26. Walter Willett, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Food Lab Talk

Dr. Walter Willett is a physician and Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He also co-chairs the EAT-Lancet Commission, a group of 37 world-leading scientists working to determine how to provide a healthy diet for a future population of 10 billion people while respecting planetary boundaries. Dr. Willet’s career has centered on the development of methods to study the effects of diet on the occurrence of major diseases. His research has provided unparalleled insight into the long-term health consequences of our food choices.

Walter Willett: “Look at where you are and start off working there. Ultimately at a much larger scale, you'd like to have an impact. But if you don't have control of the dials and the levers at that level, your own food service and wherever you happen to be working or studying can often be improved a lot, and you learn a lot from that experience. I certainly have. Almost everybody has part of their life in a workplace or in their community that they could be making some improvements. And a lot of times that's where the biggest changes start.”

00:22 Intro to Walter

02:43 Connecting human health and the climate crisis

04:24 The Great Acceleration Theory

06:29 Three pillars for food systems transformation

08:47 Harnessing community action to catalyze systems change

10:30 The history of our food choices and related complexity of shifting diets

13:31 Levers to positively influence population diet quality

16:21 What global consumption habits tell us about public health trends

18:02 Lessons from effective grassroots movements

20:50 Building trust, providing better data, and acknowledging uncertainty

24:01 Integrating justice into food systems solutions

26:37 Generational awareness and action on sustainability

28:28 Embracing disciplinary diversity for systems transformation

29:36 Why patience is the #1 skill for change management

31:40 Takeaways for changemakers

Links

• The EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health
• The Great Acceleration Theory
• Scientific Review: Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems
• Summary Report: EAT-Lancet Commission Summary Report (includes Five Strategies for a Great Food Transformation)
• Research Article: Improvements In US Diet Helped Reduce Disease Burden And Lower Premature Deaths, 1999–2012; But Overall Diet Remains Poor

• Video: What is a healthy and sustainable diet? The EAT-Lancet Lecture - Johan Rockström & Walter Willett

• EAT-Lancet 2.0

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*The views expressed by the guests in this podcast don't necessarily represent the host’s views, nor those of his employer.