Henry Dimbleby joins Dr Ruth Allan LIVE on her show ‘Brain Health: Unchaining Your Pain’ on Monday, 27 March 2023

Henry Dimbleby is the author of the book ‘Ravenous: How to get ourselves and our planet into shape’. Published in March 2023, this analysis of the food system – how it is malfunctioning and what to do about it, build on the work he did in the independent National Food Strategy, described by Prue Leith as “the best government document that’s ever come out.”

In 2013, he co-authored The School Food Plan, a blueprint for the government setting out actions to transform what children eat in schools and how they learn about food. It resulted in the introduction of free school meals for all children up to the age of eight and cooking lessons being made obligatory for all children up to 14 years old.

From 2018 to 2023, Dimbleby was the lead non-executive board member of the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, serving under Michael Gove, Theresa Villiers, George Eustice, Ranil Jayawardene, and Therese Coffey. He has also advised the Labour party on improving the food system’s sustainability and security.

Henry previously worked as a Strategy Consultant at Bain & Company, working with businesses on strategy, performance improvement, and organizational design. Before that, he worked as a journalist at The Daily Telegraph and a chef at the Michelin-starred Four Seasons Inn on the Park. 

In this episode, we talk about the chronic health epidemic associated with our current food system and the actionable steps we can take to improve the health of ourselves and our planet through a system-centric approach.

We discuss the importance of educating our children in healthy food for their minds and body and the shocking statistics concerning the food system and how it is killing us and the planet.

We discuss the risk of drugging our way out of the problem rather than dealing with the root cause and how we could be at the cusp of a new scientific revolution for using big data to understand and address these complex systems.

Henry talks about how the food system is the most significant cause of biodiversity, deforestation, freshwater pollution, the devastation of freshwater life in the oceans, and how, after energy, it’s the second most significant cause of climate change, with governments subsidizing the destruction of nature to the tune of $500Bn a year.

We discuss the steps to establishing a balancing feedback loop to address the food system’s environmental impact. Henry talks about some of the steps that are being taken and how we are dipping our toe in the water to find a solution rather than jumping in head first to create a ripple effect that will instigate vital changes in our food system across the globe.

We passionately discuss the lack of government intervention to prevent junk food advertising to our children. We talk about how people are fed up with living in a food ‘swamp’ / junk food world and want change, given our children are now predicted to have a lower life expectancy than their parents as a result of the food system messing with our evolutionary feedback loops that govern our behaviour.

We also discuss the importance of giving our children the tools to survive in the food swamp, starting with creating a safe environment inside the home, helping our children to learn how to cook food from scratch, as well as different steps you can take as a parent to make food healthy and fun.

I absolutely loved this episode as we had so much to discuss on the importance of addressing the food system through a system-centric approach, whether the system is you personally, the food industry, or the entire ecosystem in which we live – our planet, that we are dependent upon to survive. Be sure to rate and review this episode on any podcasting platform. Share your view – tell us what you enjoyed or loved about the show here, or leave a podcast review on Apple Podcasts by visiting the link below!

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