For avid followers of the TED conference it will not be new news that British chef Jamie Oliver won the TED Prize this year. The result is that he gets $100,000 plus the chance to make his wish in front of the TED audience. These days that audience consists of millions (so far there have been over 200 million talks viewed on the website). You can already check out the video of his passionate plea for a healthier America. Here is his wish:
“I wish for your help to create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.”
Tackling obesity and encouraging healthier eating is something that I believe design and design thinking can make a significant contribution to. Whether it be through innovations in new technologies and applications that allow us to track our food intake better, ( I am a big fan of the i-Phone app Lose It) or through the design of behavioral change programs that consist of new incentives, new tools and communication of new social norms.
There have already been hundreds of folks volunteering to help but I hope that as designers we get behind this wish. The chronic diseases that result from obesity are a major cause of our out of control health costs.
Everyone wants a healthier world, but before New Foodism (the cousin to New Urbanism) can really take hold it will have to acknowledge that home cooking is neither necessary or a high priority for their goals to be attained.
Also, congrats on the whole Fast Company 35th most innovative company award.
Jamie Oliver deserves a knighthood. A brilliant example of how deeds earn you the right to use the words (as with every TED speaker). Too many people feel they have the right to use the words, without ever performing the deeds_ through a kind of TED osmosis perhaps?
we all get so busy with our day to day and the by product has a direct trickle down effect to our children’s eating routines that what Jamie has championed is awesome. Design thinking can really shape what different approaches and ideas we continue to build and put into our world so we are not looking to address obesity and the rise of healthcare costs for the next 50 years. The time to do it is now.
I applaud Jamie. Now lets have him lead up the healthcare debate!
Healthy eating sounds great — we all know that it is needed. And, Jamie Oliver has done a wonderful job of bringing this issue to public attention. All that is great. But, I would like to point out that some psychologists have been working on the issue of healthy eating for many years now. Some researchers in my department (psychology, at Bangor University in Wales) have actually designed a program that “teaches” (“brainwashes”?) kids to love fruits and vegetables. They have done dozens of studies — and, independent groups have verified all their results. The program has been rolled out to all of Ireland recently — and was awarded a World Health Organization award a year ago. I do not know why more schools around the world are not using it. It is based on solid behavior change research. It is not my area (I do neuroscience stuff), but – from what I can tell, it seems to be great stuff. If anyone REALLY wants to “fix” unhealthy eating, then check out this program (it is called “Food Dudes”). They have a website here:
http://www.fooddudes.co.uk/
Tim -
You are absolutely correct that we need design thinking to address this. It’s a complicated topic because it really is about our relationship to eating as well as food. Add to that each culture and/or ethnic group with their own meanings around food and you get one complicated tapestry. Having watched my mother struggle with an eating disorder – I can attest to how many nuances impact one eating nutritionally.
Plus we don’t necessarily have the media telling us what we need to hear as much as what we want to hear. Take Campbell’s The China Study a book that came out 5 years ago with startling evidence of a 20 year study with over 8000 statistics on how people who ate the most animal-based foods got the most chronic disease while people who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. I only heard about this last week from a friend – one would have thought this would have made headlines news when it came out. But it didn’t.
Jamie’s Food Revolution starts here in the States on March 26. I think it’s going to turn everything upside down and inside out – thank God! And our children will have him to thank but we need more heroes to get this massive job done.
I work as a Family Physician and have worked as attending physician for 20 years and medical director for 12 years, at the Montefiore Family Health Center, a community health center located in the Bronx – one of the epicenters of the obesity epidemic in the United States. Over the twenty years I’ve been at FHC, we’ve watched the children in the families we serve grow bigger and bigger, and many of them now are adults, with diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Jamie’s TED talk was great, but only touches the surface of what goes on in our neighborhood. If salt, sugar and oil are the addictive drugs that get our families hooked, we have drug dealers on every corner, from MacDonalds to Kentucky Fried Chicken to the local restaurants that serve the same addictive substances in the form of food to our kids and their parents. At FHC, we joined the NYC Department of Health “Green Cart” program, placing a green cart down the street from us, which rapidly disappeared, due to pressure from the local restaurants. We have ‘healthy food cooking demonstrations’ in our waiting rooms while families wait and health instructors who teach about obesity. Patient information handouts are plentiful.
But nothing whatsoever has touched the obesity epidemic where we are. Why? A good design scout can take a 5 minute walk trying to find something to eat in our ‘hood and find the reason immediately:
- not a single healthy food within a radius of several miles
- bodegas and grocery stores with nothing but sugar, salt and hydrogenated fat by the gallons
- family cultures that have been brought up for generations on unhealthy foods
Sound like a challenging and great design thinking problem to me and one that would involve ‘massive change,’ in our neighborhood. The 15 minutes of face time we get as docs with a patient does little, if anything at all to help. The 30 minutes of healthy food cooking demonstrations are a sexy, fun and delicious idea well received by patients, but try to get a zuccini with olive oil in our neighborhood for a family to make at home.
So – massive change anyone? Any ideas welcome and appreciated.
Zach
I agree that Jamie Oliver deserves a Knighthood for all he has done to try and improve peoples health particularly children.
Jamie Oliver is a star ! He has managed to reduce his highly complex message in to a easily understandable public target, something that governments seem totally unable to do. Jamie (IMHO) will be, if he is not already, a national treasure.
I would like to point out my passion for your kindness in support of those people that really want help on this particular idea. Your personal commitment to passing the message all-around has been exceptionally powerful and has in every case helped somebody much like me to get to their pursuits. Your own informative suggestions indicates a great deal a person like me and still more to my office colleagues. Best wishes; from everyone of us.