor Marion Nestle, who is in the country to receive the Edinburgh Medal for her contribution to the well-being and understanding of humanity through the sciences, spoke of her dismay after talking with food banks and advocacy groups.
She said: “The big shock was that they were all talking about how great the demand was and how much has increased since the pandemic. More people are having more struggles because they don’t have enough money. And that’s what I was hearing from one after another of these groups all of whom are doing fantastic work.”
According to figures from Department for Work and Pensions figures on food bank use.,4% of families in Scotland used food banks in the year ending March 2022. The Trussell Trust reported in December 2022 that food bank use in Scotland was even more widespread than during the coronavirus pandemic
Speaking at an event at the Edinburgh Science Festival, the author of The Politics of Food, said she believed that food poverty, disease and the climate could be tackled through the food system by what she called “triple duty” policies.
"Triple duty” was a term she said, she first came across in two papers published in The Lancet in 2019, the Eat Lancet Report, which asked how the world feeds a planet containing 10 billion people without destroying it, and the Global Syndemic Report Of Obesity, Undernutrition, And Climate Change.
READ MORE: Scotland and north of England food bank usage highest in UK, figures show
The Eat Lancet report, she noted, had proposed a diet that “had 50 percent meat than is consumed in industrialised countries and twice as many plants”.
“They said that if you reduced red meat consumption you would have healthier diets, more prevention of disease, more land available for sustainable agriculture and you would lower greenhouse gas emissions. Triple duty effects from one dietary change.”
The Global Syndemic report also proposed "triple duty" actions, tackling all three problems of obesity, undernutrition, and climate.
“Their analysis,” noted Prof Nestle, “said that the cause of the food system that we have now is a ‘consumptogenic economic system’, which I guess is their polite word for capitalism."
The problem, she said, was "systems that prioritise corporate power and externalise the health and environmental costs of the food production system and neglect the risks of giving corporations that more power.”
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In a week in which Diabetes UK published a report that revealed diabetes cases in the UK have topped 5 million, she drew attention to the link between ultra-processed food and type II diabetes.
“People who eat a lot of diet ultra-processed foods, it has been shown in 14 systematic reviews and meta-analysis since 2009, have an increased riskks of obesity, typeII diabetes, strokes and mortality.”
Ultra-processed foods are foods that are industrially produced, full of additives, and can’t be made in home kitchens. She noted that these are foods that "20th-century capitalism loves... because they are really profitable for the people who make them and sell them.”
Prof Nestle called for a "transformative social movement" around food.
She also said she was “thrilled beyond belief to discover that Scotland is working on a plan for food for the nation” tackling the range of issues she has raised.
“I am very interested in the Scottish Good Food Nation Act. But the progress seems slow. That is an opportunity that really should not be missed because it is an opportunity to establish a food policy that is going to do all the things that need to be done. I’m quite envious.”
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