Feature


Within the past four decades, approximately 35% of the 1.5 million hectares of globally arable land has been documented to be significantly degraded by a combination of man-made pollut- ants/toxins and environmental factors such as top soil erosion, desertification, and increased sea levels. Regenerating and increasing the efficiency of this land is paramount. From year 1950, the global average ratio of per capita arable land will have decreased by more than 50% upon reaching year 2050 (meaning there will be half as much land per person available to grow food). The global food industry accounts for 70% of all freshwater usage. The statistics abound in what appears to be an overwhelming and almost ines- capable avalanche. The many expert organizations presenting


these eye-opening projections (including the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the Food and Agriculture Organization, World Resources Institute, Gro Intelligence, TED.com, National Geographic, etc.), offer a myriad of solu- tions. Among the widely varying political, ecolog- ical, and socioeconomic opinions a few common threads emerge, one being the significant need for a global and sustainable shift in our food culture. How does one elicit such change and digest such


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daunting statistics? 1. We start by refocusing the narrative to “hope- ful figures”; for each challenging projection, we find hundreds of new innovative, resil- ient, enthusiastic ventures and ideas toward course correction. From the megastructure, multinational arena to the grassroots com- munity platform, we find an abundance of determination and hope.


2. We work to create long-term sustainabili- ty by rooting a strong foundation of these values in the little acorns that will grow into tomorrow’s great oaks—we feed our children with the same open-minded determination, innovation, and hope.


Tomatoes as an Adventure vs. Tomatoes as a Chore


So much in life simply boils down to our choices, which are both affected greatly by perception and conversely affect our perceptions. We are all born with the exact number of taste buds we will ever have. As we age, they degrade; kids may have as many as three times the number of taste buds as adults. Adult “super tasters,” people with a higher- than-average amount of taste buds, are able to have highly developed flavor palates. If we as children start off with effectively “300% better taste,” this would be the perfect time to learn to appreciate and enjoy a wide variety of foods and flavors.


There are four major components to how we


develop our “sense of taste” (perception of flavors): 1. Physiology/physics: the physical molecular


shape of the food and how these molecules fit the papillae on our tastebuds,


2. Neurochemistry: how are our brain chemically interprets and responds to these foods/flavors,


3. Emotional/psychological: deeply memo- rable experiences—positive or negative that imprint on us,


4. Cultural: how the beliefs/values/social norms of our community relate to food. Being a father of two boys, I find it preferable


to frame as much as possible as an “adventure.” My youngest, three-year-old Aiden, loves tomatoes. Well, he loves tomatoes when he’s in the middle of a farm picking and eating them ripe from a two-meter-tall terrace loaded with hundreds of tomatoes, or he loves them when we make a home- made pizza party and it’s fun to choose the same toppings as dad. However, if he opens his lunch box at school and finds tomatoes, with an adult instructing him to eat his tomatoes (as a chore) before he can have his cookies, he’s likely to say “yucky” and push them aside. The children of today will grow up into a world


that will be faced with greater challenges regarding resources and sustainability than any prior gener- ation has ever seen. They will have a huge respon- sibility in making sustainable and healthy choices for themselves and the planet in the next 20–30 years—choices that can have monumental impacts on the future of humankind and our green earth. We can lay a foundation with them now to value and choose health/sustainability in the simplest of things: their summertime snacks!


The Vegetarian Lion: What Is the Foundation We Are Setting for Our Children?


Little Tyke, a celebrity of the 1950s with a well-documented (and controversial) story, was a fully grown healthy vegetarian lioness that lived for nearly 10 years with her keepers on a farm/ animal sanctuary in Washington. A rescue animal herself, she was raised from a cub on nutrition- ally dense vegetarian foods and grew to over 10 feet and over 350 pounds from whiskers to tail. Although a peculiar and debatable story, it undeniably causes one to think about nature vs. nurture. As our infants/toddlers transition to solid foods, we can create those positive and happy cultural views and indelible memories/emotions around delicious, fun, nutritious/sustainable foods, causing the components of physiology/physics and neurochemistry to fall into place. Through


SUMMER 2021


ESSENTIAL Naples


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