What does it mean to be a conscious eater? How can we live a sustainable lifestyle? Do we have to make a choice between eating healthy and sacrificing flavor?
These are the questions that were tackled on World Sustainable Gastronomy Day during a fascinating webinar that was hosted by Sara Roversi from the Future Food Institute. The panelists included Barilla VP of Nutrition and Wellbeing Dondeena Bradley, How to be a Conscious Eater author Sophie Egan, and Peter Klosse from The Academy for Scientific Taste Evaluation (TASTE), who gave invaluable insight into how we can start changing behavioral patterns while hopefully saving the planet.
Sophie Egan talked about three different takeaways that truly resonated with listeners. “First, don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. It can be overwhelming to think about eating perfectly with every choice. Second, conscious eating is not only for the elite Third, it’s important to raise your voice to help shift practices by the companies you buy from. Vote with your grocery basket.”
Peter Klosse from TASTE delved a lot into messaging and talked about being conscious eaters that can help improve people’s health, the planet, and the environment. His approach is called Convenience, Affordable, and Tasty or CAT. “We need to convince people that there are foods that are just as convenient, affordable, and tasty as the food they currently eat.”
Dondeena Bradley
Finally, Dondeena Bradley, the Vice President of Nutrition and Wellbeing at Barilla discussed how much words matter when it comes to sustainability. We spoke to Dondeena after the webinar to get more in-depth on her approaches and how Barilla is helping shape the future of sustainable gastronomy.
After writing your book, Living Full Circle, how did you get together with Barilla?
Barilla said their company is really committed to wellbeing, and they’ve been going after sustainability for a long time. The world is shifting from a healthy landscape to a wellbeing mindset and they said they needed someone to lead the nutrition commitment that they have. I ended up loving their culture and people and commitment.
How do you think Covid has helped shape the conversation around wellbeing?
If you think about how being overweight is just being in a chronic state of inflammation and a virus comes in and exacerbates that, [it’s not surprising] that we saw the number of cases and how it impacts people who are already in a chronic state of inflammation. So when I look at it by countries – Italy is one of the lowest populations in terms of obesity and it’s at like 9% and the US is at 40% and you can kind of look at the stress and the lifestyle as a real indicator for that. It’s simplifying it of course. But that’s why we’re focusing on hidden stressors [at Barilla] and slowing down and taking our time because otherwise, it’s killing us.
During the webinar, many of the panelists talked about sustainability having a messaging problem. How do you deal with this?
Overdosing on taste messages can lead to overconsumption and overdosing on telling people to do this or do that, can make them shy away from healthy foods. I think there’s this really interesting sweet spot in the way to talk about things besides just telling someone it tastes good. When you talk about pasta, after eating it you feel full longer, especially if you sit around the table and really enjoy food in the way we advocate that people eat. Sometimes I wish we could just do this huge experiment where we just drop the functional aspects of food and really talk about the social and emotional aspects of food because I think we’ve lost sight of the relationships we have with food, especially in the messaging.
What do you say to people who think pasta might be bad for you?
Pasta is not unhealthy. In fact, pasta is my carb of choice. For whatever reason, even the scientists have put pasta in a corner and lumped it in with just carbs when all it is a high-quality flour, water, and an extrusion process that actually makes it better for us because the way it traps the starch. It has a low glycemic index so when you eat it the glucose that comes from it is very slow and steady. And we act as if it’s a piece of white bread and it’s absolutely not true.
Can you explain the Barilla Food Pyramid?
Basically, the traditional pyramid is where the things at the bottom are the things you should eat more, fruits and vegetables and that goes up to the foods that you should eat less of. The very typical structure that health professionals use. With respect to the Barilla pyramid, is if you flipped it upside down then you’re also looking at things around choice. And at the top, there are things like meat and dairy and other food choices that basically use a lot more water and a lot more land resources and so at the bottom it consists of fruits and vegetables and grains as a good way to eat. Basically, it forms the basis of the Mediterranean diet. It kind of highlights the links between the two aspects of the food with the nutritional value and the environmental impact and I think we’re looking for ways to bring that one step further so people can actually in real-time understand that integration.
What are your goals at Barilla in terms of wellbeing and sustainability?
Strategically I’m part of a team that looks at longer-term goals for the company. How do we think about food and nutrition goals for the next five years, the next ten years, and looking at the latest research? And then I work with my team and ask how can we do better? We put on our science hats and we analyze data to help us form strategic, big picture, and long-term goals.
Mid-term we partner with our brands. I meet with a brand person every day. One of our products is Wasa which is a crispbread based in rye from Sweden, and we talk about how to bring forward the benefits of rye and how people can understand that. There’s a lot of constraints because of regulations for how you can message things. Rich in fiber is one of the ways you can talk about that, particularly in Europe, but rich in fiber doesn’t sound very tasty. So, we’re constantly trying to figure out ways to talk about taste and nutrition in order to get people to try it.
And finally, I would say the third thing is right now, as I’m new to the company, I’m embedding the science of wellbeing. Because I really do believe that we’re unleashing the spirit of the Mediterranean diet, and its importance, but we’re losing the lifestyle piece. So, I’ve been selectively working with people to take some projects on that just immerse them in that in an experiential way and then kind of step back and say how do we look at our own value chain, how do we think about the health of our employees, so I feel like I’m a catalyst for that.
If we can increase everyone’s capacity to try, it’ll have a positive impact on everything that we do.