The American Food Paradox: Growing Obese and Going Hungry
Brian Kenny: It's no secret that the US has an obesity problem. In fact, according to the American Diabetes Association, as much as one third of the population is clinically obese. Many of those people live in our poorest communities. In 2010 the ADA reviewed poverty rates and obesity across more than 3,000 counties in the U.S. and found that people in America who live in the poorest counties are those most prone to obesity. This in a nation where, ironically, up to 50 million people go to bed hungry at times during the year. Today we'll hear from Professor Jose Alvarez about his case entitled "Doug Rauch: Solving the American Food Paradox." I'm your host Brian Kenny and you're listening to Cold Call.
Professor Alvarez teaches in the MBA and Executive Education programs at Harvard. He's an expert in supply chain logistics and, before coming to Harvard, he served as CEO for Stop & Shop and Giant-Landover, a major grocery retailer in the United States. Jose, thanks for joining us today.
Jose Alvarez: Thank you and good morning.
Kenny: If you can start just by telling us, how does the case begin? What's going on with Doug?
Alvarez: Doug is trying to figure out what he wants to do and he comes across this issue, this paradox really, of obesity happening at the same time that we have this massive issue with close to 50 million people who are food insecure. You've got another problem going on in the background, which is that enormous amounts of food, upwards of 40 percent of the food produced in the United States, and really around the world, is wasted and never used by the consumer. Doug hits upon this idea of using that food supply, which would have been wasted, to nourish people in low-income, high-obesity communities. As he evolves the idea and finds a location and different partners to work with him, he ends up in Dorchester, Massachusetts, which is another low-income, high-poverty, high-obesity area in the city of Boston.
Kenny: Okay, let's talk about the food issue in the U.S. How much food are we going to need going forward? How much food are we wasting today?
Alvarez: Okay. A couple of things. If you think about the increase in global population and the increase that's going on at the same time in the middle class around the world, it says that we're going to need about a doubling of food in the next couple of decades. That's obviously a significant issue because we either have to get much more efficient in what we're doing or people are going to have to eat a lot less. And that's probably not going to happen.
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