My job is to work with cooks to figure out the science behind food and cooking. But something that we’re also interested in with my job is using the knowledge that we produce by doing that to improve the world.
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We live in a world of wild, damaging, unsustainable excess. We’re surrounded by unhealthy food options. We live in places built for cars, not for walking or biking. We’re buried in our screens 24⁄7. We face calls to buy stuff, endlessly. And we live in a consumer culture that is dependent on the notion of disposal. But here’s the thing. These excesses are so fully normalized, they so fully meet our expectations of how everyday life ought to look, that we no longer really see them as excessive at all.
When I learned to farm mushrooms, I discovered to grow mushrooms you use agricultural waste that is available to all the poor families in any any place we can say this is a struggling country. As long as they practice some form of agriculture, they will have this kind of waste material.
We’re here today to start a new conversation about the world of chefs and cooks, between the world of chefs and cooks, and you the delegates and influencers and people here at the World Bank. The reason we’re here is to find ways to work together to build a food system that feeds everyone, every day, everywhere.