Nutrients and this is example is cholesterol. When i graduated law school in early 70s and early 80s, cholesterol was a demon we were told you have eat foods low in colest cholesterol and egg took a big hit and egg are a cheap source of income in protein for lowincome people. And now in the new dietary guidelines for american that is will go 2015 to 2020 cholesterol is not a concern. This is covered in the news media. And it took about 2030 years but the Nutrition Community has changed its mind on cholesterol. The u. S. Dietary guidelines say cholesterol in foods is no longer a consume and we can go ahead and eat eggs again. This time it seems to be added sugar poses the same questions, is that the best approach to changing culture, changing consumer demand for healthier foods . Now, i want to turn off the slides. Okay. Next point is that the u. S. Dietary guidelines when it talks about added sugars, it says that a dietary pattern that is low in added sugars and has various levels of nine other ingredients, fat, different types of fats, saturated fat, fiber, sodium, so forth, its not added sugar by itself, added sugar thats part of dietary pattern will help reduce the risk of disease. But the message that comes out from the fda is added sugars is a demon. So i see a disconnect between those two things and, again, by emphasizing added sugars we run the risk that we did with cholesterol. So if nutrition labeling and the other things that have been suggested have risks of backfiring, what can we do . Well, other countries have taken somewhat different approaches and i think some of you may have heard of what brazil has done. And this was covered recently in the Atlanta Magazine in january, favorably covered by food politics blog. In brazils approach to improving diet they suffer from obesity and same problems we do involves efforts to convince consumers to eat meals at regular intervals. Three meals a and not snacks and to eat with other people. To prepare meals from fresh foods, to practice food preparation not just learn how to cook and enjoy those kills skills as a social activity with other people and plan meals and eat at the proper time and place. So that if the government encouraged americans to do those things, i think we would see changes in consumer demand and food culture and what Consumers Want and just like some major corporations have represented with gmo labeling and agreed to do it, the corporations would respond with the foods Consumers Want. And its funny, dr. Jacobson is a scientist and im the lawyer, you recommended legal approaches and im recommending what brazil has done which is is something else, its a form of social change which is among some of the suggestions. But the factors i named dominate the theme of brazils approach to the obesity problem. So lets be innovative and im happy to answer questions. [applause] thank you. Thank you very much, bruce and we will hold our questions until after our third speaker. So let me now introduce debra atwood, debra joins the Meridian Institute, one of our partners here at the conference today. Debra has over 35 years of experience in policy and legislative Matters Regarding food, agriculture, the environment, research and Risk Management including extensive experience working with executives in the private sector as well as federal government and nonprofit organizations. Thank you, debra. Yeah, thank you all. Shes poking the buttons here to advance my slide. First, i think you need to add to your chart, michael, what wine in sugar equates to. [laughter] when i looked at your chart, forget the candy, i want to know what wine looks like in terms of teaspoon in sugar. Just saying, a full ipa as well. [laughter] so with that said, i know we are running late in the afternoon and i thank you all for being here and agree to go participate but before i launch into everything in all the jobs i had in washington, d. C. And outside of washington, d. C. Ive always had to have good Legal Counsel with me. So while im innovativing innovating and getting crazy about my ideas and i always sought legal advice, if they do, lets map them out and lets look at how we can actually go to where i want to go. And its usually not just me by myself, its always been a Team Approach with good Legal Counsel walking right with us. And im always pushing the lawyers that ive worked with over the years to find the, yes answer, yes we can do this unless its just totally crazy and we will put something in jail, which i never want to go there. So i have three slides, one of them is just the big slide here that says agree, agree is an initiative that is house Meridian Institute, the Meridian Institute thank god has this effort. Fund an eightyear initiative to have a dialogue with food and chain agriculture to identify by 2030 and 2050 how u. S. Policies are going to look in order to see not only the United States, which is expected to grow by 100 Million People, but how do we fit in to the Global Dialogue of 2 billion plus more mouths to feed. That according to my chief of staff lets go boil the ocean and i can appreciate that. It was a big, big task and the Meridian Institute undertook very complex facilitation efforts to connect people to solve problems which is their tag line. I had the good fortune of having the backbone of meridian to help us navigate forward. 45 advisers, actually at one time we counted 150 people would be groovy to have in the room. But we were able to identify 45 advisers, one of them was here claire wang. Dan is one of our cochairs and he spoke this morning. But the bread and depth of people that we have have been really incredibly innovative and creative in terms of identifying not only the problems. We have done a very good job at the Meridian Institute, we admire the problem long enough. The first two years was, okay, lets admire the problem, lets define the problem, lets see if we can get along with one another in the supply change. Very tricky, the supply chain is not a monolithic group. Its very diverse. People in production agriculture, fruits and vegetables, organic are not really sure what walmart is up to, you know. Its their customer, ultimate customer but its a scary organization when they tell the supply chain that will shall be sustainable or that will shall do things to improve nutrition or how do you deal with your workforce, those are all value statement that is are coming down the supply chain or up the supply chain to production and having individuals in the room grappling with positions and ideas of how we are going to see 2 billion people nutritionally and sustain being was a biggal order but we got there through lots of drinking wine and excess sugar im sure tossed but and trans fat. We engaged over 2,000 people in the last five and a half years asking people and identifying what we believe are the categories of issues that are not actually categories, they are linked together and so the first two years we were socializing the ideas, we were getting to know one another, we established that, the following two years were about truly identifying the big astroid as dan talked about in the panel. What are the issues that we need as a nation to think about as a country, as individuals in our own lives when we go home or the Grocery Store or engage with families and friends and we came up with about initiatives and publicly out there on our website. My third and last slide gives all the beta of where to go to follow us. It captures four or five articles of interest around the eight initiatives that weve identified. Interestingly enough, we didnt know, i didnt know as being with 45 advisers and nine foundations and eight academics and four cochairs whether we could agree on anything and it started, i start with this because its really important. I start with small holder organic hog farmer who said what keeps him up at night is he doesnt have a regular legal supply chain. He doesnt have a legal set of workers on his operation. And the whole room erupted and said, we have a common interest in Immigration Reform and so who knew, none of the foundations that were funding this, none of us in the room realizeled that immigration was such a powerful policy initiative that needs to be undertaken. That was our first consensus document that came out with the series of recommendations. And, yeah, so its out there. Now the question is can it be implemented and we, of course, were one voice among many voices with that and teamed up and the idea of identifying the top initiatives, why mia spending time here . Im going to get to food and nutrition. Through collective impact or whatever you want to call it, we identify eight initiatives and identified what people cared about and how people operate in the community to come up with ideas on how to solve the problem. So after Immigration Reform we roll right into food and nutrition, working landscape, research and development, International Development when it comes to food and agriculture. Next generation of farmers and ranchers, very, very rich discussion that took a long time and once the dam broke open about Diverse Group could agree to it became very much easier, we built the trust and engaged a lot of different people not just ourselves but we really relied on the different communities we went into and convened and around these subject matters, which takes me to the topic. Congress, sugar, obesity. Okay, we went through many exercises just with our 45 advisers. On taxes, on the issue of should we make the snap program like wic, all the types of things as dan was saying, all the bullets, theyre not bullets theyre silver buckshots. What we did is exercises, okay, lets stand up in a line, those of you that want to regulate the snap program in terms of what people can purchase with the snapp dollars, you go here, those who are dead set against it and the rest figure out where your position is. I will tell you, theres a reason why congress cant do anything. Theres a reason why new york city cant do anything around some of the more sticky issues, if you will, because people were very, very spread along the spectrum of what they believed in. This is not science. Theres enough political science, the people that stood up among the spectrum whether it was taxes was very telling. We thought to ourselves, okay, theres a lot of people around soda, sugar, regulating, maybe we ought to examine things that are working in communities that are not so regulatory or legal or topped down heavy, and that is when we convene health care hunger, medical insurance, the Food Industry, consumer in a room and most of these individuals had never been in a room together. Theyre in rooms where nutritionist talk, rooms where Health Officials talk, rooms where safety net people talk, but we mix it all up. I work with feeding america on it and it was telling and what emerged out of it was the model that sonia is doing on the ground in new york. Now, this info graphic was actually drafted by a millennial who just graduated from stanford and she listened and said, you have to have an info graph so i can tweet it and basically what this graphic says we have to figure out how to empower families to eat healthier. How do we do that . We have to increase access to Healthy Foods, medicine, medical care and we give an example here. What you see here are the component pieces of people in organizations in community that is need to come together. But what this model shows, this info graphic show that is there has to be connectivity. How do we take what new york is doing or what portland, oregon is doing or what nashville is doing and share those stories and connect it with whats going on in the new york Healthcare System because youre all having the same conversation and utilizing different groups of people to help deliver and and address these issues. In the case of lake forest baptist health, we are in conversation with them, but the idea of using churches and faithbased organizations, very powerful in that community and ymcas and the School System, the ymcas are building kitchens because theres a legal issue, the school due to liability issues wont let them go to the schools and use the School Kitchens to help show kids how to prepare meals. Anyway, im talking on and on and on. But the point is we dont have this info graphic on our website, i think we probably should. Its confusing, not for me but i lived through all of the circles and connections but articulates the pieces that have been part of the methodology that the groups, people that have to connect not only at the local level but federal level but a task for all of you as you are studying law, if you get into a class where you are looking across the federal government at the federal level, what are the laws that would allow this kind of model to happen that it could not happen but help help incentivize . What is the incentive of obamacare, child nutrition act, pick the laws that deal with feeding program . What are the incentive programs that are built in and how do we encourage this crossjurisdictional conversation. Thats something that would be incredibly helpful to see all the departmental rules and law that is are implementing in programs that actually if we if they came together could help support what dr. angel is doing in new york and help lake first baptist. I have spoken up in my very nonlinear way. By the way im a marine ecologist so there you have it. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you so much to all of our panelists today. I think we have a little bit of time so if there are any audience members with questions, i would invite you to come to the microphones. We probably have time for two or three questions, depending if there are any, thanks. Hi, there, i am mia kat and i am bruces success or in a way, this is somewhat of a question and also a comment. As i sat and listened to a few references about that nanny state, i knew i would leave here a little disturbed if i didnt throw out some of our experiences in litigation. Innovation is a terrific thing and i too believe that the private sector can be enormous force in innovation. The Environmental Movement is one example of that. Theyve had to be that in california and these sorts of people lead the way, but i think it is i brought cautionary note with respect to food that consumers are clambering for help. All the Research Shows that they are pressing for healthier and healthier foods, but if you walk down the grocery aisle, even at whole foods, which is one of my favorite past times, you will see some of us litigate which are claimed to be whole grain and not whole grain, claim vitamins and water and, in fact, are sugar or they claim to be protein 45 when they have no more protein but 17 times the sugar cheerios as oppose to cheerios protein. I dont think we want to blame the consumer here and i just i need to throw that out and and to make as we talk about congress and obesity to just reiterate what was said this morning that the fda needs funding for Consumer Fraud and enhancing those activities. Thank you. Go ahead. And actually i could add to that, tom sherman at georgetown. We cant pretend like we dont respond to marketing. You cant pretend that marketing isnt creating a demand thats being countered by other people that are demanding good food and one solution to that is to learn how to cook. You know, dr. angel had it on her last item in the long list of things in new york and i would love to hear what she is doing with that, but if you learn how to cook, you dont have to worry about added sugar and you dont have to worry about added salt or trans fats or gmo or whether or not its whole grain or not because you put whole grain in your cooking vessel and its not on your food health chart is learning how to cook. Can i respond . Yeah. And feeding as families is actually fundamental to the changes that need to occur. I was running through because i thought it was 3 30 p. M. And i appreciated that. Further is a solution. Families have real challenges and the real impediments to cooking. And so everything from subsidizing asic ingredients for cooking to making them widely available to strategies for efficient all of those are real impediments to every family coming home and cooking together and eating together. But it is something that i if yu set as ago is as a family for a communities or as the city, that its a notable coal. The first point of empower and families to eat healthier foods, it involves everything you described. Thats what its a set of silver buckshot, not a silver bullet. Its a combination of what we are saying, behavior, education, opportunities, access. Its complicated and the social determinants are also a very important factor come is what weve learned. This is just us talking to lots of different individuals with their points of view. This actually is our first attempt at capturing the moving participants to achieve the goal. At the are no more questions perhaps i will just end with a question for our panelists. As i mentioned in the introduction, you are from some racial and ethnic minorities and individuals of our socioeconomic status akin to consumer greater amounts of added sugars and that are more likely to be overweight or obese. I was interested in your ideas on how we can short out laws and policies encourage reduction of added sugars among all our population groups . Are there some policies and rules that are more equitable in that sense or are there some actions that we can take to make sure that we are achieving these reductions across the board . Can i take a crack at that . I think new york city has pointed the way, getting rid of trans fat from restaurant foods affected everybody. And probably gave preferential benefit to low income people. Lowering sodium in packaged foods come in restaurant food as the fda is proposing is voluntary guidelines. I think we will preferentially benefit low income people, less educated people who rely on packaged food. Some of this regulatory work is especially beneficial, even taxing soft drinks, its a pro