Greg Drescher is senior advisor for strategic initiatives at The Culinary Institute of America, where he strengthens innovation in health, sustainability, culture and culinary insight. He played an instrumental role in developing the college’s Worlds of Flavor International Conference and Festival and co-led the Menus of Change initiative. On this episode of “Food Lab Talk,” Michiel speaks with Greg about how changing a system is like peeling an onion, why deliciousness is a key ingredient to successfully shift diets and why you should work with people outside your “lane of expertise.”
Greg Drescher: “If you're asking people to shift diets, what you're asking them to shift towards has got to be at least as appealing as what they have now. There's the notion of the unapologetic elevation of deliciousness as a public health imperative. It's important for the public health community to not just say in passing that ‘healthy food needs to taste good,’ because on the other side, people are trying to make food craveable. If you're putting up merely ‘taste good’ against ‘craveable’, you're gonna lose every time.”
01:57 Why we need to reconsider whether “the system is broken”
03:10 What does it mean to shift diets?
05:48 What motivates chefs to drive change
08:16 What you shift towards has to be at least as appealing as what you have now
09:57 Multiple approaches to seed change: ownership, desire, and experience
12:38 No “one size fits all” solution - tailor for culture, traditions, and geography
16:30 Levers to inspire change
17:15 Why language matters
19:30 A case study in building consensus
22:57 Menus of Change: The business of healthy, sustainable deliciousness
24:37 Building an accelerator for change
25:25 Why early success can ignite systems change
26:39 Value of working with people outside your area of expertise
28:17 Takeaways for changemakers
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What is Food Lab Talk?
A better food system starts with one thing: vision. Food Lab Talk gives global food system changemakers a platform to articulate their vision for the future of food.
The series features interviews with inspiring individuals who are working on the frontlines of many of our most pressing food issues: reducing food loss and waste, enhancing food system transparency, facilitating shifts toward more balanced plant-forward diets, enabling informed individual choices for sustainable lifestyles, and accelerating the transition to a circular food economy.
Join Google’s Michiel Bakker to meet the leaders taking bold action and answering what each of us can do to create a better food system for us all.