Season 5, Episode 5 - Food security, consumerism and health - What’s the connection?

In the months of both Ramadan and Lent, Generation One joins in with reflections on the relationship between food, community, and health with our fifth episode of Season 5.

Hosts Mark and Simon explore not only the impacts of climate change on global food availability, but societal behaviour around food and decision-making. Examining the intersecting issues of food security and consumer culture, they uncover the effects of both on nutritional health.

They’re joined by two UCL experts: Mark Miodownik (Professor of Materials & Society) who deconstructs the supply chain to highlight the damaging effects of packaging and microplastics. And Gail Taylor (Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences), who explains how the latest developments in plant science and agrotechnology can help make food more nutritious and widely available.

We also heard from Dr Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation. And from UCL students Carson and Valentina, leaders of the Students’ Union’s Zero Food Waste project, which aims to tackle food waste on campus.

Zero Food Waste: studentsunionucl.org/volunteering/o…ero-food-waste
Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/climate-change/pod…ne-climate-podcast

Date of episode recording: 6 and 21 March 2025
Duration: 55.46
Language of episode: English 
Presenter: Professor Mark Maslin and Dr Simon Chin-Yee 
Guests:
Professor Mark Miodownik, UCL
Professor Gail Taylor, UCL
Yat Hin Carson Chan, UCL Students’ Union
Valentina (Hye Won) Chang, UCL Students’ Union
Producers:
Adam Batstone
Caitlin Mullin

Creators and Guests

Host

Dr Simon Chin-Yee

Simon has over 15 years of experience in international cooperation and policy through multiple research roles within academia, as well as his work with the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Host

Professor Mark Maslin

Mark is a leading scientist interested in understanding climate change and humanity’s major challenges in the 21st century. He has written ten books and over 100 popular articles and regularly appears on radio and television, , including BBC One David Attenborough’s ‘Climate Change: The Facts’.

What is UCL Generation One: The Climate Podcast?

Generation One is the flagship climate podcast from University College London. Join our collective of passionate individuals dedicated to climate action and a fairer, more positive future – for us, and for the generations to come.

Our hosts Professor Mark Maslin and Dr. Simon Chin-Yee dive into the biggest challenges and solutions shaping the fight against climate change.

Joined by expert guests, they’ll be bringing you cutting-edge initiatives and inspiring climate action stories – from reimagining global energy systems to protecting our oceans, from using AI to decolonising climate solutions.

Tune in monthly to discover how we can turn climate science and ideas into real-world action.

Learn more about UCL’s Generation One climate campaign and access episode transcripts at ucl.ac.uk/climate-change.

We’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback. To get involved, email us at [e-mail] or find us on X using #UCLGenerationOne.

Language: English
Presenters: Professor Mark Maslin, Dr. Simon Chin-Yee
Producers: Adam Batstone, Caitlin Mullin, Jane Yelloly

Intro: 00:02

We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.

Mark Miodownik: 00:12

There's nothing to restrain people's behaviour. So it's hardly surprising that we go on consuming high carbon, wasteful food through fast food systems.

Gail Taylor: 00:23

Intensive urban environments like the one we're sitting in today don't need to be food deserts. The future can bring them something better.

Mark Miodownik: 00:34

So I think you just have to ban disposable cups. You just ban them.

Mark Maslin: 00:41

This is generation one from University College London, turning climate science and ideas into action. Welcome back to UCL's generation one podcast and episode five of season five. I'm your host, Mark Maslin, professor of earth system science here at UCL, which means I study climate change in the past, the present, and the future.

Simon Chin-Yee: 01:09

And I'm Simon Chin Yee from UCL's School of Public Policy, and I work on sustainable transportation fuels amongst many, many other things. And today, we're actually looking at that connection between food security and health. I like food, and I'm pretty fond of security. But I and Mark, we're in this very fortunate position to have that. Many are not.

Simon Chin-Yee: 01:33

And I think throughout my research actually food insecurity is really key to us all, not just the access to food and water, but potable water and nutritious food. Today, we're going to be looking at that food security part and how that intertwines with health.

Mark Maslin: 01:50

Well, for me, the numbers are always deeply shocking. Eight hundred and fifty million people go to bed feeling hungry every night. Now that's not because we have a lack of food. We produce about 10,000,000,000 people's worth of food, and there's only 8,000,000,000 of us. So there's a huge amount of food waste that's going on, and there's a huge number of people who are hungry and starving.

Mark Maslin: 02:18

And the key thing there with that is food security is not necessarily about food, it's about money. It's about being able to buy food. For example, if you and I are hungry, what do we do? We walk into the supermarket and we can pick stuff from all over the world. And we'll go, oh, I fancy an avocado.

Mark Maslin: 02:35

I fancy a banana. You know? We can have that choice because we have money. And, actually, that's exactly the point I was trying to make. It's not about it's about money.

Simon Chin-Yee: 02:44

It's about what you can buy, and it's about equity. And there are many people that would argue that there are too many people in the world and that there's not enough food to feed it, but we know that that's not true. There is enough food in this world to feed all 8,000,000,000 of us. It's just that it's not equitably distributed.

Mark Maslin: 02:58

We also have enough money. Remember, the global economy creates a $100,000,000,000,000 of new money every single year. There really shouldn't be any poor people. There shouldn't be any hungry people, and everybody should have fresh water, sanitation, housing, health, but they don't.

Simon Chin-Yee: 03:19

Now that's not the world we live in, is it, Mark?

Mark Maslin: 03:21

So should we move on with the episode?

Simon Chin-Yee: 03:22

I think probably that's a good idea.

Mark Maslin: 03:24

We could rant on for ages about this. So we're into March. So that means many people, our New Year's resolution or a distant past that eating healthily, exercising regularly may have crumbled. But we're also in the month of Ramadan, and this week marks the beginning of Lent. So this is when people are starting to think about fasting, giving up certain foods, and considering their relationship between the food, community, spirituality, and their physical health.

Mark Maslin: 03:58

So today, we are joining in these conversations with an episode focused on food security and health. We're exploring not only the impact of climate change on food availability, but societal behavior around food and decision making, and the effects that it has on our health.

Simon Chin-Yee: 04:17

We'll hear from a variety of people whose work and research is having an impact on the way we produce food, its sustainability, and what that means for our health. We'll hear from Gail Taylor, Dean of Faculty of Life Sciences here at UCL, and also from Doctor. Andrew Sims, the co director of the New Weather Institute, who explains the concept of ecological debt. And we will also be hearing from students across UCL who have set up the Zero Food Waste Initiative, which is very much in keeping with our generation one philosophy of turning climate science and ideas into tangible action.

Mark Maslin: 04:51

But before all that, let's start by welcoming a dear colleague and friend, Mark Miodownik, professor of materials and society. Mark is a member of the Food and Decision Making Research Center here at UCL. Hi, Mark. It's very good to have you here.

Mark Miodownik: 05:07

Yeah. Hi. Thanks for inviting me to the podcast.

Mark Maslin: 05:10

I mean, so the first one I want to ask, I know it's really broad, which is what role do materials and technology play in shaping the future of food security and nutrition?

Mark Miodownik: 05:21

First class, you might think, well, what? What? Yeah. But, actually, you know, if you think about it, most materials come packaged, and and, of course, that is that has a whole suite of materials. And I spend a lot of my time doing research around packaging materials, including plastics and metals and various other ones.

Mark Miodownik: 05:38

Go into a supermarket now, what do you see? I mean, you see a whole host of packaged material. Yeah. Packaging is important. But, of course, we've got this epidemic now of plastic packaging, which is 400 there's 400,000,000 tons of plastic being produced every year.

Mark Miodownik: 05:55

Approximately 40% of that is packaging, and most of that goes into the environment. So that's a tsunami of plastic ending up in the water and and and killing the ecosystem. It's ending up in soils, which we're not quite sure how bad it is for soils, but let's just say it's probably not good. And it's in the form of microplastics, which you might get onto later, it's ending up in our bodies and affecting our health. So so, yes, I think we've kind of gone from one extreme where we had almost zero packaging, let's say, in the nineteenth century and lots of food was wasted to now where we have huge amount of packaging.

Mark Miodownik: 06:31

We've actually aced the packaging, but we've actually got these knock on effects which affect ecosystems and our health.

Mark Maslin: 06:37

So what are the alternatives? What what can we do to replace those plastics? What can we do to reduce the amount of packaging?

Mark Miodownik: 06:45

Well, I think it's it's it's the you you got two choices. The the solution is seen to be that we stick with plastics. We collect them instead of throwing them into the environment, and we recycle them. And and that that technology of recycling is incredibly rudimentary at the moment. So so although our collection systems have really been ramped up, and you see in The UK, at least, that we've kind of the the the population are on board with recycling.

Mark Miodownik: 07:11

People know it's a good thing to do. We actually have if you look at the recycled content of both packaging, it's it's small, 30% max. And we need to get to 90% of the plastic packaging being recycled content.

Simon Chin-Yee: 07:23

Friends of mine came to visit me in London from France a few years back, and they were astounded by the fact that our all the vegetables and my fruits in my fridge had best before dates on it. And why is everything in plastic? So when it comes to these these organic fruits and vegetables that don't need to have plastic packaging around them, how is there a way to get rid of it? Well, when

Mark Miodownik: 07:43

you say don't need, it's more complicated than that in terms of the business model. So most fruit and veg are bought in supermarkets, and that brings the prices down because they're incredibly competitive, let's say, in in many countries. So the fruit becomes lower cost because you're buying it in the supermarket environment. Now the supermarket only can operate at the margins to bring those costs down because they use plastic packaging. Now that sounds kind of weird because that's an extra cost.

Mark Miodownik: 08:08

Right? Yeah. Putting some material on which is gonna be discarded. But but there here's here's the business model. They basically bring costs down and bring volumes up, which means that their margins are tiny.

Mark Miodownik: 08:19

So you buy some tomatoes or you buy some bananas, and they're not making very much money on that. But what they're what they have to make sure is you buy all of your tomatoes and all of your bananas from them, and you do so in the fastest possible way so you get out of the shop fast. So they are trying to minimize your residence time in the shop and maximize the volume you put in your basket. How to do that? You put everything in bags, and you put them in plastic bags because that's the cheapest way to do it cause it also helps you in your supply chain.

Mark Miodownik: 08:46

And that's why the plastic bag that's why you buy apples in plastic bags in supermarkets. It makes no sense. Apples don't need a plastic around, but it's the business model of bringing the price of apples down. I'm one these people who do buy the loose apples. Because if you look at loose apples provided in supermarkets versus ones in bags, I mean, I I, like, I can't bear to buy this plastic bag with apples.

Mark Miodownik: 09:07

So I buy them them with the with and I and I diligently put them through the the self checkout individually, but I'm the only one doing it.

Simon Chin-Yee: 09:15

No. I'm doing it too. I promise you.

Mark Miodownik: 09:17

Okay. We're doing it. Hooray.

Simon Chin-Yee: 09:18

But I because I just don't

Mark Miodownik: 09:19

see It's a little bit of resistance. You

Simon Chin-Yee: 09:21

know? Resistance. I like, back to the point, like, I just I don't I get what we're in the system and that that's how they're making their margins. I and but why do we have to stick in the system when other outside of The UK, for example, or outside of perhaps the Western world, whatever, that doesn't exist, and people aren't eating less apples, I don't think.

Mark Miodownik: 09:38

So governments can do something about it, and then they've done it in France. They just say, look. We're banning you from packaging fruit in plastic. You just have to do it loose. And if the supermarkets would take that in The UK.

Mark Miodownik: 09:49

They would lobby heavily against it because they would make less money. But they it's not they won't the market won't do it.

Mark Maslin: 09:56

So we look at the market. They are trying to increase their volume. They're trying to increase their sort of margins. But how do we take that system and twist it slightly to make sure that people's food choices are towards more healthier options? Because, again, the idea that you can pick up fruit, fantastic, but a lot of people are just going for the ready meals.

Mark Maslin: 10:21

How do we play that system that it it works for the people as well as the supermarkets?

Mark Miodownik: 10:27

Probably, we we're talking about a cultural change. I would characterize this as local versus global influences. So we have these global companies marketing sort of twenty four seven at us, firing in our head desires for things, and and that that twenty four seven marketing works. You're never gonna get rid of it by, I think, labeling a product. You either have to sort of make those companies stop marketing those foods and and stop this bombardment in people's heads.

Mark Miodownik: 11:01

Or I think you go down the local route, and I think you sort of move away that all the food offering and all of the way in which food is provided is via these international global companies with a global kind of marketing budget. And I think that therein lies an option, which is a cultural social option. And I would think would inevitably increase the price of food, but I think might have health benefits. And I think what we've we've kind of stumbled into is that we've given a lot of power to a lot of global companies, which it's a one size fits all solution. Right?

Mark Miodownik: 11:37

And that one size, it doesn't fit all. Right? They have one way of doing things. And it has actually brought a lot of countries up to a certain level of access to food, but I I don't think it will go the next level, and I don't think it will address changes in climate very well. Because although you can package things up and you can send it there, you know, often these are very ultra processed foods, and and we know that ultra processed foods, there's there's huge health implications if that's your whole diet.

Mark Maslin: 12:03

I also think that people just don't realize how complicated the food system is. If you think about it, let's say take London. 8,000,000 people live in London who are buying food on a daily basis. Okay? Whether it's through the supermarkets, restaurants, takeaways, every single one of those firms has to be supplied.

Mark Maslin: 12:26

They have to have food delivered on a day. Supermarkets work on a literally a daily basis going, okay. Is the shelves full or has it emptied? The logistics are just mad, but we expect to be able to as you said, expect we to be able to go in a supermarket and pick foods from all around the world. Okay?

Mark Maslin: 12:45

And, oh my word, do we get annoyed when the avocados aren't in at 09:00 in the morning when I want them? You know? We've got into this whole mentality, which is it has to be there.

Mark Miodownik: 12:57

You know, I think I think we should acknowledge it is an amazing engineering achievement, right, to have a supermarket that can give you all these foods from all over the world. And and that, you know, that's that's a very significant achievement. But I think we now need to understand that has have a knock on effects, and and maybe that's it's not the optimum. It's not where we really want to be for fairness and for for global nutrition and access to food. It's not the model we wanna follow.

Mark Maslin: 13:24

You you mentioned plastics, and I I wanna come back to this because you and many colleagues here at UCL work on microplastics. And we now know that it's been found in human breast milk. It's been found in blood. It's been found in the placenta. Microplastics seem to be now part of our bodies.

Mark Maslin: 13:43

Should we be worried?

Mark Miodownik: 13:44

Well, I think that is the big question. So so that's why there's so much research going on in our labs and other labs because we basically have ignored it for many, many decades. We presumably have had microplastics in our body for a long time, for decades, but we only have just gonna become aware of it. What what what we mean by microplastics is is actually worth sort of delving into. So on the one hand, there are plastics bits of plastic you can see in soil, like bright bits of crisp packet, let's say, or and and that's that is a microplastic, but that isn't the stuff we're talking about being in our bodies.

Mark Miodownik: 14:19

The stuff we're talking about being in our bodies is is invisible. So it's a much smaller fragment of that, which is in the soil, and you can't see it. And it and it becomes part of the food system, or it's flaked off your drinks bottle. So you might buy water thinking that's the healthy option, but there are hundreds of microplastics, invisible ones, in that water. That's that's been shown clearly.

Mark Miodownik: 14:38

So anyone drinking bottled water is drinking microplastics. Now when they when they get down as small as a nanometer or a few tens of nanometers, they they're so small they can get into the cells of your body. And that it's almost certainly not good for your cells. But, again, we the evidence like, there's huge amount of work working out just how bad that is and whether those cells die and whether it could even cause cancer or other problems. The the kind of more positive side is this.

Mark Miodownik: 15:03

Because it's been happening for decades, if they were really fatal, we would have noticed it in the life expectancy data by now. It's my feeling anyway. So I think I think if they were if they were gonna cause death within years, we would have seen it. So so, you know, it's a complex picture. I don't wanna freak anyone out.

Mark Miodownik: 15:23

I think if you wanna avoid microplastics, it's hard. It's almost impossible.

Simon Chin-Yee: 15:27

Mhmm. Great. So not the thing to worry about. There are all these microplastics that are coming into my body through osmosis. If we could talk a little bit about that compostable packaging material, Mark.

Simon Chin-Yee: 15:39

There seems to be a lot of public support for it, but are these better for the environment, and do they help create more compost for farmers to put in the agricultural land?

Mark Miodownik: 15:48

I mean, I think we've done loads of work on this. So we did a citizen science project where we got citizens from all around the world, but mostly The UK, to take what was labeled home compostable packaging, so a cup or a sleeve of a magazine or all these things that are are out there. And ever and people were enthusiastic about them because they thought they were better than the environment. And we were like, well, let's test it. Why don't you put that in your compost in the back of your garden?

Mark Miodownik: 16:12

So we got thousands of people to do this, and we took got them to take picture of the the item. And then before they put it in, then we we we then recorded the date they did that. And then we kept going back to them saying in three months' time, can you go and have a look for it? Is it there? And then we asked them in six months.

Mark Miodownik: 16:25

And we got this enormous dataset, the only one in the world that exists for home composting plastics.

Simon Chin-Yee: 16:30

And guess the result?

Mark Miodownik: 16:32

Guess what? 66 of them did not compost. So so and then we try to dig around the science of why that's happening, and what we realized was that, well, compost in South England is very different from a compost in Northern Ireland, is very different from one in Wales. So there's you know, you got a a single material that a company is is putting onto the market, but it's the place it has to operate and biodegrade is very different. So very hard, actually, as a material scientist to design a material that would operate in that way.

Mark Miodownik: 17:01

I think that the claims that it's better for the environment are generally not met at the moment. So so if you're an organization and you and you're thinking about giving coffee or tea to your fellow workers, don't switch from a disposable cup of plastic to one of of compostable plastic. Go to reusable. Like, the mug exists already. Just provide reusable mugs and wash them.

Mark Miodownik: 17:25

That has that's a much lower c o two footprint, and it's a much better for the environment.

Simon Chin-Yee: 17:31

I mean, we see that here at UCL, don't we? I've I was at an event yesterday, and it's it's incredible. It was just in our department where we have all the mugs that we could have used right there, and yet all of this wasn't plastic, but all these paper cups kind of came out, and everybody, all the students

Mark Miodownik: 17:44

were using them. They're they're lined with plastic. They look like paper. They're not paper. This is another problem is that a lot of the sustainable marketed stuff is designed to look benign, and people trust paper, but paper is not very sustainable material anyway.

Mark Miodownik: 17:59

And b, a, and b, it is plastic lined as as is your can, for instance. So people are, oh, I'm not gonna drink it out of a plastic bottle. I'm gonna drink it out of a can. And that's metal. That's recyclable.

Mark Miodownik: 18:09

Yeah. But it's lined with plastic, just FYI. Otherwise, it would corrode the metal. I mean

Mark Maslin: 18:15

So so can I pick up on that? Does that mean that Trump is right to ban paper straws and mandate the use of plastic straws?

Mark Miodownik: 18:23

When this first kicked off and people started banning plastic straws, we we flagged up that paper straws were worse. Everyone ignored us, and I'm afraid to say Trump is right about this. Alright? They're worse for the environment, paper straws. And and you ask why?

Mark Miodownik: 18:36

He said, well, paper is not waterproof. So guess what? There's a coating on them. And and guess what the coating is? In many cases, PFASs.

Mark Miodownik: 18:44

So these are polyfluorinated forever chemicals. Okay. And they are also really implicated in some very bad health outcomes. So that thought I'm not I'm not saying we should go back to plastic straws either. I'm saying that the way to deal with plastic waste in this situation when it's a small item if if people are wedded to having going to, let's say, a food outlet and and ordering a Coke, fair enough, and they want it through a straw, they got kids, or they just like it, fair enough, Then just redesign the cup.

Mark Miodownik: 19:16

Right? So the straw is embedded in the full item, and the whole thing is made of a single plastic that's recyclable. Because if it's big and the whole thing's one item, it will go through the recycling system. No problem. We have them in The UK.

Mark Miodownik: 19:27

It'll be fine. It will it will be recycled.

Mark Maslin: 19:29

Well, considering how many re how many reusable coffee mugs I have at home, I opened the cupboard and went, oh, yes. I definitely have one. I've got about 10 there.

Mark Miodownik: 19:40

So this is cultural change we're talking about. So people, we did loads of work on it at UCL using UCL as a living lab. I'm trying to understand why when you offer a discount, 50 p, to someone who to off their coffee if they bring a cup, it the the number of people who take you up on that offer, which is a good offer, I think, thresholds at about 20%. It doesn't get any higher. You you can't offer that and short of giving it free, right, and make a huge loss, you cannot persuade most people to leave their house in the morning with other than their keys and their phone.

Mark Miodownik: 20:12

And we tried to get to the bottom of, is this such a big ask? You're gonna need a coffee or tea during that day. It's you're it's a daily habit. Why is it not part of that set of things you always leave a house with? Answer.

Mark Miodownik: 20:22

There's some sort of disgust situation going on around reusable cups. They seem to be grimy. They sit at the bottom of your bag. After you've used them, they might drip. There's all sorts of slightly weird issues, which I don't think are reasonable, but most people do think are reasonable, and they would rather have well, they'd rather kind of make the world a worse place by using disposable.

Simon Chin-Yee: 20:43

I mean, is really, really key, and I think this is what we've been talking about this entire time is actually this is all about behavioral patterns and behavioral change. How can we change our addiction to these plastics that we actually don't really need?

Mark Miodownik: 20:57

No. I think I think this is where governments and and governmental kind of organizations come into play. I think I think if you're really serious about cutting down plastic waste, you have to just make some what will seem drastic laws at the time. And then just like banning smoking from pubs, it will seem really reasonable later. So I think

Mark Miodownik: 21:16

you just have to ban disposable cups. You just ban them.

Simon Chin-Yee: 21:20

I mean, off the back of what you just said actually, when we're talking about behavioral patterns, recycling became part of the part of our daily existence. Right? We before, we were we didn't really recycle. Now we do. But recycling isn't very efficient.

Simon Chin-Yee: 21:35

Are there other ways, other solutions that we can move forward in order to deal with these plastics?

Mark Miodownik: 21:40

Yes. So there's there's a really exciting new technology that we're working on and many other people are working on called enzyme recycling technology. And what is that? So the way that your body and microorganisms in the environment eat things is that they secrete molecules onto the surface, and those they catalyze a degradation. Things fall apart, and these are called enzymes.

Mark Miodownik: 22:04

They're in your washing powder. They they they they they make the dirt fall apart. That's what biological washing powder is. That's the magic bit. Now imagine we could make them for plastic.

Mark Miodownik: 22:13

Answer, actually, there are some that exist for plastic. We found them in the environment, and now we're trying to undiscover more in the lab. The the beauty of this situation is that it happens at low temperature, that that recycling, instead of being this kind of mechanical process, then becomes some more like brewing. Right? So imagine you put all the plastic that you collect from your very diligent recycling, and now we put them into a big tank, a a stainless steel tank, and we add these enzymes.

Mark Miodownik: 22:38

And the enzymes make the all the plastics fall apart into their constituent parts. The beauty of this solution is that then we take the constituent parts and we remake the plastics.

Mark Maslin: 22:48

I love it. Plastic eating bugs saves planet. I love it. How far along are we? Is this still in the laboratory but not going to happen for decades, or are we are we close to that breakthrough?

Mark Miodownik: 23:01

No. There there there is a company already, Kabeos, in France that is using it at scale. You know, there's an enormous amount of excitement to scale up. I I you know, I think we have to kind of be a bit humble about the fact that, okay, they're they're still competing against global markets making virgin plastic, and and the cost of this recycling process still can't compete. But yeah.

Mark Miodownik: 23:24

No. I think it's it's gonna it's got a bright future.

Simon Chin-Yee: 23:27

Is there a way just to finish off here in under understand what we do here at UCL generation one turning science into action? Because we've been talking about behavioral change, is there something our listeners can take away from this conversation that they can actually action at their scale?

Mark Miodownik: 23:43

So I just think, do one thing. Just change one thing about your life. Concentrate on getting that to happen. Leave the house with a reusable cup every day. Like, take your keys, take your your phone and everything else you need, your laptop, whatever, and your cup, and you will change the world.

Mark Maslin: 24:02

And I also like the fact that when we brought in this charge for plastic bags, there was a whole culture change. Because do you remember the looks you got when you'd forgotten your bag and people just looked down their noses going, oh, are you using a plastic bag? Can you imagine going into a coffee shop going, really? You're having one of those plastic lined paper cups? I'm never going to talk to you, and I'm definitely not dating you.

Mark Maslin: 24:26

You know, it would be brilliant. Imagine the culture change.

Mark Miodownik: 24:29

I we can do it. It really is. It's not like this is people, you know, worry about, you know, big forces in the world. Of course, there are big forces in that, but we have we have agency. We can solve quite a lot of the problems ourselves if we all only all just actually do it.

Mark Miodownik: 24:44

Right?

Mark Maslin: 24:45

Thank you, Mark. You've been absolutely brilliant as I knew you would be.

Simon Chin-Yee: 24:49

Yeah. We're just gonna all have to now do it. You're listening to UCL generation one, turning science and ideas into climate action.

Mark Maslin: 24:57

Last month at UCL's Love Your Planet event, we caught up with Andrew Sims who discussed ecological debt and overconsumption.

Andrew Simms: 25:06

Our attempts to meet climate goals have happened in the context of an economy that is designed for overconsumption. It's based on a growth model of debt fueled over consumption. And, of course, that is most explicit and easy to see where you find the polluter elite, as we call them, in the rich industrialized countries where we live in economies that give you no hint about why you should restrain some of your most polluting patterns of consumption and behaviors, whether it's flying excessively, driving huge SUVs, having a really heavily red meat based diet, these kind of things. Now what happens with these kind of unrestrained lifestyles is that we run up what we would call an ecological debt. What is an ecological debt?

Andrew Simms: 25:57

Well, it's not difficult these days with things like the ecological footprint to work out how much we can safely consume on an equal basis before we start producing more waste and consuming more than the biosphere can either absorb or replace. Now when you over consume, you run up in ecological debt.

Simon Chin-Yee: 26:19

Andrew also went on to explain how our behavior has a significant impact on the way we consume.

Andrew Simms: 26:25

I think there's a complex dynamic between system and behavior change. And if you think of regulation as being part of the system, but behavior change too. As people's behavior changes, it makes it more politically possible to pass better regulation. And I think those two things feed off each other. As we sit at the moment, whether it's fast fashion, fast food, big cars, loads of flights, at the moment, there's no proper regulation of the system.

Andrew Simms: 26:53

There's nothing to restrain people's behavior. Nothing even to indicate or signal to them that there's much of a problem. So it's hardly surprising that we go on consuming high carbon, you know, wasteful food through fast food systems, fast fashion, etcetera. So I think we absolutely need both, and you can create a positive dynamic by having bold legislation or it's not even bold, but legislation which might be up to the scale of the problem we're facing, which brings the issue to people's minds. And we know now that whether it's corporate behavior, whether it's the manufacturers, the makers, the service providers, or whether it's individual consumers, that we're actually incredibly adaptable.

Simon Chin-Yee: 27:33

So we've talked about food packaging and its potential impact on our health and we heard Andrew Simms there from the New Weather Institute explaining the concept of ecological debt and why governments need to tackle our reliance on unsustainable choices. Now, I'm very pleased to introduce my UCL colleague, Professor Gail Taylor, is Dean of the Faculty of Life Sciences. Gail has a global reputation for her work on plant science, sustainability, and adapting agriculture to meet the challenges posed by our changing climate. Gail, welcome to Generation One.

Gail Taylor: 28:11

It's fantastic to be here.

Simon Chin-Yee: 28:13

Just to kick us off here, to set the definition, if you will, could you please explain for our listeners what we mean by food security, and how does it connect to health and nutrition?

Gail Taylor: 28:25

Well, food security, it's a pretty complicated concept, and it can mean a few things. But in general, food security means that all of the people, all of the time have access to adequate food of appropriate nutrition that is safe for consumption. We know there's enough food for everyone and yet every day, more than 600,000,000 people across the world go hungry. So they're not food secure and we need to find ways to tackle that. But even in The UK, believe it or not, The UK isn't food secure.

Gail Taylor: 29:01

Food security in The UK is maybe 60 or 70%, so we we can't supply our own food needs.

Simon Chin-Yee: 29:08

So is there something that we as academics, do you think can can contribute to this? Sitting here in our, let's call it the ivory tower, what can we do?

Gail Taylor: 29:17

We can do lots. We we have to remain optimistic for several reasons. You heard earlier in this piece about food waste and packaging, for example. Food waste is hugely important in both the global North and the global South. So probably for every person in The UK, we're wasting about the the amount of calories we need to eat.

Gail Taylor: 29:40

So we waste that. How do we do that? Well, it's largely in the North on the consumer, so it's on us. We go to the supermarket, food is relatively cheap, we buy it and then we don't utilize it effectively. It gets wasted.

Gail Taylor: 29:54

In other parts of the world, that's very different. It's largely not on the consumer. It's about the supply chain. So we have very inadequate supply chains and largely it's about refrigeration and quite simple technologies that we take for granted. So we need to look at those supply chains in Global South and see if we can improve them in some way.

Gail Taylor: 30:18

That's happening. There are technologies coming along, very small efficient refrigeration units, the way we transport food. So that that's one thing that we we can be optimistic about but also then we can use technology and I'm a plant scientist and there are lots of things going on in biotechnology at the moment that can help us for the future.

Simon Chin-Yee: 30:41

Oh, can we dig into that a little bit more? Are we talking genetically modified organisms?

Gail Taylor: 30:48

Well, we could be. So we can gene edit plants. So we saw the amazing effects of gene editing in the recent pandemic. So very quickly, we all became conversant with mRNA vaccines and lo and behold we went and just had one because we knew that science was telling us that was a good thing. So those technologies are being used in plants too.

Gail Taylor: 31:15

So it is a form of genetic modification. We've been doing that for a while in different ways. There are amazing examples of how we can improve food quality with these technologies. So for example, about twenty odd years ago, something called golden rice was developed at the Rice Research Institute in The Philippines, which was a way to modify rice so that it had enhanced amounts of beta carotene. So the rice was golden, it was yellow.

Gail Taylor: 31:47

That's a very important precursor of vitamin a. The idea was that it would be supplied to parts of the world where there were vitamin a deficiencies. So we have an amazing improved plant that can impact human health. So this concept of biofortification can be very, very powerful.

Simon Chin-Yee: 32:07

Were people taking up this golden rice?

Gail Taylor: 32:11

Not so good. Yeah. So we've learned a lot through through those early uses of these technologies, and it is absolutely the case that there's a fear in many people that eating genetically modified food could be inherently dangerous and that it could also be bad for the environment. I'm here to tell you after around twenty or thirty years of research, there isn't very much evidence for that. So for example, if we compare GM foods to organic grown crops, we don't really see consistent differences in yield, for example, or quality and the way these crops impact in the environment.

Gail Taylor: 33:00

Now we have the evidence, it's rather minimal relative to standard agriculture. So standard agriculture does pretty bad things to the environment. It's responsible for 20% of global change. We put lots of nitrates into water from agriculture, and we can begin to use technology to actually address some of these big environmental issues of the future. So again, lots to be optimistic about.

Simon Chin-Yee: 33:28

How does climate change affecting these type of foods, and how do we get people to to to change their behavioral patterns, or can we even?

Gail Taylor: 33:35

I I think it's really tough. Behavior changes is recognized to be the hardest thing. And you may not know, but I've just spent the last decade in California. And The UK is a lovely temperate environment and sometimes it's sunny and sometimes it rains and quite an easy place to live. That's not the situation in California.

Gail Taylor: 33:55

In California, we always felt we're on the edge of climate change. We see that with fires, but we also see it with water. In several years, there there was not enough water for crops to grow and produce food. And so as these climate change impacts begin to really have a significant effect on global food security, we will be turning to other ways of doing business. And technology is one of them, but of course, there are other things too.

Gail Taylor: 34:26

And we could talk about regenerative agriculture where we start doing agriculture in another different way or vertical indoor farming where we do agriculture in yet a different way. So we do have some options.

Simon Chin-Yee: 34:39

Can you explain vertical indoor farming?

Gail Taylor: 34:42

Vertical indoor farming is where we change the paradigm of of food, if you like. And the Japanese were early adopters of this technology, and it's a way to grow food indoors from not in a field, entirely controlled within its environment. Food production in different extreme environments is quite an interesting concept. How can we apply it to us? Well, for example, UCL, we have just purchased two vertical indoor farms where we will be researching how we can produce food in these controlled environments where we can actually reduce the water consumption of the crop by 90%.

Gail Taylor: 35:29

So there are great things that that technology might be able to bring to us in the future.

Simon Chin-Yee: 35:34

Okay. I mean, that is fascinating. I mean, we talked about GMOs already a little bit. This idea of agri technology, I'm learning lots of new words today. How can these advances in plant science actually help us make food more nutritious?

Gail Taylor: 35:51

Well, agri tech's a vast area. So it encompasses both the way we manage the crop. So we want to do smart ag and we want to give water drop by drop as we said and we want to monitor the crop for nitrogen using a satellite. So that is one part of agri technology. Can we improve nutrition through that management?

Gail Taylor: 36:13

Yes, we can do that Because a lot of nutrition that that's good for us. So we can think of it in two ways. Plants give us calorific nutrients, largely carbon based carbohydrates, and plants give us these secondary chemicals, vitamins, minerals, and lots of volatile chemicals. They're in a natural environment in plants, they're what we call the secondary chemicals. So they're the things that come along and are produced when plants are a little stressed or we can modify certain biochemical pathways.

Gail Taylor: 36:48

So we can use management to sort of up those chemicals. What's an example of that? Well, in some of my former research working with a lettuce company, we made that Lolo Rosso red lettuce very red. And the very red that you see these days relates to a lot of the research we did. But sometimes we got it very wrong and it got so red and bitter, it was inedible.

Gail Taylor: 37:16

So those chemicals are very powerful chemicals. They're they're they're what make plants leafy greens, in that case nutritious. Second, with the volatiles and semi secondary chemicals in nuts, we can modify them through management. But we can also do like the yellow, the golden rice, and modify using GM.

Simon Chin-Yee: 37:36

Now we've talked about a lot of plants today. Mhmm. Can I move on to meat consumption or meat prep production actually even here in The UK and the amount of modify modification that happens in our meat products? And again, it goes back to behavioral patterns. Like, I don't wanna put the onus on the consumer all the time in in order to, again, eat less meat to save the planet.

Simon Chin-Yee: 37:58

But where does meat fall into this idea of food security? Maybe here in The UK or globally or in California, for example?

Gail Taylor: 38:05

Well, I mean, the big thing about meat is that it does contribute hugely to climate change. It's the least efficient way of eating in terms of greenhouse gases and all of the environmental footprint. So I'm afraid I am a plant scientist, so I'll have to go back to plants. So there are lots of alternative ways we can eat protein. Peas and beans and leguminous plants that fix nitrogen through these special nodules in their roots.

Gail Taylor: 38:34

They are high protein entities that will give us all we need. And there are some amazing things going on with plants. Example, duckweed which you may have seen floating on a pond is called lemna and it's being utilized as a high intensity protein to go into processed foods. So lots of processed foods, for example, have egg white protein that comes from laying hens. You can now substitute that from a green plant, from lemna, from this protein that's been densified.

Gail Taylor: 39:11

And so suddenly, there there might be times where animal products can be taken out of the food chain and substituted for a plant product. And we've seen that, of course, with Impossible Burger. And now in Singapore, laboratory based meat, if you fancy it.

Simon Chin-Yee: 39:29

Oh, I'm not sure I fancy that actually. Now that you've said it, laboratory based meat doesn't make it sound the most appetizing. All of these new different kind of modified vegetables or enhanced vegetables that you're talking about, as well as kind of over processed foods that we have been having. We've had a lot of the positives sides of why they're good and why they can replace meat products, but do we know the darker health implications of those foods as well?

Gail Taylor: 39:57

I think it's a really good question. When I went to California, was quite fun to eat the first sort of meat free burgers and to know they weren't available in The UK. But then if we look at the life cycle analysis, we know that some of these ultra processed new foods have a bigger environmental impact than their meat based equivalents. So it's not that the raw product is bad. It's good.

Gail Taylor: 40:25

As I said, there's a lot of actually, with some of those burgers, there's wheat protein and legume protein, but it's the way we process it. It's the same with cultured meat or lab based meat. I think it's 53 alerts that have been noted that could potentially be an issue when we take those stem cells from animal protein and combine them and try to bulk them up into lab and be produce a lab based chicken nugget or a lab based lobster. And it's that which we still it's a very dynamic and new technology. We don't know.

Gail Taylor: 41:02

For example, based milk is now available and that's through engineering a dairy protein using yeast. And it looks very interesting so then we don't have the methane in the environmental footprint of cows. We don't have the water footprint of almond trees. It's in a laboratory. But we still haven't looked at that in detail.

Gail Taylor: 41:28

So potentially quite a positive future, but there are some consequences we need to unravel a little bit more.

Simon Chin-Yee: 41:34

And there's gonna be yet another milk choice when I order my coffee in the morning in order to understand how to I'm already confused between soy oat and all of the other ones

Gail Taylor: 41:43

There are so there are not enough here.

Speaker 7: 41:44

There are enough. You haven't tried walnut milk.

Simon Chin-Yee: 41:47

I have not. I didn't even know walnut milk existed until this very moment.

Gail Taylor: 41:51

It does in California.

Simon Chin-Yee: 41:52

I'm sure yeah. That that makes more sense to me, actually. So we've talked about all of this different innovation that is happening. But is it translating into actual food on shelves? Meaning, we know that especially in US, Canada, The UK, the supermarkets have such a massive monopoly.

Simon Chin-Yee: 42:13

Can we get and I know we see meat free burgers in the supermarket shelf, but are people buying it? How because and how nutritious are they?

Gail Taylor: 42:22

Well, I think you're right. We we all go to the supermarket to buy our food, and it's not unreasonable for us to expect that the supermarket shelves are full of good things to eat and the latest technologies. That's not always the case though and there does seem to be more and more of the super supermarket shelf full of a lot of processed food, which might not be best for us. So how do we how do we ever overcome that? Trying to buy a variety of fresh whole food is incredibly important and that becomes expensive of course, but that's where we get our nutrition from.

Gail Taylor: 43:02

So it would be great to see more of the supermarket shelves in future full of the things that are whole and not processed and they don't need to be perfect. And I guess for individuals, shopping in a variety of places, farmers markets, getting those genetic varieties that people can grow. But the supermarkets often have very big supply chains and they need to feed a lot of people. So they do tend to focus down on very limited genetic stocks if you like. And that's not necessarily the best for us.

Gail Taylor: 43:43

So it's opening our eyes if you like to a new way of of eating.

Simon Chin-Yee: 43:47

And isn't that a great way actually of bringing even people together is cooking? I know we haven't talked about that today, but having fresh produce fresh, delicious, nutritious meals is a is a is a massive takeaway that we can have as well. Absolutely.

Gail Taylor: 44:03

And we can even do that in very high-tech indoor. Imagine a future in an urban environment where you go to your vertical indoor farm. The LEDs, the light environment has been tweaked so it gives you a better chemistry, so a better nutrition than the one that any supermarket shelf can deliver. You can choose what you buy. You buy it on the day that you eat it and you combine that with a wonderful recipe.

Gail Taylor: 44:32

So intensive urban environments like the one we're sitting in today don't need to be food deserts. The future can bring them something better if only we have the ability to deliver that.

Simon Chin-Yee: 44:44

So this sounds like there's a lot of potential here. The potential is enormous moving forward, but it needs to happen. In order for that to happen, policy might need to change. The supermarkets need to be pressured. Is it down to the consumer or is it down to who can change regulation in order to make sure that all of these new innovations get put on shelves?

Gail Taylor: 45:05

I think you're absolutely right. It's this dilemma between the consumer, the supermarkets, and what politician politicians can do. So politicians are very important in setting this regulatory framework, and some work has been done on that. We have less sugars and salts in some foods, but we can do so much more. So that regulatory framework needs to pressure the supermarkets to understand that consumers need to be given a better deal.

Gail Taylor: 45:39

I don't want to walk into my supermarket and find shelves and shelves of processed foods. I want to demand more than that. And that's much more difficult, of course, for the supermarkets to deliver. But nevertheless, we need to work together to ensure that we can achieve that. And if we can't achieve that in The UK, a relatively small population, relatively wealthy, with a reasonable temperate environment for growing a lot of food.

Gail Taylor: 46:10

We should not be 60 or 70% food secure in The UK. We should be looking towards 90 plus in our food security. And we can do that, but there has to be a will between the government suppliers, the supermarkets, and of course, the consumers engaging in a food culture.

Simon Chin-Yee: 46:29

I think this is a wonderful way to end this conversation, Gail, and I hope to keep that conversation going moving forward. So thank you very much for joining UCL Generation one.

Gail Taylor: 46:39

Thank you.

Simon Chin-Yee: 46:41

You're listening to UCL Generation one, turning science and ideas into climate action. And for tangible evidence of putting theory into practice, we have a little gift for you now. We sent our amazing producer and videographer, Caitlin and Tom, out into the UCL ecosphere to interview the leaders of a fantastic initiative, the Students' Union's Zero Food Waste Project. Zero Food Waste is a student led project at UCL that aims to tackle food waste on campus.

Mark: 47:14

I'm here with Carson and Valentina on the UCL campus, and these are the representatives from the student union's Zero Food Waste project. So thank you so much for coming in this morning. It would be great to hear a little bit about what inspired the creation of Zero Food Waste.

Carson: 47:30

The project was founded on the principles of the amount of food waste on campus. We have over 11 cafes on campus, and even if there are a few pieces of food waste in every single one, it adds up really quickly. And we thought that it could be put to better use to be given to people in need instead of discarded. So that was kind of the principles the project was founded on.

Mark: 47:56

Amazing. Could you be able to tell me a little bit about what impact the project has had so far?

Valentina: 48:01

Sure. So in the last academic year, we donated up to 8,550 food waste. So that includes all the sandwiches, all the fruit pots, that kind of stuff that we have donated. And we are currently working with two local charities. One of it is St.

Valentina: 48:20

Mungo's, which is really close to Law Building. And the other one is Life After Hummus and that one is in the St. Pancas Station. So we have currently been working with them for quite for several years actually. And we've been donating a significant amount of food waste that would have been thrown away otherwise.

Valentina: 48:40

What challenges have you

Mark: 48:41

faced in redistributing surplus food?

Carson: 48:44

In terms of, we actually have difficulties that we face, in fact, are quite a few in attaining our work. And I guess the big one is the lack of volunteers, because we do have quite a large number of volunteers who sign up through the Students' Union portal every year, but the number of returning or regular volunteers that we have are often quite limited, especially during the times where there are more food waste, so like end of term or reading week, which is why we currently do not collect 100% of the available surplus. As of the previous academic year, only around 78 is collected, which is a shame because the rest would have went in the bin. Lastly, there is just, we just call on greater attention to this issue and to kind of bring to light some of the food waste issues on campus so that more volunteers kind of, potential volunteers can kind of understand and get involved in this work, because I know a lot of people probably once they heard of our work might be interested, but as of right now, not too many people have heard of it. So we hope to get the word out.

Mark: 49:56

So on generation one, we're really keen to explore how different issues like climate and issues in society really intersect, particularly around food. So in your experience, how does food waste reflect broader issues in society such as inequality, consumer culture, sustainability? Yes. So as a student led project,

Valentina: 50:18

we are obviously donating these excess foods that are produced in our campus cafes. So in essence, we are striving to create this sort of circular economy and trying to essentially eliminate anything going into waste and then keeping this in within our community and obviously within our campus as well. So this really reminds me of something that we heard previously from Andrew Sims, who's an economist who talks a little bit about ecological debt and over surplus and over consumption by the more developed, richer nations.

Mark: 50:58

Is that something that you're observing with how much food waste is produced by campus? Do you think that there is a connection between over surplus and perhaps our behaviors and over consumerism in our culture?

Carson: 51:13

Yes, it's very much the case. Just for example, like the general expectation of students on campus is that food needs to be available when they want it, where they want it, and also all the choices that they want. And this obviously to create this choice, inevitably there will be surplus and to contributing to waste. But at the same time, much of the student population currently doesn't see it as their responsibility to deal with this food waste, which their expectations inevitably kind of contribute to. And especially in developed countries, guess, it's quite an expendable resource to many people.

Carson: 51:47

And to many in UCL, they don't really realize that actually just a few steps from our doors, there are many people in the community who need this food, or even within the campus that there is a lot of there's a lot of need or like food poverty actually scattered among campus.

Mark: 52:03

So with that in mind, how do you hope that community driven initiatives like Zero Food Waste can help maybe create a bit of a cultural shift in people's behavior when it comes to food?

Valentina: 52:14

Right. So actually one of the projects that we're really pushing is to install a larder in the student center because while we are currently collecting these excess food and donating it to our local community, we really believe that the food that is the excess food created on campus should be back on campus and to the students. So essentially what we want is something for the students by the students. And I really believe that this would obviously reduce not only reduce the food waste, but also increase the students' awareness of how these food where these food waste has go where this excess food is going to and what they are contributing to.

Mark: 53:03

And lastly, here at Generation One, we're all about putting principles into action. So can I just get a final takeaway about what our listeners at home, our students and staff can do to get involved in reducing food waste both on campus and in their daily lives?

Valentina: 53:20

So I believe that it's really important to, first of all, not over consume. Obviously, it's really important to not buy things that you know that you're not going to finish. That's one thing that you can do at home.

Carson: 53:32

And then as for the wider university community, we think as a university, we can change our attitudes to food waste instead of being something that is optional, we need to kind of give it a higher priority in the sense that if, because we are responsible for creating this waste, we are also responsible as a university to find good uses for this waste. And source reduction is another thing. We hope that as a university, we generate less surplus over time by learning from the kind of historical data of consumption to order less, which actually some of our cafes on campus are already practicing that. But obviously there is always room to cut down waste further.

Mark: 54:15

Fantastic. And for all of our student listeners, you heard it here first. Zurich Food Waste are looking for volunteers. So one practical way you can get involved is to look them up on their website and reach out to our lovely project leaders. Thank you so much, guys.

Mark: 54:30

Really, really appreciate your time.

Carson: 54:32

Thank you.

Simon Chin-Yee: 54:33

That was a great example of how ideas are being turned into action by Zero Food Waste here at UCL. And a big thanks to Karsten and Valentina who were talking to our producer, Caitlin.

Mark Maslin: 54:49

That's it for this episode of Generation one from UCL, turning climate science and ideas into action. But stay tuned for the rest of the series or listen on catch up to all our episodes on your favorite platform.

Simon Chin-Yee: 55:06

And if you'd like to ask a question or suggest a guest that you'd like to hear on generation one, you can email us at [e-mail].

Mark Maslin: 55:17

Otherwise, for more information about UCL's work in the climate space and what our staff and students as well as our brilliant researchers are doing to make it a more sustainable future, head to UCL generation one website or follow us on social media with hashtag UCL generation one.