What’s the Antidote for Our Health and Our Planet? Foods Grown for Flavor, Not Yield

By Agroempresario.com

Food is at the center of our greatest health challenges and our most promising solutions, stated Dr. Amy Godfrey at last week’s Regenerative Food Systems Investment (RFSI) Europe event in Brussels.

Each year, these challenges become more painfully evident, something Dr. Godfrey, an analyst at venture capital firm The First Thirty, underscored with a list of thought-provoking statistics. Among adults over 18, 50% have at least one chronic disease. Around 70% of deaths worldwide are caused by chronic diseases, which are largely preventable. Meanwhile, the costs associated with these diseases amount to trillions annually.

“The global increase in life expectancy should be an opportunity for us to live longer and fuller lives, but the reality is that we are medicated and ill for much of those later years,” she said.

The good news is that the link between soil health and human health is becoming increasingly evident, presenting an opportunity for regenerative agriculture and food systems that prioritize more than just high yields.

According to her, the results of such a transition would be substantial: “Better health, greater economic growth, and less pressure on our healthcare systems,” to name just a few benefits.

Nutritional Quality as a Byproduct of the Environment

“Nutrients are microbially mediated from soil health to the plant and into the foods we consume,” said Eric Smith, CEO and co-founder of Edacious, who joined Dr. Godfrey on stage.

Edacious has developed software to map the nutritional density of whole foods, from meat and dairy to fresh produce. During the RFSI panel, Smith stated that the company is “beginning to see solid, systematic evidence showing how this nutrition actually transfers to the plant and, therefore, to our bodies.”

Anecdotally, he added, we have all experienced this connection between soil health and nutrition: “When we taste good food, we can feel that something positive happened in its production. The nutritional quality of food is a byproduct of the environmental conditions in which it is produced.”

You Are What You Don’t Eat

Ali Morpeth, co-founder of Planetary Alliance and a registered nutritionist who also participated in the panel, said that getting healthy, regeneratively grown food to everyone is more than just a matter of accessibility. The quality of our diet must also be considered.

“We have a very high incidence of obesity, but at the same time, we have extremely high levels of malnutrition, which sometimes go undiagnosed because they occur in populations that are also living with obesity.”

“A diet low in whole grains, for example, is directly responsible for 3 million deaths annually,” Morpeth stated. “A diet low in fruit is responsible for 2 million deaths each year,” she added.

In other words, it’s not just about what we overconsume but also about what we consume too little of.

Growing for Flavor

There are many links in the food supply chain that bear some responsibility in this transition toward better agriculture and, consequently, better health, the panelists suggested.

“When it comes to consumers, I don’t think we have much work to do,” Morpeth said. “When we talk to people about their preferences for a healthy diet, almost everyone wants to eat healthily.”

“The difficulty we have is in the accessibility and affordability of [regenerative] foods and the prolific marketing and promotion of low-quality, ultra-processed foods that dominate our supermarkets.”

So, while much remains to be done in terms of consumer education, there is also a significant need to restructure our food environments and make healthy foods available to everyone, she added. This is more of a push for food companies and retailers that control which foods the average consumer sees daily.

Smith questioned the dominance of ultra-processed foods (UPFs): “We have to get out of that diet,” he said bluntly, adding that we must also address the problem of chemicals that affect food safety.

Finally, he emphasized the need to ensure food is nutrient-dense because “all our dietary systems and recommendations are actually based on minimum daily intakes, not on optimization and what constitutes a healthy life.”

How can we optimize our diets for a healthy life? Grow for flavor, Smith asserted.

“The way we have designed [the food system] is to optimize for yield, carbohydrates, and calories; what we have sacrificed is actually flavor, and flavor is directly linked to nutrition,” Smith said. “If we truly want people to go back to eating those fruits and vegetables, if we want people to eat the right fats that are linked to healthy ecosystems, we need to make food taste good again, and we need to get people excited about eating those foods.

“I believe the real cultural shift in this is getting people to reconnect with the land and get excited about food again.”