Food and Society at Aspen Institute

Food insecurity rates in Canada are startling. So I learned at a fascinating day-long hashtag #WorldFoodDay conference in Toronto organized by Maple Leaf Foods Inc's Sarah Stern. Some of the statistics in her keynote: a national food insecurity rate of 23%, and 59% of voters in one survey choosing food insecurity over taxes or rising food prices as the issue that matters most. And then Neil Hetherington, of Daily Bread Food Bank, told stories that stuck with the crowd, even if all of them are already engaged in social-determinants issues: visits to the food bank per month went from 60K pre-pandemic to 330K post-pandemic, and are now rising by 12-14K per month; 59% of clients have post-secondary education, and 51% of new clients are employed. Fully one in 10 Torontonians now rely on the food bank to feed their families--including a CBC producer he knew from another life, fully employed, whose salary doesn't go far enough to feed her two children. "They've done everything right," Hetherington said. "These are your colleagues." I got to talk about Food and Society at Aspen Institute's Food is Medicine Research Action Plan along with Naomi Gunnell, MPA of Walmart, which made the plan possible, and Neal Curran of Reinvestment Partners, which does great FIM work in NC, CA, and other states. For once the US is ahead of Canada in using reimbursed nutrition supports to help treat and prevent chronic diseases, many of them caused by diet, and attendees wanted to learn from US experience. This being Canada, there were many "hopey-changey" notes, as Hetherington only slightly dismissively called them. Andrew Furey, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador provinces, spoke of wanting to increase monthly income supports--a topic that came up casually and constantly, even with complaints about Byzantine bureaucracy, as it never would in the US. And the controlling stockholder in Maple Leaf Foods Inc, Michael McCain, said he was all in to mobilize the private sector to help hunger relief--and stayed the whole day. An example for other corporate leaders. More, um, leafs the US can take: the concept of "cultural accountability," a term used by Joseph LeBlanc, of NOSM University | Université EMNO, who works closely with Indigenous populations and advocates for nutrition education in medical schools. LeBlanc, who reminded us that the Native word for "medicine" means "strength of the land," told the story of an older woman in excellent health who went to see her main doctor and described her morning breakfast of fish-head broth. The doctor "turned up her nose" and dismissed it--and, LeBlanc said, "slammed the door on that woman's trust in the health-care system." Trust and increased help of many kinds: hopey-changey notes we all left with, along with a renewed commitment to understand where need is in our communities.

Eden Vardy is the founder and executive director of The Farm Collaborative, a non-profit organization in Aspen, CO that aims to connect children and community through farming and food. Eden is a member of the inaugural class of Food and Society at Aspen Institute's Food Leaders Fellows, a group of the country’s most promising emerging food leaders who come together to ignite personal transformation, promote cross-sector collaboration, and create scalable change. We caught up with Eden at this summer's Aspen Ideas Festival where he shared his thoughts on leadership and what inspires him. This is Leading Voices, a new series from the Aspen Institute where every Wednesday you’ll hear directly from leaders about what it takes to lead and how they got to where they are. 💡 Follow us to make sure you don't miss any leadership lessons along the way.

Even more thrilled to have U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announce Food and Society at Aspen Institute's exciting new partnership on Food is Medicine!