World Diabetes Day: The Food System and Human Health

I’m writing to you from California, where we’ll be hosting Food Tank’s Inaugural San Diego Summit, “Growing the Food Movement,” on Wednesday, November 14th!

In honor of World Diabetes Day on November 14th, we’re reflecting on how our food system is deeply connected to human health. The World Health Organization now estimates the direct costs of diabetes at more than US$827 billion per year, globally. The health crisis is growing: the number of people with diabetes has risen from 108 million in 1980 to 422 million in 2014—rising from 4.7 percent to 8.5 percent prevalence among adults.

Food has become the main driver of human health costs, and this growing public health crisis demands a more sustainable food system.

One of our Summit panels is titled “Accounting for the True Cost of Food: Practices and Policies to Improve Sustainability,” and it will look at the cost of food from a systems perspective, inspired by new framework from The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture & Food (TEEBAgriFood).

Through this holistic lens, we will see the full range of impacts, both positive and negative, of the food value chain—from farm to fork to disposal. To fix our broken food system, we must first fix food metrics.

We hope you join us November 14th via livestream on FoodTank.com and Food Tank’s Facebook page to take part in these exciting, inspiring, and thoughtful conversations. If you can’t join us live, we will be posting videos on Food Tank’s YouTube channel.

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Please keep sharing your ideas and innovations with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and by emailing me at [email protected].

Sincerely,

Danielle Nierenberg

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