You Are What You Eat

Unless you were under a rock this week, how many times were you asked “Have you seen The Social Dilemma?”

The law of unintended consequences is all around us, everywhere. And the Food sector is no different to Social Media. Much of what we eat is the result of an unintended consequence which NEEDS to be changed, just as much of social media is, well, do watch the movie!

“You are what you eat”…

…Is a simple thought, but we think it is the solution to the problem at hand. During COVID-19 our Brand Director Umang Bhattacharya was able to put this little film together for under USD 60, and the whole team had a whole lot of fun voting for the clips we liked best. Umang started a team WhatsApp group called ‘Food Thoughts’, in an attempt to get the entire company to really engage with the problem at hand. We toyed with the versions of ads where you talk about 4x height and 2x nourishment and 10x what have you…But it didn’t feel like us speaking, so we spoke from our voices instead.

 

Some astounding facts which are directly contributing to the vast number of multivitamins you are eating:

1. Almost 50% of our plant-derived calories come from just three foods: Wheat, Corn and Rice. Isn’t that astounding?

2. About 75 percent of the world’s food comes from just 12 plants and 5 animal species!

This concentration around just a few food sources puts our food systems at risk. But more than that, it robs us of nutrient dense food and varied tastes. The world today has 7 billion people, approximately 2 billion of whom are obese and 2 billion of whom are undernourished.

How did we even get here?

For example: Why did we stop breastfeeding babies after millenia? We are asked so often if someone’s 4 month can eat what we make? The answer is a big NO!

As two working mother’s whose entire office has heard that annoying beep of the breast pump, we don’t believe we should profit from choices like these (PS: No judgement intended here, whether you choose to or not, is a personal choice). What children need is to develop taste buds that can distinguish what good food is from the very start.

Where we are today is the result of a well documented industrialization of food after the Second World War. Commoditization, mass yield, and uniformity over nutrition and sustainability.

This week, the skies are orange, icebergs are melting in Antartica. Food systems are circular, and not linear, and our planet’s circle is badly broken. We simply have to do our little bit in fixing this broken link. It’s time for all food companies large and small to take the best steps we each can, to make this better. Will you join us?

 

‘You are what you eat.’ – Who said this?

‘You are what you eat’ has come to into the English language by quite a meandering route. In 1826, the French lawyer Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante:

“Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es.”
[Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are]*

*Phrases