Speaker 1: It's the big take from Bloomberg News and I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm West Caasova. Today, the daily diets of people around
Speaker 1: the world are starting to look more and more alike,
Speaker 1: and not in a good way. Go to a restaurant
Speaker 1: these days and there's a decent chance the menu will
Speaker 1: boast how the chef uses only local seasonal ingredients. But
Speaker 1: the fact is, in our daily lives, most of us
Speaker 1: are eating an ever narrower selection of the thousands of
Speaker 1: edible plants the planet has to offer, and many of
Speaker 1: them are from big industrial producers like the US, that
Speaker 1: grow vast amounts of grain and export it the world over.
Speaker 1: Diets in Beijing in Boston were once pretty different. Now
Speaker 1: the Western diet, carb heavy, pizza, bread and fat ask
Speaker 1: food has spread across the globe. Here's a non scientific
Speaker 1: survey we gathered a somewhat arbitrary group of people from
Speaker 1: all over the place are leaving Canada, England, India. I
Speaker 1: live in Rhonda, I live in France, the US. I'm
Speaker 1: from Scotland, but I do live in Turkey. I'm an
Speaker 1: Australian living in the United Kingdom. I live in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: I live in Norway, and we asked them, what's your
Speaker 1: favorite take out the food you crave? My favorite takeaway
Speaker 1: is Indian food, certainly something Southeast Asian pet ti. It's
Speaker 1: either usually like a breed or some kind of wrap
Speaker 1: which is like a Turkish version of pizza. So bread
Speaker 1: of course, my goats, who is usually any Mexican sushi
Speaker 1: can already be Pizza McDonald and fiza. I really do
Speaker 1: enjoy a good fast food chicken sandwich. My favorite takeaway
Speaker 1: is pizza. My your favorite takeaway east tacos. My favorite
Speaker 1: takeaway as probably tai So why does it matter if
Speaker 1: tacos and pizza are taking over the planet and our
Speaker 1: diets include more foods made from grains, fruits, and vegetables
Speaker 1: that are shipped in from far away. My colleagues Jasmine
Speaker 1: Ung and Gin Wou join me now from Singapore to
Speaker 1: explain they're out with a deeply reported story about some
Speaker 1: of the unexpected risks posed by this increasing global dependency
Speaker 1: on a handful of crops. Jasmine Young and Jin Woo,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for being here, Thank you for having us,
Speaker 1: Glad to be here with us. In your story, you
Speaker 1: write about this enormous global trend which is that diets
Speaker 1: around the world are becoming more and more alike. Where
Speaker 1: before around the world people would eat differently, would eat
Speaker 1: local foods, Now people are eating the same sorts of foods.
Speaker 1: Can you describe what's happened? So our story is based
Speaker 1: on this idea that you know, it doesn't matter where
Speaker 1: you are in the world, our diets are looking more
Speaker 1: and more similar. And in the past sixty years or so,
Speaker 1: the biggest changes that we have seen are in Asian
Speaker 1: Africa towards a more universal diet. And what that looks
Speaker 1: like is something that resembles a typical Western diet. You know,
Speaker 1: things like hamburgers, sandwiches, steaks, potato, chips, and even cakes.
Speaker 1: And while it's true there on a country by country
Speaker 1: basis chances that that we have access to a wider
Speaker 1: variety of food than our parents are grandparents did, but
Speaker 1: as a whole, you know that shift is causing the
Speaker 1: whole world to become overly dependent on a handful of
Speaker 1: staple crops. And there are mainly rice, weed and mace
Speaker 1: and which is you know, the same as corn. And
Speaker 1: in fact, today over sixty of the world's daily calorie
Speaker 1: intake is made up of just those three staple crops
Speaker 1: around the world. You're saying sixty of our calories are
Speaker 1: coming from just those three crops. That's right, and we're
Speaker 1: seeing those crops become a bigger and bigger part of
Speaker 1: meal time. And then those are the placing you know,
Speaker 1: native crops like cassava and saga, which were once very
Speaker 1: important to local diets, but today some people might not
Speaker 1: even have heard about them. We asked the same group
Speaker 1: of people you heard earlier professing their love for pizza
Speaker 1: and fast food, among other things, how important bread, the
Speaker 1: quintessential wheat product is to them. Bread is very important,
Speaker 1: is one of our staples, and we buy it every week.
Speaker 1: Brand is really important for me. I like it a
Speaker 1: lot and I eat it every day. For me, bread
Speaker 1: is a sense of for lunch and dinner, very important.
Speaker 1: Bred is obviously very important to me as well as
Speaker 1: to the country, very important. Growing up, there was a
Speaker 1: loaf of Italian bread on the table at dinner every night.
Speaker 1: I don't think bread is very important to me. I
Speaker 1: feel like it's one of my staples that I could
Speaker 1: most easily go without. Bread is a pretty important part
Speaker 1: of a Turkish diet. How important is bread to me,
Speaker 1: it's very portant. Actually, I really love bread. I think
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, in all my life, for breakfast,
Speaker 1: sometimes long sometimes for dinner, I bread every single day.
Speaker 1: I guess about two or three slices every day. So
Speaker 1: I'd say it's pretty important. Bread is pretty important to me.
Speaker 1: It's really important. Bread is really important to me. It's
Speaker 1: a part of my daily life. Jin How did our
Speaker 1: diets all converge? There are a lot of factors behind
Speaker 1: those increasing similarities. Economic growth and rising incomes are definitely
Speaker 1: a big reason why we're seeing these massive changes, mainly
Speaker 1: in Asia and Africa, you know, with people moving away
Speaker 1: from basic staples and adding more meat, dairy and processed foods.
Speaker 1: And the other thing is industrial mass production, and it's
Speaker 1: also a key driver. It has happened in every industry,
Speaker 1: including agriculture and food. There's a lot that goes into
Speaker 1: industrializing our food system, from the companies that sell seeds
Speaker 1: and fertilize us to farm us, to the producers who
Speaker 1: buy the raw ingredients and process them, and eventually to
Speaker 1: the consumers. So this simulate efficient system has contributed to
Speaker 1: our prosperity. It helps businesses reap economies of scale and
Speaker 1: produce really large quantities of food for our massive population
Speaker 1: across the globe for a relatively small price. Gen, can
Speaker 1: you give some examples of what you're talking about. How
Speaker 1: would a diet, say in China or Singapore where you
Speaker 1: are right now, in Japan, or in countries in Africa,
Speaker 1: how would they have been sixty years ago and what
Speaker 1: do they look like now? Yeah, it's great you mentioned
Speaker 1: China because China is actually one of the biggest changes
Speaker 1: we observed from our analysis, and I think that was
Speaker 1: highly related to its booming economy in the past several decades.
Speaker 1: So you know, Chinese consumers now have access to more
Speaker 1: choices of food, especially with all the restaurants selling foreign cuisines,
Speaker 1: and they can afford more expensive ingredients such as you know,
Speaker 1: meat and seafood. So take my personal experience as an example. Actually,
Speaker 1: I grew up in China and my parents still lived there.
Speaker 1: For them, a typical breakfast nowadays often includes bread, milk, eggs,
Speaker 1: and sometimes cereal, and almost every day after dinner they
Speaker 1: would also have some yogurts. These were not something we
Speaker 1: usually ate when I was little back in my childhood,
Speaker 1: like twenty plus thirty years ago. A typical breakfast included
Speaker 1: above clanji or something we called power fan. You know,
Speaker 1: you just put water into a bow, leftover rice, some
Speaker 1: soy milk or fine toi and like rice rolls. So
Speaker 1: basically a lot of rice. And if we look back
Speaker 1: and further to the nineteen sixties and seventies, a typical
Speaker 1: Chinese diet MI include a lot of sweet potatoes and
Speaker 1: bonds or pancakes made from SGA and flour, millets or maize.
Speaker 1: Of course, China is very big, so the diets look
Speaker 1: different in various provinces, but in general very little protein
Speaker 1: is the disposable income of an honorary Chinese consumer was
Speaker 1: much lower back then, and many things were not even
Speaker 1: available even if you had money. But if we fast
Speaker 1: forward to now, port has become China's most widely eating meat.
Speaker 1: It's actually providing about ten percent of our daily calorie intake.
Speaker 1: So every weekend morning the cafes across the nation are
Speaker 1: also packed with people grabbing French toasts and coffee. And
Speaker 1: we hardly eat food made with millets and sgam anymore.
Speaker 1: You know, the main things I mentioned in the nineties
Speaker 1: sixties diets and too many people sweet potato is something
Speaker 1: healthy that actually they eat once in a while just
Speaker 1: to gain more fibers. Imagine if you go to a
Speaker 1: restaurant with a friend and she orders a plate of
Speaker 1: food that represents the Chinese diet, and you get one
Speaker 1: that represents the Chinese diet, as they will look very different.
Speaker 1: So we've talked about how the industrialization and mass production
Speaker 1: of certain foods spreading around the world is contributing to
Speaker 1: our diets kind of converging and becoming more alike. You're
Speaker 1: writing your story about how imports have become a big
Speaker 1: part of this. That countries used to grow a lot
Speaker 1: of their own foods and more and more now they're
Speaker 1: getting their foods from a smaller number of countries. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. So what these dietary changes mean is that
Speaker 1: there is now a greater competition for a limited number
Speaker 1: of crops. And the war Uklein and the impact it's
Speaker 1: had on foot prices and supply around the world, it's
Speaker 1: a very clear example why having similar diets as a problem.
Speaker 1: Earlier this year we saw, you know, Russia's invasion of
Speaker 1: Ukraine cutoff exports from a region that is known as
Speaker 1: the bread basket of the world. Because it accounts for
Speaker 1: a quarter of global weak trade. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: we had bad weather like droughts, flooding, heat waves that
Speaker 1: damage production of wheat. From the US to France to
Speaker 1: India and just about every major producing region was facing
Speaker 1: one threat on another and the result was rampant foot inflation.
Speaker 1: You know, food prices were staring everywhere, and for import
Speaker 1: dependent countries, the shop was huge. The country's most affected
Speaker 1: tend to be those in the global South, and many
Speaker 1: of them are lower middle to lower income countries, mainly
Speaker 1: in Africa and the Middle East. And you know, Egypt
Speaker 1: is the world's top importer of wheat and buys most
Speaker 1: of its supply from Russian Ukraine. And after the war,
Speaker 1: you know, there were reports of breadlines, concerns that such
Speaker 1: countries would be at risk of bread shortages, and there
Speaker 1: were fears that this would lead to political unrest similar
Speaker 1: to Arab spring. And it's not just that emerging countries
Speaker 1: to experienced problems. You know, there are also issues for
Speaker 1: rich countries. The war in Ukraine has called exports of
Speaker 1: grains and vegetable oils, which push global prices to record highs,
Speaker 1: and that added the pressures from the pandemic from high
Speaker 1: energy costs and also labor shortages in developed countries. And
Speaker 1: in the UK we saw grocery inflation hit the highest
Speaker 1: in decades. You know, British shoppers are having to switch
Speaker 1: to discount supermarkets and buying more store brand items, and
Speaker 1: they're cutting back on non in central spending and buying
Speaker 1: you know, monkey vegetables or imperfect produced just to try
Speaker 1: to save money. And in the US at the recent Thanksgiving,
Speaker 1: price increases for flour and cookies hit a record high
Speaker 1: for October, and all of these products that made from wheat,
Speaker 1: and there are reports of bread costing as much as
Speaker 1: ten dollars to loaf in some places. And it's very
Speaker 1: ironic because US is one of the largest wheat exporters
Speaker 1: in the world. And you know, this just goes to
Speaker 1: show that no country, whether you're a producer or consumer,
Speaker 1: developed or developing nation, can be insulated from price spikes
Speaker 1: and supply shocks when the world it's all going after
Speaker 1: the same few staple crops. My conversation with Jasmine on
Speaker 1: and jin Wi continues after the break. Jin can you
Speaker 1: tell us what are the countries mainly responsible for exporting
Speaker 1: these goods? Around the world, and what are the countries
Speaker 1: that are mainly dependent on importing all of these grains
Speaker 1: and other global products. So what we find from our
Speaker 1: reporting and analyzing data from the United Nations is that majority,
Speaker 1: or if not all, all of these major staple crops,
Speaker 1: the supplots of exports were controlled by a very small
Speaker 1: number of countries. And for many of these major crops,
Speaker 1: these kind of exports were controlled by higher incombinations, which
Speaker 1: making the most vulnerable countries even more vulnerable. We can
Speaker 1: take rice as an example, and rice is actually one
Speaker 1: of the few staple crops that's not heavily controlled by
Speaker 1: higher income countries because we know like India is actually
Speaker 1: a very big producer and exporter of rice, and we
Speaker 1: also have Asian countries like Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and then
Speaker 1: followed by US. And that's what the rice explore control
Speaker 1: looks like. But if you go to crops like wheat,
Speaker 1: wheat is a crop that has huge problems over the
Speaker 1: years due to the war in Ukraine and one of
Speaker 1: the major exporter of wheat was we all know that
Speaker 1: Russian and Ukraine's but most of the other major exporters
Speaker 1: of wheat, our countries like u US, Canada, France, Australia.
Speaker 1: So if we look at the country categorization by income groups,
Speaker 1: all of the low income countries are net importers of wheat,
Speaker 1: and majority of the lower income countries like lower middle
Speaker 1: income countries are also net important of wait except countries
Speaker 1: like India and in Ukraine. Gen How has this consolidation
Speaker 1: of diets affected health? I mean, the Western diet people
Speaker 1: want it, but it's not known as exactly the world's
Speaker 1: healthiest diet. It's high end carbs, it's high in fat.
Speaker 1: Has that affected the health of people who are now
Speaker 1: moving toward a Western diet as opposed to traditional diets?
Speaker 1: In actually many countries there is this quite interesting but
Speaker 1: also troublesome situation going on. It's like we have under
Speaker 1: nutrition and obesity happening at the same time, and these
Speaker 1: two issues are actually increasingly connected due to rapid changes
Speaker 1: in countries food systems. One big reason why it happened
Speaker 1: was our higher reliance on processed or sometimes like ultra
Speaker 1: processed food. You know, it's food that's made by industrial
Speaker 1: processing and often contains addictives such as flavors, colors. So
Speaker 1: a bag of sliced bread is an ultra processed food.
Speaker 1: A piece of cake is a pizza, could be a fruit.
Speaker 1: Yogurt could be ultra processed food. A scoop of ice
Speaker 1: creams that eat often there's also part of that, and
Speaker 1: of course instant noodles. I think this increasing popularity of
Speaker 1: Western diets like you mentioned, in many cases are could
Speaker 1: be fast food. You know, instant food definitely brings a
Speaker 1: lot of health concerns to the global populations. You know,
Speaker 1: their health reads associated with a global diet that depends
Speaker 1: on just a few staple crops. People around the world
Speaker 1: are consuming more calories, more protein, more fat as to
Speaker 1: rely on a short list of food crops like wheat,
Speaker 1: mas and soybean, along with meat and dairy products. So
Speaker 1: this westernized diet that souping the world has contributed to
Speaker 1: a rising global obesity, which has you know, nearly tripled
Speaker 1: since the nineteen seventies, has also led to the spread
Speaker 1: of metabolic diseases like diabetes, and in both war and
Speaker 1: rich countries. You know, people are just seeking out the
Speaker 1: lowest cost glories and that might exclude things that make
Speaker 1: up a balanced diet, like you know, fruits and vegetables
Speaker 1: because they tend to cost more, and the result is malnutrition,
Speaker 1: which is defined by number one, you know, not just
Speaker 1: having enough to eat and to not eating enough of
Speaker 1: the right things. So eating a light isn't just unhealthy
Speaker 1: and boring. It's like owning a portfolio with very few stocks,
Speaker 1: and it's very vulnerable to any kind of disaster. One
Speaker 1: of the things that you write about is how this
Speaker 1: reliance and fewer and fewer crops has led to neglected crops.
Speaker 1: What are neglected crops and what is the effect of that.
Speaker 1: We have like five thousand fruit crops globally, but we
Speaker 1: are actually now only eating a very small array of them.
Speaker 1: So there was this idea of neglected crops, sometimes also
Speaker 1: being called underutilized crops. They're usually domesticated species used in
Speaker 1: previous centuries for food, but in recent times have been
Speaker 1: reduced in importance. So many experts actually believe these neglected
Speaker 1: crops might provide an answer to our food system problems,
Speaker 1: as many of them are more climate resilient and actually
Speaker 1: richer in nutrients. I want to bring in Stefan Schmidt's here.
Speaker 1: He's executive director of Crop Trust and he spends his
Speaker 1: days thinking about what foods people eat and where it
Speaker 1: comes from. We'll hear more from him in a minute,
Speaker 1: but he has an interesting point to make about what
Speaker 1: Jasmine just said. We had more than five hundred apple
Speaker 1: varieties in Europe a hundred years ago. When you look
Speaker 1: at genetics of apples these days, they derive from just
Speaker 1: six varieties we all know, and that is a very
Speaker 1: dangerous narrowing of the corridor. We need to build on
Speaker 1: the diversity we have. The diversity of food is the
Speaker 1: raw material for breeding new varieties. What we see as
Speaker 1: the current and potential feature disruptions in trade. We start
Speaker 1: to see more and more governments actually thinking about bringing
Speaker 1: back these marginalized crops as alternate staples. But in order
Speaker 1: for many of these neglected crops to be common stable,
Speaker 1: a robust supply chain actually it will be essential. That
Speaker 1: might include things such as improving farmers fields and maybe
Speaker 1: modernizing how these crops are actually processed. Gin Wu and
Speaker 1: Jasmine Ill, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank
Speaker 1: you with but the pleasure. Thank you for having us west.
Speaker 1: When we come back. What are developing countries doing in
Speaker 1: the face of all this, and what does it mean
Speaker 1: for the developed world. Stefan Schmidt joins me now he's
Speaker 1: the executive director of Crop Trust based in Bond, Germany. Stefan,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for being here. Hi. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us what Crop Trust does? The Global Crop Diversity Trust,
Speaker 1: or crop Trust for short, was established eighteen years ago
Speaker 1: to provide support to provide funding for seed banks for
Speaker 1: gene banks around the globe. Those gene banks posts the
Speaker 1: collections of the most important crops that will secure food
Speaker 1: security for mankind in the future. And so this is
Speaker 1: really in an enormous vault filled with all varieties of
Speaker 1: species to protect them from extinction. Yes, all crops, all
Speaker 1: plans that are suitable for consumption for agriculture is collected
Speaker 1: in various gene banks around the globe and we provide funding.
Speaker 1: We provide support in particular to those gene banks in
Speaker 1: the Global South that do not have the capacities to
Speaker 1: provide funding themselves. And this plays very well into the
Speaker 1: conversation that we're having here today, which is all about
Speaker 1: diversity in the food that people eat around the world,
Speaker 1: and how what used to be a great variety of
Speaker 1: crops has now narrowed to relatively few that people consume. Yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely It is amazing what mankind, what farmers around the
Speaker 1: world over the last twelve thousand years, created amazing diversity.
Speaker 1: There are twenty thousand edible plants on Earth. Six thousands
Speaker 1: of them have historically been used as food. Just nine
Speaker 1: account for two thirds of food production. These are the
Speaker 1: usual suspect. We all know it's weed, its rice, its maze, potato,
Speaker 1: and ends on. But we must not forget that there
Speaker 1: is an incredible diversity of edible plants, old land races,
Speaker 1: also the crop wild relatives that are so important for
Speaker 1: food security. When we are facing climate change in particular,
Speaker 1: can you describe how this would affect the global supply. Yes,
Speaker 1: those the ieties of wheat, for example, we use today
Speaker 1: will in many cases no longer be suitable for planting
Speaker 1: and harvesting in twenty thirty years from now, when it's warmer,
Speaker 1: when plants need to be better adapted, too longer, droughts,
Speaker 1: too higher rainfall. So breeders start to look now for
Speaker 1: those old varieties and crop wied relatives that are in
Speaker 1: nature that holds the genetic traits that are able to
Speaker 1: cope better with heat and drought, and they have to
Speaker 1: use these old varieties for breeding purposes to bring these
Speaker 1: old traits back into the crops for the future. How
Speaker 1: are those old versions of these crops being brought back?
Speaker 1: Is this something that is being taken from the seed
Speaker 1: banks to try growing them? Exactly? That is exactly where
Speaker 1: the seed banks, where the gene banks come into play.
Speaker 1: They house thousands of old varieties of wheat and maize
Speaker 1: and rice, but also those thousands of varieties of lesser
Speaker 1: known species like a sorgum or millet a. Scientists and
Speaker 1: breeders today know where those old varieties are housed. We
Speaker 1: have established a huge information system, so everybody knows around
Speaker 1: the world which old varieties are collected in gene banks,
Speaker 1: and those science is those breeders can ask for duplicates
Speaker 1: of those varieties. They will receive it and then they
Speaker 1: use it for their breeding purposes. That is not an
Speaker 1: easy job. It sometimes takes years. It's try and error.
Speaker 1: You need many growing cycles until you get to that
Speaker 1: point where a new variety is ready to be planted
Speaker 1: and harvest. When you look down the road, do you
Speaker 1: see that we are going to have a different future
Speaker 1: that includes many different kinds of grains. I am convinced
Speaker 1: that ten twenty years from now, we will have a
Speaker 1: complete different landscape of what we see as crops growing
Speaker 1: in the fields. There will other crops and there will
Speaker 1: be a greater variety. Again, we do not have any
Speaker 1: other choice. We have to start today being prepared for
Speaker 1: that future and make use of the diversity we have
Speaker 1: and create a newer a diversity. So Stefan, give us
Speaker 1: a preview when we go into a grocery store, when
Speaker 1: we go into a restaurant a decade from now, what
Speaker 1: are some of the foods we're going to be eating
Speaker 1: that we would not even think of today. Perhaps millet.
Speaker 1: Let's take millet compared to wheat. It requires less water input,
Speaker 1: can withstand higher temperatures. So in future, I see a
Speaker 1: great opportunity for millet to be grown ten twenty thirty
Speaker 1: years from now, and I'm sure that it will appear
Speaker 1: on the menu of restaurants in many parts of the world.
Speaker 1: We have to change our diets anyway, and that is
Speaker 1: again where seed banks come into play. There are speed
Speaker 1: banks that house hundreds and thousands of different kinds of
Speaker 1: fruits and legumes that are ready to be used for
Speaker 1: more healthy diets in the future. Today, many people around
Speaker 1: the world simply cannot afford food and vegetables, so we
Speaker 1: have to put more effort into research into breeding of
Speaker 1: new varieties of fruits and vegetables to make it affordable
Speaker 1: for people all around the world. Steven Schmidtz, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for speaking with me today. You can read more
Speaker 1: from Jasmine on and gin wo and Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to us here at The Big Take,
Speaker 1: the daily podcast from Bloomberg and I Heart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more shows from my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app,
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Speaker 1: Big Take, and we'd love to hear from you. Email
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Speaker 1: dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
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Speaker 1: is an associate producer is is our engineer. Original music
Speaker 1: by Leo Sidrin. I'm West Casova. We'll be back tomorrow
Speaker 1: with another Big Take.