The Leading Voices in Food

Today we're talking with Kevin Hoban and Jordie Simkovic, the creators and starring characters of Captain & Cat, a popular YouTube kids show with 200,000 subscribers and over 200 million views. The educational show for preschoolers tells stories using entertaining songs and narratives. They've just launched a new series called Explorasaurus: Healthy Food and You, aimed at teaching kids about healthy food and how it's grown. Their first episode about SugarBee apple growers in Washington State has over 500,000 views on YouTube.
Interview Summary
So, for people who aren't familiar with your show, for those few people out there who may not be, tell us about Captain & Cat, the characters, what they do, and how did you guys get started doing this?
Kevin - Gotcha. Well, Jordan and I have been best friends since college. We went to Northwestern University in Chicago, and we were in a band together. We would perform live on campus, in the streets. And we realized that kids would stop and really enjoyed what we were doing. And I think that was the seed of the whole thing was, "Hey, maybe our act that we have, this two-man show is something for kids." And then we graduated. We both moved out to LA. Jordan came out here to act. I moved out here to produce TV shows, and on the weekends, we started performing for kids.
Jordie - Yeah. Actually, we did a show called The Bubble Show. And we were doing probably six to eight shows a weekend for about 10 years. And then during the pandemic we started putting our stuff online because all live performances stopped. And for about three years it was nothing and crickets, and really just our parents watching. And then we won the award for best kid song of the year in 2023. And then that kinda put us on the radar of YouTube Kids who invited us to be one of the featured channels on their platform. And for a while we were doing jingles and music and educational songs and stuff like that. And then towards the end of last summer, we had connected with SugarBee Apples and that whole kind of growing cooperative out there about doing an apple song. And they actually were like, "You know what would be even cooler than that? Why don't you come out here and meet the farmers and see the harvest in action?" And we're like, "Whoa, this is really cool." And honestly, it was a life-changing experience. We now say that we have aunts, uncles, and cousins out in Central Washington. And honestly, I grew up in Miami, I went to college in Chicago, and then I've lived in Los Angeles ever since. I had never stepped foot on a farm, really, in any significant way. And just to be able to get exposure to this incredible pocket of people that otherwise I would have never had a chance to see and meet was completely eye-opening.
Kevin - I would say I went out there thinking, "This is a huge apple company. They sell them all across the country in every grocery store." I went out there thinking, "Well, this is sort of like a big industrial corporate farm," right? Must be just one giant farm with robots harvesting apples. And what we found was it was a co-op of family-owned farms. Smaller families. We met the families. We met the grandparents, the parents, the kids, the grandkids. And we learned so much about apples and how you grow them. That every apple is picked by hand, first and foremost.
Jordie - We honestly expected there was going to be like a machine just going around and shaking the apples off, you know. Because you have no idea. And there's been so much dialogue around factory farming, which has become kind of like the negative word. And honestly, yeah, as Kevin was saying, we expected just a giant faceless corporation there. And it was the exact opposite.
Can I ask you guys a question? I'd like to dive in a little deeper than this, because you're saying something that resonates with me very personally. When I moved to North Carolina from Connecticut, I was offered the opportunity through the North Carolina Farm Bureau to do a tour of farms. Two-day intensive tour of farms in Eastern North Carolina. And we went to a blueberry farm that harvests millions of pounds of blueberries a year. Soybeans, corn, hog farmers, chicken. I mean, we did everything. And it was incredibly interesting. And there was the technology part of it, or the lack of technology that I was learning about, just as you related. But there was also a very moving human part of this. The people, I thought, were really interesting. And the generational nature of farming and all. So, tell me a little bit more about the people part of it. How much that affected you.
Jordie - We met the farmer who like seven generations back, their family introduced the Granny Smith apple to the United States, you know? It's going back and we literally see it's a whole family working and living very close to where they farm. And so, kind of just, it's Uncle Farmer Peoples now, you know? And so, we were kinda talking to him about chemicals and pesticides and stuff like that off the record because we're like, "All right, so now tell us how much you spraying on these?" He's like, "Why would I ever do anything destructive to this land? This is where my family and I live."
Kevin - Yeah. And I think you also picked up on the pressure that these farmers feel to carry on the farm itself. It's been in their family for generations. They need to keep it running. And all of the pressures and anxieties that come with that just to keep this farm afloat. Because again, it's not some huge corporation, it's a family farm that's part of this co-op of other family farms. And they've all kind of banded together to pool their resources to keep everything going, which is just a wonderful... It's a wonderful lesson, I think. These farms rely on people working together day in and day out for their own collective good.
Jordie - The guy who runs the packaging facility is the brother-in-law of one of the growers. So, we thought that they were pranking us, because literally every car that drove by, they're like, "Oh, that's my brother-in-law. Oh, that's my aunt. That's my niece," in this little town right off Lake Chelan. And you really see the impact. We actually were just there last week again to film a new segment about apple blossoms and pollination and stuff like that. And one of the coolest experiences we had there was we went to an elementary school. One of the families in the co-op had donated shoes to a lot of the kids in the elementary school, and we helped go distribute them there. It's honestly so cool to see that the same way that LA is built around the film industry, there they're literally built around the apple and cherry industry, and pears. Ever since we went there, I off-camera would not, you would not catch me eating anything other than a SugarBee. And that's the truth.
You know, so interesting to hear you talk about this and your experience with the apple production facility and the people being related to one another. It's exactly what I found on a sweet potato farm here. North Carolina's the largest producer of sweet potatoes, and I visited a very large farm owned by a man and his daughter. I mean, they really ran this business. And they were farmers at their heart, but this was $100 million a year business. And they're looking at international trade markets and deciding when to release the sweet potato. I mean highly sophisticated financial decisions they were making. But at the end of the day, they were related to their land, and that's what this was all about. I mean, to say it was a spiritual relationship doesn't... I don't know what word captures it. But it was something very special in that sometimes you think about farmers exploiting the land, and that happens with the big factory farms. But in these cases, you find farmers want to be at peace with their land. And I heard it many times, that they wanted to turn the land over in better condition to their children than it was turned over to them. It's obvious from affectively and emotionally the way you're talking about it and the way I'm talking about it, something very special is occurring here. How do you communicate that in a video, especially to children?
Kevin - Well, I think for us, we always lead with the enthusiasm that we have, but then also trying to tease out the enthusiasm that the farmers have themselves. Because some of them are not used to being on camera, and certainly not on a YouTube Kids show. But once we ask the right questions and probe a little bit of, for an example, we just shot with them last week. And we asked for students that we work with around the country to submit questions. And one of the questions was, "Does the farmer talk to his apples?" And we asked one of the farmers that, and he lit up, and you just saw all the sudden that passion that he really does have for his apples. And I think the more that we can bring that out of the farmers, show kids and families how passionate and excited they are about the fruit, that hopefully that will get the kids excited as well.
You can imagine the farmer talking to an apple when it's falls from 30 feet on his head.
Jordie - They're pretty sturdy up there, honestly. And I think another way to kinda communicate the care is to show how much work goes into it. Because literally, this was informative for us just because going from the blossoms, they go through and prune by hand. And hand select it because there are so many variables involved. And what we found is the confluence of this incredible intergenerational wisdom and technique and craft that has been passed down and honed. Also, kind of meeting within the packaging facility. The technology there is honestly mind-blowing. And I think it's only getting more and more advanced.
We shot an episode at a dairy farm. And one of the farms we visited recently had AI milkers - AI robotic milkers. And we're like, "Oh, does this make it so that the cows have a different and negative relationship with you since they're used to robots?" And they're like, "Actually, it's the exact opposite. Now, they're much friendlier with us because they know that we're not coming to do anything, you know. We're not coming to milk them." It's incredible to see. And I recommend everybody getting a chance to go visit a farm and see where their food is made, because it changes your relationship with how you eat, I think.
You know, I can see why your offerings to children and their parents would be so popular. Because you guys have this neat sense of wonder. You know, you learn, you're out there, you're meeting interesting people, and these interactions sound like they mean the world to you. And of course, the wonder is something amazing that children have naturally. And if that can keep invigorated for as many years as possible, hooray.
Kevin - Yeah. You asked earlier whether you should refer to us as Captain and Cat or Kevin and Jordan. And I think the truth is they've become one in the same. I mean, when we go out there and we film these episodes. Sure, we're in costumes and we're wearing bright colors. But for the most part it's just us, Kevin and Jordan. They're excited to learn about whatever we're talking about or talking to. And there is a natural curiosity that I think we both have. We're not acting, we're not faking it. To go to these farms and see, down one row of apples they're harvesting hundreds of thousands of apples. And they've got to get it done within a matter of weeks. You don't have to pretend, that's just impressive. Yeah. That is just impressive to us.
Jordie - And the world is cool out there, honestly. I don't put on anything. We actually pride ourselves on not talking to kids in a silly voice. I talk in our episodes exactly the way I'm talking now. We don't dumb down our content, and we love having kind of complex words and complex ideas, which we then take upon ourselves to translate into simile that helps our audience understand. You know? We're processing all this in real time. And Kevin and I come from an educational background. I'm a teacher at heart, and I've always have been. And it's just amazing to be able to receive and absorb this information, and at the same time relate it to an audience that we believe will catch up with us if we use the right words.
Tell me how you remain optimistic. So, let's talk about kids and food. The average child is exposed to tens of thousands of messages over a period of time that are mainly for unhealthy food. They're being given food in schools and elsewhere that is engineered to hijack the brain chemistry to keep them coming back for more. You know, Tony the Tiger is not on plain cornflakes, and the Trix Rabbit is not on an unsugared cereal. And you can go on and on. They're obviously exposed to a very tough environment. Are you optimistic that can get turned around?
Kevin - I'm optimistic just based on what we've seen with what we're doing with healthy foods and produce. I think we are trying to, in some sense, be the Tony Tiger of apples, right? We want to be there going, "Hey, apples are really exciting because they're healthy, and they're good for you, and they're sweet." And if we can get kids excited about it, we feel like we've done our part. And what we've seen by this classroom program, we're working with classrooms around the country where we're sending in our content, but we're also sending apples with the help of SugarBee. And then the kids and the teachers have been filming videos and sending it to us about how excited they are to eat apples. And I think kids are wonderful. I have two of them of my own. And they will get excited about what you get excited about as an adult. If you say, "Apples are the coolest, most fun thing I've seen," they get excited about it, too. And they wanna learn, and they wanna share, and they wanna talk about it.
Jordie - There's also a really cool, I think, trend that's happening within the produce industry which we've noticed. And we've noticed that since we've gotten in, which is that it's not enough to just be on the shelf anymore. You want to have a branding, and you want to have a logo, and you want to have a messaging, and you want to have connotations around your brand. And I think produce companies are starting to catch up and use a lot of the same marketing tactics and strategies that kinda junk food was using for a long time. And you know what I always say? It's this. If you actually take the time to bite into an apple and really enjoy it, there's nothing sweeter and more nuanced, in my opinion, than that. I think the more we can change the relationship with how and when we eat, the more we'll start to appreciate food that's of a different quality. And I think bringing attention to that, we're obviously swinging since probably the 1950s, maybe even earlier than that, in terms of just mindless, quick-to-go eating. But I think you see that we're changing the way that we think about how and when we eat. And I think that will favor the swing back towards it. And that's why, honestly, I think we're just optimistic people no matter what. If we went out there and did a despairing series about healthy foods, then that's not going to work, you know? But we love what we do, and we really believe in it, so that's our cause for hope.
You mentioned interacting with classrooms. So, you could just post your material out there and not get involved with actual children and actual classrooms. Why the decision to do that? And tell us how that works. How do you interact with classrooms, and are teachers responsive? What kind of reaction are you getting?
Kevin - Well, this actually came out of a conversation we had with the people at SugarBee. They said, " We would love to get into classrooms to teach kids about healthy foods. We've been asked before to send our apples to classrooms, but we just don't know what to do or how to do that necessarily." And so, we took it upon ourselves to start reaching out to teachers one by one on email, Instagram, TikTok, and say, "Hey, we have this healthy food episode. And we're going to create a worksheet for kids, so they learn how apples are grown. And SugarBee has generously said that they will send a bag of apples to every classroom that wants to be participate in this." And we didn't know how teachers were going to react, if they had the time for that or interest, and the response was overwhelmingly, "Yes, please, and thank you." I think teachers are looking for new lesson plans, interactive lesson plans, and obviously want to encourage kids to be eating healthy. And the fact that we can facilitate this to hundreds of classrooms around the country, it was a win for all sides really. And then we didn't ever ask anybody to film anything or post anything on social media. That's not part of the program. But they took it upon themselves to film videos of either the teachers or the kids thanking us. Thanking Sugarbee for doing this. It was more rewarding than I think we even realized going into this.
Jordie - There have been people who reached out to us and got back to us, and they're like, "We just want you to know somebody's offering us a scam of free apples using your name." And we're like, "Actually, that's not a scam. That's a real thing." And I think we all see a huge opportunity. And one of our guiding philosophies and what we've realized is this: at home, you're very set in your ways, and you've created your habits around eating. And it's very hard at that point to disrupt it because at home, you're rebelling against your parents, you're set in your ways, you're not willing to try anything. And that becomes a position or in a place where you kinda dig your heels into the ground and say, "This is what I like, and that's it." But in school, we found that everybody is so open to trying new things. I remember growing up, I would just, anything that they'd put out at snack for me, I would eat. And, because it was a nice break from being in school, you know? And we think that hitting them in this environment is actually much more effective even than hitting them at home with this. And if we're looking to create lasting habits and changing the narrative around these healthy foods. The last thing we want to do is make it feel like you should eat this. Because the second someone tells you what you should do, that becomes the last thing in the world you want to do.
Can you give us a peek at what kind of foods you might be wanting to take on next?
Kevin - Ooh, spoilers. Yeah, we got some cool ones. We just released an episode this month about Sunkist mandarins. We went to Mandarin Farms in Central California. Same thing, we filmed with the farmers. It's also a co-op, all family farms. We went to the processing plant where they wash the mandarins and sort them and bag them and ship them. And so those mandarins are going to go out to classrooms in the next couple of weeks, and then we've got some really fun stuff planned. So basically, our goal with this is honestly to create a healthy food/product of the month club that we would send into participating schools. It's going to be very, very seasonal because we kind of want to create that sense of it. And luckily, we've got a lot of different brands signed on already. Our summer is looking pretty busy, which is a blessing for us. And really a blessing for the kids that we hope will be learning about this and receiving new foods.
It's not too hard to get kids to like the idea of eating something sweet like an apple or mandarins. What about things like broccoli and cauliflower and Brussels sprouts and asparagus? Will you turn your attention to those at some point?
Kevin - Absolutely. Yeah.
Jordie - Absolutely.
Kevin - We're up for the challenge. I know from my own experience with my five-year-old, if you dip anything in ranch, they'll like it.
Or, or do a deep fry it. Or deep fry it.
Jordie - Right? But it's a pairing issue, you know what I mean? And it's a context issue. So, it's the way you eat it. So raw broccoli is probably not your gateway broccoli. You know what I mean? Right. But you can always find different ways, whether or not it's incorporating it into a smoothie, incorporating it into a sandwich, or anything like that. It's kind of a gateway thing. And there's also a cool thing we're doing. So, for example, we are talking to a potato company. We don't want teachers to have to go home and make mashed potatoes, right? Because that's a barrier to entry, and that's kind of a pain. But what we found is a little workaround with a few of these is like, oh, there's an opportunity to send potatoes into classrooms and have them grow their own potato and get a sense of how it goes. It's not only about trying the food, because honestly, nothing has given me more appreciation for blackberries than trying to grow blackberries myself. You know? And so being part of the process and realizing, wow, the stuff that we're getting is remarkable. And remarkably effective and really delicious and gigantic, and the quantity of it is mind-blowing. So just there's so many different angles that we're getting kids into the idea of farming. And getting their hands dirty, and that's stuff that I feel like is really, really missing from modern society.
Your messaging is focusing on how delicious these foods can be, how interesting their story is, who grew them, where it came from, and things like that. Is part of the messaging what these foods do for you? That mean that they can make you run faster, jump higher, whatever. I mean, is there a functional part of what you're trying to communicate?
Kevin - Yes, absolutely. We try to say it gives you superpowers. And then with each food that we're working with, we do get into the science and try to present it in a way that's appropriate for young kids. But getting into even what flavonoids are in an apple, we just  did a whole segment of that and all the nutritious benefits. We've partnered with nutritionists. We were just filming with one in Washington to try to expose kids to the ideas that there are, inside of an apple, all of these natural vitamins and things that can help them. And we've even been doing fiber. Now, trying to present fiber in a way that ... doesn't say poop.
Jordie - But we've started saying poop on our show, by the way. We're like, "You know what? We can say it as long as it's an academic context," you know?
Kevin - Yeah. Yes, exactly. We find the way to toe the line, and quite honestly, kids will lean in if they hear something that makes them giggle a little bit. But understanding, I mean, even for me as a grown adult, understanding that apples are a good way to clean out your digestive system. That fiber is good for that. It's even a good reminder for me at my age to be like, "Oh, yeah." If I'm feeling a little bit of indigestion, maybe I need some more fiber.
Jordie - And a cool thing we also did on our Sunkist episode, Captain and I actually dressed up as these ridiculous California surfer bro characters named Sonny Sunkist and Manny Mandarin, and the idea was that we were talking about why it's a perfect snack for surfing. But at the same time, we're also giving kind of the sugar pill treatment, which is like we're doing these ridiculous characters, but at the same time we're actually providing information about why they're so healthy for you. We're doing one about whey where Kevin and I are gonna go and hijack a LA Fitness and as these muscle bros and talk about why whey protein is so rich in protein and calcium and stuff like that. We're always evolving, and each episode ends up being different. But the one thing that we've found is like the story that we can tell of these is really infinite.
And will there be any part of your messaging that will talk about foods kids might eat less of? I mean, you're focusing very positively and optimistically, so the answer to this could very well be no, because it just becomes complicated. But you've got lots of kids eating sugared cereals and drinking sugared beverages and things like that. I'm just wondering if that's part of the picture. It needn't be, but I'm wondering if it is.
Kevin - I think up until now our thought has been if we can try to get them equally or more excited about the healthy options. Hopefully that's enough to sway them in that direction. And honestly, as a parent, I think just giving kids the idea of getting excited about produce, that they go home to their parents and then maybe the parents' job is just a little bit easier. Because I'm faced with that every day when my daughter says she wants a snack, and she wants candy, and I'm trying to say, "No, how about this apple over here?" If we can be on Team Apple, you know, if we can be the helper to the parents that's encouraging the kids to eat a little healthier, I think that we've done our job there.
Jordie -  I think it's never about us wanting to disparage or discourage or make anybody feel bad about their habits, because I think a lot of the problem around our eating habits in this country is that there's a lot of shame involved in it. And you're not only getting a dose of those unhealthy foods that kind of give a quick release of dopamine or whatever. It tricks your body into thinking it's also you're getting a little dose of that shame. And the last thing we ever want to do is to turn into police, you know, and policing each other. Nobody wants to take advice from the police, you know? And nobody wants to feel disparaged or talked down to. It's interesting. We never really kinda thought about it, and obviously we just want to keep it an entertaining and enticing picture rather than any sort of daunting... because when you get into the facts of some of those unhealthy foods, it can really seem a little bleak.
And it is. Well, and making foods seem like fun and having] interesting characters associated with them is something the food industry has done successfully forever. It makes perfect sense to do that, but attach these things to the healthy choices.
Kevin - Let's use their tricks for good. Lord knows we're steeped in them, you know?
Jordie - Yeah. Let's wield that as a cause and weapon for good. I think that's what
we're trying to do.
Kevin - We've also been learning about the history, a little bit, of produce, of the produce business, and how for so long these companies looked at their products as commodities, right? It wasn't necessarily SugarBee apple, it was, "We're a company that sells apples. We're trying to be in as many grocery stores as you can." Which I understand. That makes sense. But I think what probably was lost in the process was if you're just a commodity and every apple is just a different Red Delicious or Golden Delicious. You're losing that opportunity to put a fun character behind it. And I think you're seeing now a lot more of these even different produce companies coming together. Like avocados from Mexico. I think is a great example that you see a lot more of their branding and their advertising where all of these avocado growers are coming together and saying " let's just market avocados. Let's get people excited about the food itself."
Jordie - I think there's also going to be an interesting trend away from going to physical grocery stores that will only continue in the future. So I think if we're ordering online from let's say a whatever warehouse, Amazon warehouse, right? And they have 20 different apples there, it's really important to have brand loyalty. And that becomes things that they're having to consider now. And we just happened to release this series at a really nice time, which they're all trying to do that. Because probably 10 years ago they would've been like, "We don't listen to apples. They sell themselves." You know? But now you're dealing with so much competition and so much branding and so many name things that It can be overwhelming. And at a certain point you might just disconnect unless you know what you're looking for.
What I found that historically is that the people selling these foods were pretty splintered. There would be a plum association and an apple association and a pear association. And, they're loosely grouped into a broader produce organization and things like that. But those organizations tend to not to be very well-funded or have a lot of clout because they were so splintered. I wonder if that's beginning to change. Do you see any evidence that the industry as a whole is beginning to unite effectively?
Kevin - It's funny. Just on Instagram alone, there are, like, places that it's like, " we just love cranberries so much." And then it's like cranberries from Wisconsin. That has their own little thing, you know? I feel like there hasn't been that coalescence, and I feel like also there's probably some sort of advocacy group. I think it's largely statewide policy as well from what I've gleaned off of this. They're each focusing on their own state policy.
Jordie - And then maybe there's a national organization. And this honestly, we are just scratching the surface on this because this is more complex than we could have ever imagined. And we are learning every single day in our talks. And we love to just go out to lunch with the people who are on the business side and straddling the business and the farming side. And the things that they are grappling with are fascinating because all these companies ship internationally. So, you're subject to international law, like weather, there are so many different variables that we're like, "I've never felt so connected to the weather in my life."
Well, before talking to you guys, I was having a day of my ordinary level of hopefulness, but it's gone way the heck up now.And you make me feel really optimistic about the future. And I love the work you're doing. And boy, you could have no two more perfect people doing this kind of thing. And also, I wanted to say, I've done hundreds of podcasts, and I think this is the first one ever where I haven't asked a single question from the prearranged script. It just flows so naturally with you two.
That's how we do this series, too. Oh, yeah. Farmers will be like, "Can you send us a script of what we got?" And we'll send them just the most generic questions of all time. But the things we end up talking about conversation that grows naturally, in my opinion, is by far the best one. So here we are just talking like old friends, you know?
That's nice. Yeah, and it's much more human that way. And that's what registers with people. So, in any event, thank you for the good work you do. And I just hope this incredible visibility you have just continues to grow, and that more and more kids are exposed to it. Congratulations.
BIOS
Jordie "Cat" Simkovic was born in Miami, FL and has worked in early childhood education for almost 20 years, specializing in children with ADHD and learning disabilities. He is a classical flautist and enjoys studying music, martial arts, and gardening. He majored in political science and international studies at Northwestern University, and was this close to applying to law school, but is glad he didn't, although he still teaches the LSAT. This new series about farming and healthy foods is the culmination of his interest in nutrition, education, and meeting new people all across the country. 
"Captain" Kevin Hoban, born in Detroit, Michigan, has spent two decades travelling the world and producing content for networks like National Geographic and the Discovery Channel. As a lifelong camp counselor, he's always had a passion for teaching children in a fun, interactive (and often musical) setting. Captain & Cat's "Explorasaurus" series allows him to share his love of exploring and learning about the world with kids and families! Kevin lives in Los Angeles with his wife, two adorable daughters and his dog, Charlie.

North Carolina is one of the nation's top agricultural producing states. And it is also a state where one in seven residents don't have the resources to provide food on their table every day. Today, I'm talking with Amy Beros, president and CEO of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina - the state's largest food bank. Each year, this organization provides 95 million meals distributed through more than 700 partner agencies, food pantries, congregate meal sites, backpack programs. And they do this in 34 counties in the state. In our conversation today, we will explore the policy issues that this food bank and many food banks face.
Interview Transcript
Amy, I want to ask a really simple question about what got you to this place. So how in the world did you get involved in food banking?
Oh, gosh. Well, you know, when I was growing up, I didn't know what food banking was. But I knew that it was our responsibility to make sure that neighbors helped neighbors. So, I grew up volunteering what I know now is a partner agency of the local food bank in my hometown. And as I moved across the country, I found ways to get involved. When I moved here to North Carolina about 16 years ago, I found food banks. I've been working professionally in food banking for a little over 12 years now. But I believe that food is a basic human right, and it has been my life's work to make sure that we're doing everything we can to ensure everyone has what they need.
Thank you for sharing that. And I can imagine over the years, as I've also been involved in food banking but on the board side or as a volunteer, that this is a work that we sometimes think it's just about moving food and providing that. However, there's a whole policy framework that, sort of, surrounds and influences and shapes what food banking and what the work of the partner agencies, the food pantries on the ground, what they do. I wonder if you could help make this a little bit more real for us. Could you tell us a little bit about how policy becomes personal in your work? Can you share a moment when that really came true for you?
Oh, I think the most recent blinding moment was last year during the government shutdown. Well, one, there's a lot of noise on TV right now, right, and in the media, but you hear of these massive numbers, and we know that our elected leaders are looking at these numbers on spreadsheets. And we see the humans behind those numbers and their stories. And these are thousands and thousands of stories like the ones that we hear about each day. Last year, during the shutdown, a father of five reached out to me and said, "I have five children. I work at the federal prison. I'm missing my second paycheck. For the first time in my life, I don't know how I'm going to put food on the table." Or the SNAP delay and disruption that we had. For the first time in our history during that shutdown, a mother reaching out and saying, "I don't know what to do. I've told my children to eat everything they can at school because I don't know what we're going to have when we get home, if we don't have these benefits." And that's just two stories and one crisis. And so many of our neighbors are living a crisis every day. These systemic issues. And we see those humans and hear their stories each day. And I think that's when it becomes personal. These decisions, one stroke of a pen, impacts food for hundreds of thousands of neighbors.
Thank you for sharing that. I teach a class called the Economics of the Public Sector, and we often talk about policies that provide support to individuals. And it can be easy to talk about these policies as if they're just decisions that policymakers make, but there are real people who are dependent on these policies. And when they don't work or when rules change, it has significant implications for how people navigate. And so, I appreciate the work that you all are doing. I want to take a step back and talk about food banking. And while I know a lot of our listeners are familiar with food banking and food pantries, I do know that people kind of mix those two terms up. Amy, would you just tell us, broadly speaking, what's a food bank, and then what are the partner agencies. And how do they relate to one another?
Yes, absolutely. Our food bank serves 34 counties in North Carolina. And as you shared, we work with over 700 partners. We work with growers. We work with over 80 local farmers in North Carolina. We work with manufacturers in North Carolina. We work with all of the retail chains to get food out into the community. And we do that primarily through those partners because they are embedded into the community. And what we're really proud of here, and I think something of how food banking has changed, you know, many people still think of a food bank as a dimly lit church basement pantry. And that maybe was food banking 30 years ago. But today it is part of the modern food system. We are a critical piece of infrastructure within the food system as part of the charitable food system. And one of the things that I'm most proud of is we live in North Carolina, this beautiful agriculture state, and over half of what we distribute each year is produce and protein. And that is what neighbors are asking for, too. Because neighbors want the healthy fresh foods, and it's also the most expensive to buy. And food banking today is not just focused on moving calories and getting pounds of food out to the community. It's focused on meals and nutritious meals and how to provide that nutrition education to make meals healthier. To use the types of foods you would get in a food pantry. For instance, I just learned at one of our nutrition demos this past weekend, you can leave the peel on a sweet potato, blend it up, and make it into a pancake. You never notice that you left it on there, but you get so much more fiber. And we're doing these types of trainings to help people make meals more nutritious, make meals go further, too, that they're getting. It's really a holistic approach. It's about being alongside community partners that are embedded into the community that are providing holistic supports like workforce development, job training, housing support. And we're that food portion as part of those agencies and making sure they have the right food and enough food to get out into the community.
It's really helpful to hear the ways that food banking is adjusting. This idea you're no longer just this big organization that takes in a bunch of food and then distributes it through, you know, food pantries and what used to be called soup kitchens. But rather you're working with other community partners, you're working with farmers to find ways of moving food, but also providing opportunities and thinking about this almost as wraparound services. Are there other things that are being provided than just meals? I know I've been in pantries where there have been nurses, and there have been other support services like ways to sign up to SNAP. This is a sort of a series of overlapping and intersecting opportunities to help families meet their food needs, but more than that, their sort of broader set of needs. And I think this is a really critical way of understanding that food banking looks different than, like you said, grandmothers working in a church basement. I know that the work that food banks can serve as shock absorbers. When things go down, when things are problematic, food banks are there to sort of meet needs in a real way. We've seen a great deal of breakdown in policies over the last several months, and both at the state and at the national level. What does this shock look like to you and your partner agencies on the ground?
It has been a tough year. You know, our budget went from 27% government funding and support to less than 10% in one year just because of decisions that were made in an instant. And there was no feedback structure. And I think that's one thing that I really pride our food bank on is the community feedback. We're constantly trying to engage with neighbors facing hunger, understand nobody knows what people facing hunger need more than the people who are literally experiencing it every single day. We try to ground all of our decisions in what is the community saying they need of us. And I think that is one of the things that's been so frustrating to see the decisions made this past year at the federal level. There's been no feedback. It's just numbers on a paper. And within, you know, a stroke of a pen, North Carolina lost $30 million for food purchased from North Carolina farmers for schools and food banks. And that was just North Carolina. It was one billion across the nation. And we're impacting people facing hunger, we're impacting farmers at the same time, and we have farmers who are saying, "I don't know if I'm gonna keep my family farm open." With SNAP, you know, we have cuts coming this year for SNAP and changes that are going to be detrimental for so many of our neighbors. And the cost shift to the states that are not prepared to take that. There's not a transition plan place. And SNAP is an economic driver. For every one meal a food bank provides, SNAP provides nine. We can't replace SNAP if we lose those meals. There's no possible way for us to charitable food our way out of that. But I don't think people realize the ripple impact of those decisions. So yes, it's going to impact people facing hunger. And eight out of 10 of those people on SNAP are working families, seniors, people with disabilities, our most vulnerable neighbors. And at the same time, we're going to see rural grocery stores close. We're going to see more farms close because for every dollar of SNAP, it means $1.50 to $1.60 back into the local economy. And that's going to be a detrimental effect that we can't turn around quickly. It's going to be long-term health impacts for neighbors because of the loss of this nutritious food and the loss of jobs. And we can't just flip a switch and turn that back on because of how damaging it's going to be to so many pieces of our economy. And when I say we can't charitable food our way out of it, we were meant to be here in times of crisis to stabilize and to be an ongoing support for people in the community during that time. But we were never meant to replace the safety net. At the same time, we're having all of these changes at the federal level. We're the only state in the country without a budget. There was another multimillion-dollar loss for food banks and farmers that was invested by the state to purchase from local farmers to go back to neighbors in need. And because we have not had that budget, we've not received those funds. And so, it's really been hit after hit, and we're seeing each one increasing need at our pantries.
Right now, we know there's over 600,000 people facing hunger in our community, and we're hearing from our pantries 20% to 60% more than they're seeing last year. I think that 600,000 people number is actually very low, and we're going to see that continue to climb, unfortunately, because of all the changes we're experiencing this year.
Amy, this is pretty sobering. And I realize that we're talking about issues that are also highly political. And I know you are leading in spaces where you have people who have differences of opinion about what policy should be. But a lot of these people are coming to the work of the food bank, either on the board or in partner agencies or wherever, donors even, because they care about addressing issues around hunger, right? So, how do you build trust? How do you work across these differences to help achieve the goals that food banking is supposed to achieve?
I've never met a politician that told me they didn't like food banks or they didn't care about food banks. There's a lot on people's minds, and I think we need to be in front of our leaders more because there's so much coming at our elected leaders that it's hard for them to even understand everything that's happening in the community. It's hard for me to keep up with just what's happening in our sector, and I'm living it every day, because it's been so fast. I often say, you know, we can't be apolitical. We're nonpartisan, but food is political, so we can't be apolitical. But we'll always be nonpartisan, and we have incredible support from both political parties and all sides of the aisle. And I think we can go in, and we can argue all day long about what we disagree on, and there's much that people disagree on. It's filled in a time when everything feels like it can be political, and we're going to walk out, and we're both going to be mad, and neither one of us is going to change each other's mind. And so I think we have to walk into every conversation with what do we align on, and where can we do good together? Because there's always going to be things we disagree on, but I also know there's always things we align on. And how can we choose those things that we align on and do the most impact and the most good possible with that? Because nobody wants to see a child go hungry. No one wants a senior choosing between medicine and their food or their rent. And so how can we focus, and how can we be a voice to tell that human story that they might not be seeing or hearing enough of so that they understand those true impacts, and we can figure out a way to work together on those alignment?
Yes. I think those are wise words given just the difficulty we're facing right now to find that common ground. To find ways of working together. I'm grateful for the way you are trying to navigate those differences to achieve the bigger goal. The goals that I think many of us want to see achieved. And so that brings me to this last question I want to raise with you. This is a challenging moment that we're in. I want to know what gives you hope, and where do you see people making real difference, despite the challenges that we face?
This is bigger than me, this is bigger than you, this is bigger than the food bank. This is our community. This is the health of our community. And focusing on the health of our community, seeing what happened last year during the shutdown... the community responded in a way that was inspiring and breathtaking for neighbors, because they saw their neighbors hurting. And we are a community food bank. I might get emotional. I do get emotional often. Every day, and I can see them right outside my window right now, we operate because of thousands of volunteers who come here and choose to give their time to us. Thousands of donors who choose to give their money to make a difference in their community. Thousands of food partners who are choosing to work with us. And these more than 700 agencies, we are a community food bank. Our new strategic plan 2030 is called Rooted in Community. And it is grounded in what neighbors said they needed from the food bank, what we are uniquely qualified and able to provide for neighbors right now. And I think seeing that community aspect and seeing the community come together during times like this absolutely gives me hope. And we saw the impact on that on policy, too. During the shutdown, so many advocates reached out and said, "This is unacceptable." And Governor Stein's office invested $3.5 million in our food bank, $10 million across the state during that moment because he saw the need, but he, like we heard from the constituents. And I think seeing and watching how powerful people's voices are, it can't just be the food bank there. It has to be the community members saying, "This is unacceptable in our community." And when we see people come together and align on that, we see change, and that gives me hope. I also think our youth today gives me hope. I just watched a video on C-SPAN that our food bank participated in that two high school students here in Raleigh won an award about building food security in their community. I just talked with a Duke student last week, she's in a feminism and farm class, which is an incredible class that I want to take, I didn't know that existed. And talking about how we can make a change. And I see so many people coming together and truly aligning on what we agree on, and I think with that there comes a lot of power.
BIO
Amy Beros is President & CEO of the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina — among the largest anti-hunger organizations in the United States. Amy returned home to the Food Bank following several years of service with Feeding America, where she led nationwide efforts to build food banks' capacity to better serve people facing hunger and poverty. Throughout her career, Amy has maintained a firm commitment to holding the experiences of neighbors at the heart of every decision. She has applied this community-centered approach across critical efforts in food sourcing and access, disaster response, strategic partnerships, and philanthropy — including leadership roles with Inter-faith Food Shuttle, Easter Seals UCP, and Pillars Community Health. During Amy's prior tenure with the Food Bank, she led the multi-year campaign that established the organization's state-of-the-art Raleigh headquarters and ushered in a new era of systemic solutions to hunger in the region. A South Carolina native, Amy holds a Bachelor of Science from Clemson and an MBA from DePaul University. She currently resides near Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband, two children, and rescue dogs. Outside of work you can find Amy lifting weights, spending time with family, or sharing her love for Dolly Parton with anyone who will listen.

For many people, the FDA-approved drug class called GLP-1s has been a game changer for managing type 2 diabetes and weight loss. An estimated one in eight US adults is using this type of drug, which mimics a natural gut hormone to regulate blood sugar, slow stomach emptying, and suppress appetite. Researchers and the public have been scrutinizing the pros and cons of taking these drugs for many years. One critical question that remains is does the use of GLP-1s translate into lower medical expenses for consumers, healthcare providers, insurance companies, and the government? Today, we're speaking with Duke University health economist Jonathan Zhang on the answer to these questions from his multi-year study of veterans who use GLP-1s. The results are surprising.
Interview Summary
Jonathan, first, let's talk broadly. Would you briefly describe the kinds of health benefits people are experiencing with GLP-1s, particularly in terms of changes in behavior and overall health?
Yes. So GLP-1s are medications that manage body weight and improve metabolic health. The primary health benefits are via better blood sugar regulation and weight loss via reducing appetite. But there's larger health benefits that are much broader. So, trials have also shown that they lower blood pressure, reduce strokes and heart attacks, among other cardiovascular benefits. Overall also improves, so things like obstructive sleep apnea, improvements in inflammation-related measures. And recently it was FDA approved to treat MASH, which is a form of fatty liver disease. Finally, people also report feeling less hungry. They get full faster, fewer cravings, and reduction in what is often called food noise, which can potentially help people make a range of better behavior decisions and changes relating to food and perhaps even beyond food. However, the evidence on that seems to be promising, but new and less strong.
Thank you for sharing those. I know a lot of our listeners have heard some of those issues and some of those points about how GLP-1s could change the way we behave, and some of the health outcomes. So, let's dig into your particular study. In your working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) you and your co-authors describe a natural experiment involving patients and doctors in the Department of Veteran Affairs, and their access to and use of GLP-1s. Would you lay out the general parameters of your study for our listeners?
Yes, absolutely. So, like many medications, what we know about GLP-1s primarily comes from randomized controlled trials, which have small sample sizes and often select for quite sick patients. As GLP-1s reach a broader population, the population becomes less pro-comparable to those in trials, so the real-world impacts become less obvious. Moreover, there are some outcomes such as healthcare utilization or spending costs that are incredibly important for policy but not directly studied in trials. We were interested in studying in a very large healthcare system, that is the VA, the Veterans Health Administration, the real-world impacts of GLP-1s using readily collected data from the healthcare system and a quasi-experiment. So that is we try to emulate a real experiment where some patients get GLP-1s from their primary care doctor and others do not. And the reason one patient might get it while the other doesn't is because their doctors differ in their likelihood or propensity to prescribe these drugs. And we focus on the Veterans Health Administration, the VHA, because the veteran population is quite diverse, at least in terms of comorbidities relative to the trials per se and also in age, say, compared to Medicare. And GLP-1s are provided in the VA to eligible patients at a pretty affordable cost. So, sort of a nice policy playground for us to think about what outcomes might look like when GLP-1s become readily available and affordable to all Americans.
Great. Thank you for sharing that because now we have a good sense of the quasi experiment that you all were able to exploit. That there were providers who had a high tendency to prescribe GLP-1s versus those who didn't. And looking at that difference, you were able to see how GLP-1s may have affected the outcomes that you were interested in. So now tell us a bit about the findings, and I think there's some surprising results here.
So, first we replicate many of the findings from the randomized trials for this diverse, veteran population. We see reductions in body weight, we see hemoglobin A1C blood glucose levels improve and blood pressure improvements as well. Even a reduction in heart attacks and strokes for patients with existing cardiovascular conditions, and even a small reduction in moderate drinking risk as well. The trial evidence seems to hold up in this large and diverse population of we have 1.4 million patients that we're studying. Second, despite these improvements though, we do not see a reduction in healthcare spending. This is actually excluding the cost of the medication, the GLP-1. It's not because GLP-1s are expensive. We're taking that out of the equation. Over four years, this is how long we're able to track these patients for, we're able to rule out reductions of more than 7% in healthcare spending. And we see no reductions in whether that's outpatient clinic or in inpatient hospitalization. We also don't see any reductions in emergency department visits more generally, despite seeing a reduction in heart attack and strokes for those patients with existing cardiovascular condition.
Jonathan, that sounds great, but it's a little hard to understand. So why is it that you're seeing no real changes in the consumer healthcare spending? What's going on?
Yes, we were a little surprised as well. We think there could be a myriad of potential reasons. But first, I want to note that there's also at least three other studies that use real-world data to look at a similar question, and all the studies find no statistically significant spending reductions. And in fact, all of us, we all find a slight positive increase. I think the first explanation is that while heart attacks and strokes are very expensive and obviously, very serious events, they are still thankfully quite rare and thus are not very common in our three to five-year period in which these studies are looking at. But perhaps over ten or twenty years, you could start seeing some healthcare spending materialize. I think that's totally possible. Most cost projection models, whether that's from the CBO or other organizations, they project healthcare spending reductions to accumulate over time. But these models also project immediate spending reduction, which is not yet supported by the data.
Another potential explanation is what I would call these behavioral responses. So, you can imagine that a patient sees some improvement in their health, and that changes their expectation of, "Oh, wow, I could actually make some changes to my health." And they actually go and get some more care. This can also be driven by the physician as well. So, sort of, "Look, things are working. This patient's seeing improvements. Maybe we should treat some of your other health problems and issues." This is what I would call sort of a behavioral response. A third explanation could be that some of these patients have conditions that have progressed to be irreversible even with metabolic health gains. So, for example, late-stage kidney disease would be a good example. We find some suggestive evidence that this might be happening in our study. In other words, for these patients where they have some potentially irreversible health conditions, the metabolic health improvements - that's not a primary reason for their healthcare spending.
This is helpful. That explains why we're seeing some of these challenges with healthcare spending. And I appreciate your point of taking a longer view may actually reveal some differences. And also, the responses of doctors and patients to the benefits that they gain and how that might expand opportunities for healthcare. So, thank you for sharing that. I want to shift focus a little bit. And it is taking a step beyond the paper, but I think it's a natural extension of the work. As you know, I'm an agricultural economist, and I've been interested in obviously food policy issues. And the fact that we're seeing weight loss, the fact that we're seeing better management of A1C suggests that there's something probably happening with food consumption and food patterns. I'd be interested to learn from you if you have any ideas about what this work suggests about the impact of GLP-1s on consumer food choices.
Yes, I think there's a fair amount of both trial and real-world grocery purchase evidence that GLP-1s are impacting consumer food choices. In the randomized trials, GLP-1s reduce, calories consumed, reduce the desire to eat sweet, salty, and savory foods and high fat fast foods in their meals. For example, these trials will look at what people eat for lunch. In real world data, there's a study out of Denmark that found that after patients' first GLP-1 prescription, their grocery store purchases went on to have fewer calories, sugars, saturated fats, carbohydrates, and more protein over the one-year period after they initiate GLP-1s. The share of ultra-processed foods also decreased. The effects were actually quite modest, so there was only about a one percent reduction in calories and a four percent reduction in sugar and a five percent increase in protein in the year after versus the year before in this Danish study. In the US, there's a similar study using kind of this transactional level data as well. And they find that households after they start GLP-1s also reduce caloric intake, fast food consumption, caloric dense processed foods. And there it's a little larger in the US by about five to ten percent. Then the question is, you know, are they shifting towards healthier foods or is it sort of a uniform reduction in calories across all different food classes? And there the evidence is a little less strong. There's some evidence that consumers are shifting towards healthier foods, but if that is the case, the shift is quite small. In both the Danish and the US study, it's roughly looking like a level shift for all different categories. And this is also in terms of not food so much anymore, but there's also been studies looking at alcohol consumption, which has been very interesting and promising. There's a phase two study pilot trial with only forty-eight participants, but the randomized control trial found that among patients with existing alcohol use disorder GLP-1s led to a reduction in the average number of drinks per day. No change in the number of days drinking, but conditional on drinking, the average number of drinks per day declines in the treatment group that get GLP-1s. And then for out of the 48 patients that are also smokers, there's also a reduction in smoking as well in that population. So, very promising early evidence there as well.
Jonathan, this is critical information, and I know some colleagues in the Ag econ profession, folks like Brian Roe, Tim Richards and Glenn Townsend have also worked in this space, and some of the work is showing some issues around the quality of protein or overall food spend is going down. And the choices or the responsiveness of people to prices when it comes to proteins. There's some evidence, some causal evidence to suggest GLP-1s are changing the way people are even looking at food markets. And so that raises a really important issue. If consumers are changing when they're exposed to GLP-1s, I have got to imagine that the food industry, grocery stores, food manufacturers, restaurants are making some adjustments. What have you to say on that particular point?
So, we're both economists, right? We both, of course, believe that producers and grocery stores are adjusting to demand. We do know a lot less about how the supply side is adjusting compared to the demand, and that's because there's just less data and fewer studies on patients. There's more data and more studies on patients and consumers than on grocery stores and restaurants. I've seen a lot of anecdotal evidence, often reported in the mainstream media or reports from various market research agencies that GLP-1s are having this large impact on the food industry. I've seen claims like GLP-1s are hurting Walmart sales or why are beer company sales down, like AB InBev, and range into things like why restaurants are reducing their portions or recently I actually also saw over the past couple weekends claims of why Coachella portions are smaller because everyone's on GLP-1s. So, the best estimates from last year are that one in eight Americans are using GLP-1s. And if each of these users are cutting back in consumption by 5% to 10%, as in those studies, it's totally plausible this leads to a large population reduction that the food industry just cannot ignore, right? I think it's important to note a couple things. First is that the long-term adherence of GLP-1s is generally quite low, with more than 50% discontinuing within a year in most of the studies I've seen in the US. And after discontinuation, most of these patients will gain back a large fraction of their weight. And in that US groceries transactional study I told you about, they find that after discontinuation, purchases at fast food, grocery, restaurants, et cetera, they go up beyond baseline, in fact. So, beyond six months prior to when they were on GLP-1s. It's still an open question to whether these 5% to 10% individual consumption reductions will become long-term and manifest in the population level, especially if adherence is not very high. Second is that up until very recently, there's been a very strong demographic and socioeconomic profile of these GLP-1 users, right? So, they tend to skew near elderly and also a little bit more female, and generally fall in the middle- or higher-income brackets because previously Medicaid, for example, did not cover GLP-1s, right? Until earlier this year. And it still does not cover it for many states. So, any food industry changes will likely be concentrated in the restaurants and the food chains that sort of have these consumer demographic and economic base. That's something to keep in mind. Certainly, there are examples like, you know, Smoothie King has introduced a GLP-1 smoothie. But even in these clear-cut cases where the producer is clearly trying to appeal to this demand shock, it's still very difficult to disentangle the producer's stated intent from general industry market trends, right? So, general trends like rising cost of living. There's been more demand for protein. You can see protein in everything now, right? Even water. Rise in sort of small plates or family-style tapas at restaurants. Feels like every restaurant's doing this now. Or for example, a decline in alcohol consumption or interest in alcohol consumption, especially among young people around the world. I think some of this is certainly happening. Producers are listening, but it's hard to disentangle the general trends from a specific GLP-1 impact.
I'm grateful for you taking some of the hype out of this and thinking through carefully what the economic implications are of this change and recognizing that there's some real important context that people don't stay on these drugs for long. Or there are certain types of folks who are more likely to use them, and therefore we can't assume that there's this massive wave of change that's going to happen, but that there are some responses. These are important ways of framing this discussion. I have one final question. Based on what you're seeing now with the use of GLP-1s and considering their use over time, what would you say is the key takeaway for policymakers?
I think there are a few takeaways. Most importantly, I think policy makers should think about the rapid change in profile of patients who are using this drug. Just because it's beneficial for sick patients doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be equally as beneficial for patients who are less sick. One of the findings in our paper is that as the veteran population that starts to initiate GLP-1s in the more recent years, these patients actually are healthier, so their treatment effects are not quite as strong as those who were initiated in the very early period who in our setting were among the sicker veterans. Policy makers shouldn't extrapolate the potential benefits to a broader population since there's so much demand for this drug, right? This also means that some of the downstream improvements like cost savings or even improved labor outcomes like absenteeism or being able to return to work, while these things might seem logical, it's not fair to assume that it's going to be automatic, especially at a population level. Related to that last point, we should encourage additional research on important socioeconomic outcome that might completely change the calculus of the cost benefit of these drugs, right? So, labor force participation, earnings, use of government transfer programs like disability insurance, even some interesting patterns of household formation and fertility. These are all fascinating and important questions. However, it is imperative to note that GLP-1s already have incredible health benefits for many people. While it's possible that these benefits might spill over to broader societal benefits, these benefits should not be presumed. And at the same time, we shouldn't be holding GLP-1s to a higher standard, say, to reduce healthcare spending or increase earnings just because we know that it does a bunch of wonderful things for a range of conditions. So, maybe it does this and this as well, and suddenly we're less excited if there's no evidence of that and that, right? These things have incredible health benefits. Let's appreciate them for that, and we shouldn't be holding them up to a higher standard just because it appears to do so many wonderful things.
BIO
Jonathan Zhang is a health economist at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University and the Margolis Institute for Health Policy. He is a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and an evaluator at the Department of Veterans Affairs. He researches how policy can improve mental health and substance use outcomes using quasi-experimental methods.

Interview Transcript
Kate - Welcome to the Leading Voices in Food podcast. I'm Kate Stanley, a researcher at the World Food Policy Center at Duke University. I'm joined today by my co-host, Katariina Koivusaari, a researcher at North Carolina State University. Together, we collaborate on policy research for the Bezos Center for Sustainable Proteins at NC State.
Katariina - Great to have you. Greg, you have been involved in food and agriculture policy in Washington, D.C. for several decades and have worked with both Democratic and Republican administrations. Are food policy politics caught up in party differences depending on which political party is running the executive branch?
A very relevant question right now. I guess it would be wrong to say that the political party in office doesn't make a big difference in the policies being carried out by the executive branch. However, in the food and agricultural space, and especially in the areas that I focus on, which is really around these new technologies in food and Ag and how do those get into the marketplace and adopted, that difference hasn't been so big. Let me give you an example or two. I'll take you back first to about 2000, and we had the Clinton administration. We have the regulation at FDA of biotech crops, and they had a voluntary consultation process and there were a number of stakeholders and others who felt that that wasn't sufficient. The Clinton administration interpreted the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to try to turn that into what they called a mandatory consultation, and they proposed a pre-market notification rule. It didn't get finished in, before the end of the administration in January of 2001. Then we had the Bush administration come in, so we went from a Democrat to a Republican. And the Bush administration looked at the same law and looked at that same proposed regulation and said, "We don't have the legal authority to do that." And they withdrew that proposal, and so we still have to this day this voluntary consultation. And I give you that example for two reasons. One, I think what we've seen when it comes to food and policy regulation by different administrations is how they interpret the law. And I can say this in very general, the Democrats have tended to be a little more expansive in how they interpreted the law to try to find more legal authority to do things that they might want to do. And the Republicans have tended to look at that language much more restrictively or look at just exactly what that language said and not try to interpret anything into it. And so, you see that difference here between what happened in the Clinton administration versus what happened in the Bush administration.
I mention this example because as many of your listeners may know, right now in this administration, we have the question about voluntary GRAS and whether that's going to become mandatory or not. And some of us who have followed that know that the current FDA has submitted to OMB, to the White House, a proposed rule to make GRAS mandatory. Well, that is-- the regulatory process for those biotech crops is also a GRAS process. It's interesting now that we have a Republican administration who's finding the authority to do that, and we'll see what actually comes out and what the courts do with it. But I think this shows that sort of difference in policies between Democrats and Republicans. But overall, we haven't seen a lot of difference.
In this new administration, I think one of the questions people had was what would happen with a technology like cell-cultivated meat? Where would the regulation of it go forward? There's many in the MAHA movement, I think, that felt that that wasn't consistent with what they wanted. But we've seen that those approvals continue to happen. Similarly, pesticides have been an issue in many administrations. Sometimes Democrats have argued to be much more restrictive in the use of pesticides and to make the regulations much harder. And Republicans have oftentimes said to make those easier for the agencies. But what we see is pesticides have moved forward under both administrations. People understand the need for pesticides to produce agriculture. We have some differences in policy, but on the whole, in this area, I think, whether it's Democratic or Republican, they have generally supported following the law.
Kate - Greg, you shared some interesting examples of across administrations how we've seen different actions be taken. And I'm curious. Under this administration, for some of these areas you work in, like these novel technologies, what do you see as driving the new federal legislative actions in food policy?
The legislative area has generally always been more partisan than the executive branch to some extent. I mean, the executive branch is interpreting laws from Congress; the Congress is setting those. But I think again, in the area of food policy, we've seen many good laws come out that have been bipartisan. And when I look at how did those laws come to be, I sort of see a couple different scenarios. One, and I don't think this is unique to food policy or ag policy, we tend to see legislation when some crisis has occurred. The example I would give in the food space was the establishment of the Food Safety Modernization Act more than a dozen years ago. And to a large extent, that was reaction to a number of outbreaks: spinach outbreaks, peanut butter outbreaks, egg outbreaks. And people getting sick, and some people even dying from those outbreaks. And so that brought a bipartisan coalition together to say, "We need to give more authority to FDA to address our food supply and ensure it's as safe as it could be." So that's one way we've seen that.
A second way we see policy change is when a policy is old or that is no longer in favor. And the example I give there is most recently, in this Congress passed the whole Milk for Healthy Kids Act, and that is a definite change in policy from the Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. This changes what milks, whether they're flavored, and how much fat they can have and be in the school programs. And I think in both cases, those bills were relatively partisan at the time, and yet they do opposite things. So that would be another reason that we see changes in laws.
But the third way, and I wanted to focus a little more on this, is one way the federal government gets involved and Congress gets involved is when states start regulating an area, and we start getting different standards. And then there's a push at the national level to have some sort of uniformity, some sort of have national standard for markets to work properly, for efficiency's sake and so forth. And I can give several different examples. We can go all the way back to the National Organic Law that was passed back in 1990. You had a number of states who had defined organic; they had different organic labels. Congress came together and said, "Hey, let's set up a national organic standard." We had the same thing happen with the National Bioengineered Disclosure Law, that I think happened around 2017 or 2016. In which case you had a number of states proposing legislation. You had Vermont that had passed legislation requiring mandatory labeling of genetically engineered ingredients. And in fact, the law that was passed by Congress was passed, I think, within a week or two of when the Vermont law was about to go into effect. And people felt it was better to come together and have a national standard than have different states doing different things. Because the reality is, consumers and manufacturers don't just purchase things in one state or produce things for one state. They produce it for the nation. We're a nationwide market. And then we see even those kinds of things happening today, and I go back to the pesticide area as another example. We've had different states having pesticide laws or regulations that have been different than the federal situation. We have a Supreme Court case now that the Supreme Court is going to hear in April of this year about whether that's those state regulations are preempted by the federal law. But Congress and the Farm Bill has also put in language that would ensure that the federal standard is the standard that is applied, not having multiple different state standards. So that's been a way that we've seen a lot of things happen in this food and Ag space.
Kate - We've seen a lot of food policy action at the state level in the past few years. Katariina and I were on this podcast not long ago talking about state legislation aiming to restrict how cell-cultivated meat products are labeled or even banning those products altogether. We've seen action in a variety of other areas as well. Are there issues that states have started regulating where you think we could see federal action in the near future?
I do. I think that the MAHA movement in particular has really set up a situation where we see states taking the lead on a number of issues, and we'll see whether the federal government decides to come in, and particularly Congress, to address those at a national level. For example, in the area of synthetic dyes and food additives, I think there's some 30 states that have introduced bills. And a number of which have passed, either restricting those use at all in any foods, restricting their use in school lunches, having different labeling associated with many of those ingredients. And we've seen some of those laws pass, and we've already seen some court cases. A court case in West Virginia which said that those laws are preempted by federal law. One could envision either something at FDA or in Congress that would set some uniform standard for how this moves forward federally.
You mentioned cell-cultivated meat and the three of us were involved in a paper that looked at the state regulation in that area, especially around labeling. And again, if we don't have a lot of those products on the market yet, but as those products get closer and get on the market, I could definitely see a push again to have some uniform labeling. Either again from the federal executive branch or from the legislative branch. And also, in areas like ultra-processed foods is another one. California has passed a law defining how they're going to define ultra-processed foods. We've heard that FDA may issue a definition about ultra-processed foods, but I could also see Congress getting involved eventually and setting a standard.
Katariina - I'm sure that in working with US regulatory agencies for so long, you've seen trends develop and persist over time. What would you highlight right now for our listeners?
Well, as I said, I've worked very much in this space where we talk about new science, new technology, new kinds of products coming into the marketplace and how do we regulate that? What are the policies and regulations to ensure that that's safe for humans and safe for the environment, and that there's information and access that's necessary for those safe products to, to thrive in the marketplace. And when you look at that, I think I have some observations, I guess, about the US regulatory agencies and what they've done in this area. The first one is that the science tends to move faster in the private sector and in the research community, like you're both in, than it does in the federal government. And so generally, the people in the federal government, who I have the utmost respect for, the career people, tend to always be playing catch up on the science. That the science is moving faster and they're not there. An example I would give is cloned animals. When the industry went to FDA and said, "Hey, can we put these cloned animals into the m- into the marketplace?" FDA sort of said, "Well, wait. We need to look and see whether we need to do a risk assessment to see if there's any risks out there." And they spent a couple years doing that, and they asked for a voluntary moratorium while they were figuring that out. In the end, they figured out that for many cloned animals, there was no risk and there didn't need to be regulation, but they had to catch up. They had to catch up on the science. And I think that's the first thing. It's important for industry and public sector scientists like yourselves to make as much information about new technologies and new products available in the public realm so that those experts in the federal government can stay as close as possible to what is happening.
Second is, anytime you have a first-of-a-kind product. You talked about cell-cultured meat, Kate, a little while ago. We can talk about biotech crops. We can talk about a number of genetically engineered salmon. We can talk about a number of different new products of methane-reducing feed additives. The first-of-its-kind is always going to take a little longer to figure out what is that regulatory pathway. It's great to be the first into the marketplace. You get a lot of advantages, but I guess one of the disadvantages is that you probably have a little slower regulatory timeframe. That again bodes for that transparency for that additional information. The third thing I'd mention, and you would think, oh, this is something that is sort of a given and expected, and that is the level of transparency that we have in our federal government. But that's not true. I've traveled around the world, and many governments don't have that. But interestingly, most of our regulations are, you know, they're all publicly available. There's lots of guidance documents out there. We can go online today and see GRAS applications and decisions made at FDA. We can see what information was submitted for cell-cultivated meat crop, meat, meat products, and what decision the agency made on those. We can do that for genetically engineered animals and for genetically engineered plants. And so, we do have a fair amount of transparency, and I impress upon people to use that to their advantage. I think that builds trust for consumers, but also for people in the industry. It helps them learn so they can be as efficient as possible when they go through the regulatory process. And the final thing I might mention is it may look like from the outside the government moves slow all the time. But I think having been inside the government and in the role, I played as the Chief Regulatory Officer at USDA, that slowness, in part, is to make sure that the government speaks as a single voice.
We've been talking a lot about FDA, and we talk about USDA, but there are actually some 18 or 20 different agencies that actually regulate different parts of the food supply, for example. A decision made in one agency may have some indirect impact on a decision or a regulatory process in another agency. And so, it's important before major decisions are made or major regulations are promulgated, that we have an interagency review of those things to make sure that the government is speaking consistently with one voice about how they interpret laws; about how they apply risk assessments; about how they look at safety and so forth within the context of their laws. And that sometimes takes some time. It is a big bureaucracy, a big government, and again, that could be looked at upon negatively. But at the same time you can look at upon that positively as an opportunity to make sure that the decisions that are made in one place are consistent with other decisions and other statutes in another place.
Katariina - Thank you for sharing that. It's really helpful to get more insight into the policy process. Let me ask you one final question. For organizations seeking to navigate through state and federal regulations in order to bring a food product to market, what are the key, what are key takeaways you would highlight?
Well, there are a number of them. First, I would tell companies or public researchers, whoever is bringing a product to market, to be as transparent as possible. Put as much information about your product and your technology in the public record, especially if it's in peer-reviewed journals that are accessible to everybody. That is only going to come to your benefit. That's going to help the regulators. They know that information is out there. They know that other people have that information. They can utilize that to help make decisions about whether there is a food safety or a risk to the environment, and then how maybe to address those risks. So that would be my first response. The second one is, and I think, again, this is something that I thought was going to be universal when it came to interactions between the regulated community and the regulators, but it's not around the world, and that is to consult. All the agencies that I've worked for have open door policies where they say, if you have a question, as you're thinking of bringing a product to market, come in and consult with us. Come in and talk to us. Let us help you figure out what the regulatory pathway is going to be, what the data you are going to need is, why we need that data, and go through all of that. And, in my consulting business, that's one of the things I do. I help facilitate those conversations between one of the agencies and a client. And I think that just the earlier you do that and the more often you do that, the more efficient you will be, the less money you will spend, the quicker your review process will be. And while I have clients who don't always agree with the decisions by the agencies of what information they might need or what regulatory process they have, it's still better to know that upfront and earlier in the process than later in the process. The third thing I'd mention is to be a little creative. The regulators, you know, they're trying to ensure they're representing the public, and they're trying to make sure that a product is safe for human consumption, for animal consumption, for the environment. They don't always have all the answers, and sometimes they are fitting square pegs into round holes because new technologies come along that aren't exactly a perfect fit. But be creative. Try to help them. I think, you know, sometimes working with people like me or others to help think about what a good regulatory pathway would be, what are the potential risks that really need to be addressed here that can be really helpful. The fourth thing is, you know, that the devil is always in the details. The details and the science matter, and that is something that is very important. And so, we want to look for analogies of your product or your technology to other ones that have happened in the past, and that's always good. But also understand the differences. And so, really, I think, sometimes people think, "Oh, they don't need to engage with the regulators as much about exactly what I'm doing," or "They don't need to know all those details." Those details actually do matter, and I do think those are important. And then I would finally say that, you know, it does take time, especially when we're talking about new technologies and new products, to figure out what that regulatory process will be. And we don't have neat situations. Our laws are written a long time ago. We don't want to write a new law for every new kind of product or every new kind of technology. I'm not sure that's the most efficient way to do it. But by not doing that, we're sometimes, as I mentioned earlier, fitting square pegs into round holes. We have a law, for example, the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, dealt with food, but it never envisioned genetically engineered crops. It doesn't talk about biotechnology. We have a meat law that regulates meat at USDA. Didn't think about cell-cultivated meat. And we have to think about how those fit together. And sometimes we can do that without the new laws, and sometimes you need new laws. When I was at USDA, we worked on methane-reducing feed additives. FDA regulates them, but they really don't fit very well. They're not a drug, but they're also not a feed because they don't have a nutritional benefit. And so how do we fit those into the regulatory system? FDA's come up with a temporary regulatory pathway, but there's also a bill in Congress to set up a more definitive regulatory pathway. And we see that for some of these new technologies that we might see some legislation. And then the final point I would just make is to temper everybody's view that a compromise is essential in this area. No one company or no one stakeholder gets everything they want. Governing and the government's job is to, you know, figure out what's the appropriate balance. They want to ensure safety, but they also want to make sure that safe products can get to market and that consumers can get to take advantage of those products, and we can get the benefits from those products. And so all of this is always a balancing. There will always have to be some sort of compromise. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing, just pointing it out as something that people should be conscious of.
BIO
 
Gregory Jaffe is President of Jaffe Policy Consulting, which provides strategic advice on national and international policies involving agriculture and food, with specific expertise in sustainability, climate, bioeconomy, biotechnology, PFAS, pesticides, food safety, and food loss and waste. He recently worked as the Senior Advisor for Regulatory Affairs in USDA's Office of the Secretary and the USDA's Chief Regulatory Officer. He managed a broad portfolio of policy issues, including bioeconomy, biotechnology, biofuels, pesticides, PFAS, food safety, sustainability, and scientific research and development. Before joining USDA, Greg worked for at the Center for Science in Public Interest (CSPI), a non-profit consumer organization working on food and nutrition issues. While at CSPI worked extensively in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia on projects funded by USAID and the Gates Foundation. He worked with government officials and stakeholders helping them develop laws, policies and regulations that allow for the adoption of agricultural technologies, including biotechnology. He advised on agricultural policy, sustainability, and trade issues, conducted capacity building, and worked on international treaty implementation.

Kelly Brownell interviews Jon-Paul Bianchi, Director of Systems Change at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, about the foundation's systems-change approach linking food, health, early childhood, and family economic security to address inequities affecting children and families. Bianchi describes his path from PhD research to policy work and then to Kellogg, and explains how integrated grantmaking focuses upstream on policies, practices, resource flows, narratives, and long-term investment in people and relationships rather than isolated programs. He highlights Vermont's inclusion of food quality in childcare ratings and the foundation's Farm to Early Childhood efforts connecting procurement, regional food systems, and state policy, with examples from states like North Carolina, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and notes Brazil's national local purchasing policy as a model for success.
Transcript
As I was mentioning before we got started, I've long admired the work of the Kellogg Foundation. Working with the concept of food systems or connecting agriculture with nutrition and thinking about regenerative agricultures. There are a lot of places where your foundation was out front. So, I salute you and your colleagues for that. And it'll be interesting to find out what's happening right now. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and how did you get into the philanthropic work and your work with Kellogg in particular?
I'm Jon-Paul Bianchi. I'm the director of the Systems Change team at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. And what that essentially means is I'm the director of national programs at the foundation. But we call it systems change because we really do see in the different areas of work that we focus on- health, family economic security, food, and early childhood- that these things are all interconnected by some distinct systems. But also, common systems that overlap across them. And so, that's the approach that we take. And I'll spend some time sort of diving into that today. You know, to answer the question of how I got here... you know, a master stroke of luck. I was set to be an academic researcher. I was working on my PhD at the University of Wisconsin. I was ABD and decided that I didn't want to be a researcher and I wanted to work in policy. And I moved to Colorado to take a job sort of sight unseen, being the policy director of an organization that worked in K-12 and children's health, and food and early childhood education. And did that for a few years and learned to translate research into practice; into policy. And was giving a presentation and got a tap on a shoulder from somebody that worked at the Kellogg Foundation who was interested in what I was saying. And we had one conversation, and six months later, I wound up having a new job and leaving Colorado and moving to Michigan. That was 15 years ago.
Well, you went into this with a great background having done the science as a graduate student and then into the policy world. And you're right, the intersection of those two is really where the magic can occur. You began talking about this, but let's talk about it a little bit more. So, when you say that there are systems that cut across different problems like food and health and economic security, etc., and I know you structured your team to reflect that cross-cutting kind of view of things. But tell us a little bit more about that. And how is this different than what's usually done, and how does it affect the way your work gets carried out?
So, big picture at the Kellogg Foundation, we envision a society where every child can thrive. But we know that there's too many kids and families that still can't access good food or quality childcare, or their parents can't find quality jobs because of inequities that are embedded in the policies and the practices and narratives that shape our systems. And so, having a multi-issue integrated grant making team, it's made us more effective by better understanding the points of intersection and collaboration across those bodies of work. So, our food systems program officers are in the same team, and they work closely with our program officers in early childhood and family economic security and health. And those collaborations strengthen the work in a variety of ways. We have experts in each of those areas, but because they're spending time with each other and working in the same team, they're exposed to, and they learn about each other's work and each other's worlds. And that creates powerful collaborations in the foundation, but more importantly, out in the field. And it helps us to see that we can't fix any of these systems, including food systems, with surface level or patch kinds of solutions. We really have to work together to get upstream and focus on policies, focus on practices, focus on resource flows and narratives that really sustain the inequities that we see. And so, the foundation partners with organizations to dismantle barriers in food systems in the other areas so that children and families can access quality food. But I think we also recognize that's about investing in people. And it's about investing in people over time to drive transformational change in any of these systems, including food.
For people listening to this who aren't in the world of philanthropy or academics or science or policy they might be saying, "Well, this kind of makes common sense. Isn't this the way it's usually done?" And in fact, it's not usually done to have this cross-cutting work accomplished the way you're doing it. It's actually a pretty impressive thing.
Yes, thank you. And I have a lot of respect for our philanthropic partners and peers, and we work very closely with a lot of large and small foundations. And I think the adage in philanthropy is you know one foundation you know one foundation. So, we do it this way and somebody else will do it differently. And I think there's a lot of connection for us back to our founder. You mentioned Will Keith Kellogg at the top of the call. He was ahead of his time in terms of understanding the interconnectedness between food and the land and opportunity and people's education. And a lot of that came out of his tradition as a Seventh Day Adventist. But also, I think just as a person coming up in the Depression and seeing what happened afterwards and really beginning to understand in his own community of how these things were sort of connected to one another. And so, for us, both inside and outside the foundation, systems change really means betting on people long term to reshape those systems from the outside in. But also, from the inside out. And that's really what we're striving for.
You mentioned the history of Dr. Kellogg. The history of that family is so interesting, and what went on in, you know, the sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, and how the concept of breakfast cereals came about. And how the focus on natural foods was so important. It's worth spending a little time even on just Wikipedia to try to find out what that history is, because I find it fascinating. So, let's go back to food and go a little bit deeper and talk about what this systems approach looks like in practice. You're a philanthropic organization. You exist in the context of a capitalist society where businesses are out to do as well as they can. How is the foundation's work different from, say, funding a food pantry, launching a single nutrition program somewhere, which is what typically might be done?
Yes, I think what we intend to do and how I think our systems approach is a little different from, say, you know, funding a single nutrition program, is that we mean to design and redesign practice and policy based on how kids and families actually live their lives. Right? So, where food and health and early childhood and family economic security show up together in a community, right? Families experience these things simultaneously in their everyday lives. They don't experience these things in silos. And so, we try to have our team and our work reflect that. So, instead of treating food as a narrow problem to fix with one program, we try to think about how the entire system around a child and their caregivers works or doesn't work and find those opportunities and levers to move that whole system. I'll give you a concrete example that will bring in our colleague Linda Jo Doctor, who you mentioned at the top of the conversation. Early in my time at the foundation, I was a reviewer for the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge Grant. This was an Obama era competitive grant process for building early childhood systems in states. And the state of Vermont did something really interesting that I had the good fortune to review as part of that team. They included the quality of food and access to fresh, healthy food in childcare centers as part of their quality rating and improvement system for childcare. They didn't just talk about teacher quality or curriculum or reflective practice. They actually said, "If we care about child development, then what children are eating every day in those childcare centers is part of what quality means." That's a systems approach. They connected food policy and procurement directly into early childhood policy and practice so that nutrition and education and child wellbeing were all being advanced simultaneously. I brought that back to the foundation and brought it back to Linda. And we had a really great conversation about it, and then another, and then another, and then another. And that experience helped shape how I think and how many people think about our work at the foundation. And it led to things like the expansion of our Farm to Early Childhood work, which again, leans heavily on procurement as the strategy to drive systems change, but connects it into early childhood policy.
Tell us about that. You know, the Vermont example you gave is a terrific one. And you talked about Farm to Early Childhood. What does that mean in practice?
In practice for the foundation, it really leaned heavily first on, sort of, understanding the landscape of where there was capacity to connect regional food hubs, farmers and producers and growers to systems of early childhood. At the same time that you have these burgeoning and developing systems of early care and education with regard to financing and sophistication, you have something similar going on in them in the food system movement, depending on the state that you're in. And so, we work diligently in a subset of states to really connect those policy levers, pull them together, and try to create essentially more situations like Vermont, you had partnership at the local community level, at the regional level, and then at the state systems level. So, syncing up the actual practice on the ground, syncing up how the relationships between different organizations are formed and maintained with regards to better food and early childhood. But then also trying to codify that into state policy and practice. And we did that for a number of years and had remarkable success in places like Iowa and Wisconsin and even in North Carolina, and a handful of other states. And we very much saw this as a build off our successful farm-to-school work, but doing it in a system that comparatively in terms of early childhood, was a little more fragile, right? And it wasn't necessarily as easy to do it, but all the more important and helpful because of the age and the vulnerability of the kids and families that we're talking about.
The systems approach is very powerful, and so I'm going to ask a question not to be challenging, but to in some ways give you a softball for proving the systems approach. If at the end of the day, the most important thing in a childcare setting is to get healthy food into the bodies of the children so they can thrive intellectually and medically and everything else. Couldn't you accomplish that by just giving a good shopping list, a Costco shopping list to the daycare directors, and they could go buy good foods? And why does it need to be connected with farmers and, you know, the broader connection into the community at large, why is that important?
Yes. Well, backing up, I wouldn't want to state, as an early childhood person, that the only thing that, you know, makes an early childhood program high quality would be the quality of the food and that that would, you know, lead to optimal child development and school readiness. I think, you know, there's other things in there that actually matter too. But this is definitely a key component. I would say, you know, to your question, that that system that you named already exists. We have the Child and Adult Care Food Program. We have the ability to subsidize the cost of food, and to have that good shopping list in play. But, I think, what the systems approach does is it asks different questions, right? It seeks to say, where does the food come from? How is it grown? Who is benefiting economically, right? How are schools and childcare centers and farmers and communities connected? And how do we strengthen those, connections and relationships so that we can begin to shift policy and practice so that children and families can reliably have access to good food. And they know that it's coming from the community in which they're situated. And the people on the side that are actually producing the food, the farmers and the folks doing procurement and others, that they're actually connected to it too. And they know where the food is going. And so there is this social kind of interstitial benefit to connecting those systems in a way that I think brings value beyond just you get a healthy meal today. I think it begins to shift culture. And if you could shift culture in the institutions that people are participating in, you can actually shift culture in people. So, you could see if a parent that potentially wasn't exposed to that before, or maybe didn't have access, or didn't know how to get access to that kind of food, if their expectations suddenly shifted because in their childcare program they're getting access to quality food, that then becomes an opportunity to engage in a different way. But it also becomes an opportunity for that parent to become empowered and to come together with other parents and other community members and begin to insist that's a reality in everyday life for them. That becomes a norm rather than an exception.
I really like your answer because, you know, in some ways, people in our country have become distant from their food. You know, it used to be you could just go to the store, and there might've been one agent between you and who grew the food. The farmer would deliver it to, and now there are factories and machines that process the food, and 10 steps, and it comes from different countries, and all that kind of thing. And what you're talking about is shrinking that gap again to decrease the distance, so people are more in touch. And you could easily see that if the food is coming from farmers and the daycare providers know that they're going to feel better about the food. They're more likely to tell a story about it to the children. The farmer might come to the daycare center, or the children go to the farm. And you could see there's a lot more going on here than nutrition, and that's the beauty of this systems approach, isn't it?
I mean, the children want to have a garden, right? I mean, how many times have we seen that? It seems like a small thing in early childhood, but just that simple act of having a garden and being able to understand how things are cultivated and grown. Even for a small child, and I have two small kids, we have a small garden in our backyard: it's meaningful. And it also, I think, establishes a norm that the tomato that you pick off the vine or the pole bean that you pick off, that you eat, that you find just unbelievably delicious, then that becomes normative for them. That's a normative experience, and kids are not as frightened by things when they encounter it. And I think we have a real opportunity in the early childhood space to link up those two systems to say, "Yes, we can affect change." And I think that, again, back to this notion of investing in people long term, the investment in those kids long term and what they come to expect will be the norm matters very much to how we think about our work at the Kellogg Foundation.
So you're talking about both practices and policies and a cross-sector approach to these things. And let's talk about policy for a moment. Where does policy typically break down? And what kind of people need to be at the table, and what sort of partnerships need to be established in order to have better food policy?
I think if we take seriously that food policy is cross-sector, I believe that we need to build tables that look like the food system. And that means not just public health experts or nutrition advocates or academics, but farmers and food workers, and those childcare providers and teachers, and leaders in K-12, and tribal leaders, community organizers, local state government officials, right? And the funders, right? The funders who are willing to invest in the long slow work of doing systems change. And, you know, one place I would highlight is in your home state of North Carolina. For years, there was significant investment that helped really build a dense ecosystem. You established regional food hubs and meat processing infrastructure, and anchor institutions into schools and early childhood centers. And a really strong network of organizers and philanthropic partners. And that made it possible to fully integrate farm to early childhood in your state's definition of early childhood.
And as an aside, I would say North Carolina was also one of the leading states back when I was first coming into the field of building out a high-quality system of childcare. North Carolina led that. And so, these two things converging is a very powerful example, but again, we're getting back to local sourcing. We're getting back to bigger things than just doing food education, right? Those things are now built into the system. And they're not just a side project of the system. They actually are the system.
So, you're talking about a foundation doing a lot more than getting proposals, seeing what needs to be funded, and then sending money out the door. You're talking about connecting people in innovative and unique ways. And building bridges that didn't exist before. And getting people to understand the systems change approach. And it just can lead to so many interesting and innovative things that just weren't possible using traditional models. So, really my hat's off to the work you do, and I can see why it's creating such powerful outcomes.
One piece I would be remiss if I didn't say this, right? What makes all those partnerships work or fall apart? Usually, it's not the brilliance of a single policy idea or practice idea. I. Sort of. Sound like a broken record, but I'm going to come back to this. Investing in that people infrastructure that sits underneath it is really important. And the places that we find that make progress in any of the issues we're talking about, family economic security, food, health, Medicaid, early childhood, K-12, right? The places that make progress really do have varied and diverse voices at the table, and they're able to build real trust. And they're able to cultivate champions and also the next generation of champions and the next generation of champions who can move between those sectors, right? And the funders are involved, but they really understand that they're financing relationships and governance and people. They're not financing programs. And I think as a grant maker, that's an interesting distinction to think about. Think we know it implicitly and we know it when we see it. It's a lot harder to stick it in a white paper and define it and disseminate it in Stanford Social Innovation Review, for example.
No, I totally agree. In the work that we've done over the years with, uh, community partners in Durham, it's been my impression that they get this systems thing from the very get-go. That they understand that if poverty is too severe, then nothing else is going to work, and if housing is a problem, then these other things are going to be affected in pretty serious ways. And they understand the importance of these. And in a way you're letting the flowers bloom. You're taking, I think, what some people understand intuitively and would like to accomplish, but they've been forced into silos. And then once a funder comes along and can allow this to prosper, I think it's sort of a natural thing that occurs.
I think so. And I think the tricky thing there is to not be seduced by the programmatic solution. Like, do you remember several years ago when the notion of collective impact was this very popular term that folks talked about? And it's a good thing. I mean, I think the framework and the model is powerful, and it's a useful thought exercise. But what I found in a lot of collective impact work was that it focused very much on aligning the programs. Sufficiently funding the programs and aligning the programs, but not the human side of design and redesign of how do those programs function, right? Who do they serve? Who's at the table when building them or rebuilding them? Do you have the ability to change them midstream if you feel that you need to? And I think a slightly different approach with systems change is you're sort of engaging in a loose hold of the policies and the practices and the issues to give people and the people infrastructure and the relationships time to come together and figure out how they want to move them individually, and how they want to move them collectively. And that's a subtle difference. That's a nuance that I think has really worked in our particular corner of the world.
One thing I bet some people are interested in is how the Kellogg Foundation might be distinct from Kellogg as a company. You've described beautifully the innovative work you're doing. The company is off doing what it does commercially. How do these two things intersect? And what's been the history of the connection between the foundation and the company?
Yes. So, when the foundation was founded in the 1930s, Will Keith Kellogg, as you said, he endowed the foundation and created it separate and apart from the company. So, it's an independent philanthropic organization. And so, while we bear the name of Will Keith Kellogg, the foundation does not have a formal connection or stake in the company any longer. As you may know, the company split into two companies a few years ago, one called Kellanova and one called the W.K. Kellogg Cereal Company. And since then, I believe both companies have been acquired. I think Mars now owns Kellanova, and Ferrero, an Italian company, owns W.K. At present, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation does not have any connection to either of those companies because they've been acquired by other groups. And aside from having some stock with the foundation, that was sold to support our endowment, we don't have any formal connections anymore.
But I think the proximity of the foundation to the company in Battle Creek, and I think the shared history of Battle Creek and the shared history of Mr. Kellogg's vision is actually important to note. And I think it does matter to how the two institutions are connected. I said this a little while ago in the conversation, but in the 1930s, Mr. Kellogg knew that you couldn't separate food from health and education, family economic security, and he knew this while he was making cornflakes, right? And so he helped make sure in the late 1930s that children in Battle Creek had access to fresh milk in schools at the same time that he was doing work in soil conservation and in building healthy land. And he had a sense of knowing that how the food is grown and how kids are nourished, it's part of the same story. And I think that DNA has pulled forward into the foundation, and it makes it a really special place to work because we still carry that memory of him, and we still carry that vision of him into the work that we do.
Thanks. You know, a long time ago, when I first became familiar with the Kellogg Foundation, I wondered about the history and the independence of the foundation from the company. And I pretty quickly came to learn that the foundation, as you said, is quite independent from the company. But you've enriched my knowledge even beyond what I've known over the years, so thank you. That's a fascinating history. So, let's end with one final question. If you fast-forward and kind of look ahead, what do you think is on the way? And what does success look like to you and your colleagues?
Yes, it's a good question. I mean, I think if we got this right, you know, 10- 20 years from now, success would look like children and families living in communities where good food is just a part of everyday life. It's normal and reliable and not something that folks are lucky to find. I talked a little bit about how Mr. Kellogg thought about this in the '30s, but we also see what's possible in other places, right? When that vision can become a reality in terms of policy and practice. So, we had done some work in the country of Brazil. And we see now that national policy in the country of Brazil now requires that at least 50% of school food be purchased from local sources, grown with high-quality standards, right? That one decision reshaped incentives all along the food chain. What farmers grow, what institutions buy, what kids eat. That's a powerful example of institutions using their everyday purchasing power to build healthier and a more just system. So, you know, 10- 20 years from now, if we've done our job, it would mean that the kinds of innovations in places like Brazil or North Carolina or even in Michigan with our 10 Cents a Meal program, that those types of things would have become the norm. That schools and early childhood centers and hospitals and tribal and local governments would be routinely buying good, locally rooted food. And that workers and farmers are earning a fair and stable wage, and they have incomes. And the communities most affected by hunger and inequity are actually at the core of leading and designing new systems. And food policy would no longer be a patch on top of the inequity. It would be one of the main ways that we build healthier and more equitable futures for kids and families.
BIO
Jon-Paul Bianchi is the Director of Systems change at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) in Battle Creek, Michigan. In this role, he leads WKKF's national grantmaking strategy focused on early childhood care and education, health equity, employment equity and food systems. As a longtime philanthropic leader and national expert with a focus on early childhood education, Bianchi provides strategic oversight to the foundation's national programmatic work to support thriving children, families and communities. Bianchi holds a doctorate of Education from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College of Education and Human Development, a master's degree in child development and a bachelor's degree in child and family studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He helped found and currently serves on the board of Valley Settlement in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.