Transcriber: Ross Edwards Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Good afternoon everybody.
I would like to thank you for coming and listening to our talk,
and I would also like to thank TEDxHult for giving us this great opportunity.
Now, I am Shanghainese-born but grew up in Australia,
and my background is in environmental sustainability.
Working in Australia, every time I would go through immigrations,
on the immigration card, it would ask you to fill out your occupation.
And I would always write 'environmentalist'.
Now, every time I'd go to the counter, I would always get slightly dubious looks
or raised eyebrows, and I know exactly what they're thinking:
'That's not a career path, go and get a real job.'
But coming to China,
and doing what I've been doing here for the last year,
I am filled with extreme optimism and passion for my work.
For better or for worse, just because of how visceral the pollution is,
I do feel that people are genuinely concerned,
and they genuinely want to know what they can do.
However, coming here, my journey hasn't been that smooth either.
I've had a lot of difficulties trying to find a way
to maintain my own healthy eating habits.
Coming here, I see on the news that there are 50 000 hospitalised babies
because of contaminated milk powder.
I hear [about] 16,000 dead pigs
floating down the Huangpu River, right across Shanghai city.
And most recently, I hear about contaminated, expired meat
being sold by two of the largest fast-food chains here in China.
And then I thought to myself: 'What can I do?
How can I combine my work with healthy eating, sustainable eating?'
and: 'What can I give?' and this is what I want to impart today.
I want to show China how it can eat in a way that's good for them
and good for the planet.
Now, when you think of a typical Chinese family,
what do you imagine?
You see loving parents, you think of doting grandparents,
who want to give their kids everything they never had growing up.
And because of China's economic boom in the last 30 years,
they're able to do exactly that.
But they might not realise
that they're actually slowly killing their kids with kindness.
30 years ago, you see a picture of this.
Chubby kid, chubby cheeks, rosy cheeks, and it's a sign of wealth and prosperity.
But just because of how greatly our food landscape has changed
in that timeframe, this is now a precursor for obesity, for diabetes,
and for chronic heart illnesses that could stay with them
for the rest of their lives.
China has one fifth of the global population,
yet it has one third of diabetic patients.
In a typical classroom,
one child out of 50 is already diagnosed with diabetes.
Seven kids out of 50 are prediabetic.
What that means is that in the near future
they will be diagnosed and develop juvenile-onset diabetes.
You may ask: 'What does that actually mean?'
Juvenile diabetes means that a child
will have to monitor their blood sugar level on a daily basis,
they will have to inject themselves with insulin on a daily basis,
their quality of life is directly affected,
and their life can actually be shortened.
It doesn't just affect them, but it affects their entire ecosystem.
If their blood sugar level is too low, they'll get heart palpitations,
they can sweat and become hungry.
If it becomes too severe or too high,
they can become catatonic within half an hour.
Now, a lot of you may know this little culprit: sugar.
Coca-Cola in the Western world has been a little bit demonised.
It's been shown to have a lot of sugar related to sugar spikes;
it's been shown to degrade teeth and stunt bone growth.
But what you may not actually know
is that many other drinks in the Chinese marketplace
have just as much if not more sugar than Coca-Cola.
If you look at the bottom left, this is promoted
as a healthy yoghurt drink, sold to kids, with twice as much sugar as Coca-Cola.
On the top right,
that is promoted as a healthy traditional Chinese medicine drink.
Again, just as much sugar as Coca-Cola.
Now, sugar is actually very, very problematic for young kids
because of how addictive it is.
Sugar has been shown to be eight times more addictive than cocaine.
And, to be honest, corporations know this, and they know this because they know
that if they can get you while you're young,
they will have a customer for life.
This is why 70 per cent of processed food on our supermarket shelves contain sugar.
Now, even if you eat well, even if you watch your diet
and watch your sugar intake, your life or your kid's life
can still be indirectly impacted by our diet choices.
This is because our food and diet choices
are the single largest driver of global climate change.
It actually contributes 30 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The livestock industry alone contributes 14.5 per cent of global CO2 emissions.
It is also the largest contributor of methane gas,
which is actually 20 times more potent at trapping heat within our atmosphere
compared to CO2.
You may not also know that it also contributes
65 per cent of nitrous oxide,
which is 300 times more potent at trapping heat within our atmosphere.
A recent study has come out and shown that,
based on China's growing meat consumption, it is expected by 2020
to increase meat consumption by an additional 20 million tonnes a year.
That may not seem like a lot, but an additional 20 million tonnes
of meat consumption per year, by China alone,
equals the same amount of CO2 emissions as 49 million vehicles on the road.
Again, what does that mean?
Well, if you were to line all these cars nose to tail,
it would actually equal 150,000 kilometres,
which will take you almost halfway to the moon.
So this is the environment that we're growing up in,
and these are some of the global stats I'm giving you, but you may ask:
'What does that mean to my diet?' 'What does that mean to my daily meal?'
Well, you could either eat a single serving of steak,
or you could actually eat 20 servings of vegetables.
Both have the same amount of emissions.
And this is what I mean about imparting you and teaching you
about how to consume smartly, how to be a smarter consumer
and how to eat in a way that's good for you and to the planet.
You can either eat one serving, or you can eat 20 servings.
Now, China currently already consumes 55 kilograms of meat per person per year.
So if you think of an average Chinese person,
they probably weigh about 50 kilos, like myself.
So can you imagine eating your own weight in meat?
To me, that sounds like an awful lot of blockage.
So rather than eating all that meat,
I'm not saying for you to go out and be a vegetarian
because, quite frankly, vegetarianism isn't sustainable either.
Many studies have actually shown that 80 per cent of vegans
would actually revert back to eating meat within one year.
Rather, again, I want you to be smarter consumers;
I want you to be smarter about what you eat and how you eat it.
You can either have one serving of steak or, with the same amount of meat,
you can have six different servings
of dishes very much aligned with traditional Chinese cuisine.
It's not just the livestock industry
that's problematic within our food environment,
it's also heavily processed food.
Now, this may seem like a simple pack of instant noodles.
But, did you realise that within the food industry
in China alone there are 2400 food additives?
In a packet of instant noodles, there are 130 food additives alone.
And what are they? Let me show you.
So all of these products are actually in a packet of instant noodles.
Now, I would never drink lighter fluid,
nor would I go and take a ball of wax and start munching on it.
But that's exactly what you'd be doing
every time you eat a packet of instant noodles.
Purely for the sake of convenience.
So take a step back and really think about it:
is saving five minutes here and there really worth it?
The kind of damage that it could be doing to yourself
and also all the chemicals being pumped into our environment as well.
Another aspect of our food industry and how unsustainable it is,
especially here in China, I think,
is the amount of package waste you see everywhere.
China last year produced 30 million tonnes of package waste alone,
just food package waste, and only 30 per cent of that was recycled.
You see a packet of biscuits here
being sold in most convenience stores across China.
It doesn't have one, two, rather four layers of packages
for two tiny little biscuits.
And you see the moisture packet on the right there,
if you look closely enough, it actually says:
'Not for human consumption. Poisonous.'
Now, that's in direct contact with the food we eat.
I mean, really, it doesn't take a genius to understand
how bad that can be for you and for the environment.
Do you know what doesn't have a lot of packaging waste?
Funnily enough, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, seeds and nuts,
which also happens to be everything that's good for us.
So now that I've scared you half to death,
you're probably thinking: 'What can I personally do?'
And this is what I want to show you:
that there are very tangible actions you and I can all take.
Lessons learned from climate change
have shown that it's actually very difficult
for individuals to relate to scientific terminology.
It's very difficult for them to feel like there is a personal involvement
with these big, complex issues,
because, firstly, they may not feel
that they can have an impact, a global impact,
or secondly, they may not feel like they are personally invested in the issue,
just again, because of how complex the issue is.
So this is where I come in, and this is what I do.
I take these really difficult, complex issues
and disseminate and dissect it in a way that is easy for you to understand
and also translate it into a language
that speaks to everyone on a very personal level.
And what do I mean by that?
For example, many advisers from around the world
have said the importance of, firstly, biodiversity,
balance in our diet and the importance of micronutrients
in sustainable food consumption.
And what we've done, and how we've translated
all of these concepts is to simply say to everyone:
'Eat a rainbow every day'.
So this message is easy enough for even kids to understand.
And what do we mean by that?
Simply to eat real food, eat unprocessed food, made from scratch,
eat a variety of colours and eat a variety of food
and incorporate a variety of food into your diet as well.
And this is what I want to impart to everyone.
I want to empower them to be smarter consumers,
and I want to show the next generation of kids
how they can be smarter consumers too.
What I mentioned to you before about six adults doting on one child,
it's a lot of pressure on the child actually,
because that means that they're responsible
for taking care of these six people later on in life.
But what that actually means is that a child here in China
actually has a lot of autonomy,
They have a lot of purchasing power in dictating what they want in the family.
And this is why we want to speak directly to kids and engage kids
because we feel that if we can engage them and empower them
to make better decisions for themselves and for the planet,
they're able to affect their entire ecosystem.
And how we do this, through our "New Way to Eat" initiative
is to show kids how they can be their own food heroes:
what they can do personally and how they can be impactful
from something as simple as the food they eat.
And to be a food hero - it's very easy. This is something that everyone can do.
So before you eat, just ask yourself a few simple questions:
'Where does my food come from?' 'What is actually in my food?'
'If I can't read the labels, if I can't pronounce the ingredients,
should I really be putting it into my mouth?'
'What does my food do to my health?'
'How will it impact me, how will it make me feel?'
and lastly, 'What does my food do to the planet?
What kind of impact and footprint am I leaving behind?'
To get you on this journey,
and to help you in answering some of these questions,
there are a few simple guidelines that I would like to share with you:
some thoughts of my own to start you on this food journey.
Firstly, grow your own vegetables.
Even if there's no space, even if it's a tiny balcony here in China,
you can still do this.
More importantly, teach your kids how to grow their own vegetables.
I want you to get your hands in there, get really muddy and get really dirty,
and I want you to really experience the joy of seeing something bloom
and seeing something grow and blossom from nothing.
Secondly, visit a wet market.
They're few and far between now,
but I'm sure you can still find them if you look hard enough.
Unlike places in big grocery stores
where everything is nicely and neatly packaged in plastic wrap,
at a wet market you get to smell it, you get to taste it, feel it, squeeze it
and really learn how to buy fresh produce.
Lastly, just simply have fun in the kitchen.
You can teach kids basic skills in the kitchen
from something as simple as dicing vegetables, peeling garlic
or even just learning how to light a fire.
I want you to prepare food from scratch,
sit down as a family and enjoy the food together.
China in the last 30 years has seen astronomical growth,
and I do believe, in the next 30 years, its next phase of development and growth
will be just as transformative and just as revolutionary.
But I believe that we need to take a step back.
We need to really think about -
what kind of world we want to leave our kids?
What is the legacy and what is the knowledge
that we want to impart on them?
For me, it is to simply get them to understand or acknowledge
that they need to be smarter about their food choices.
I want to empower them to be smarter consumers
and learn how to eat
in a way that's good for them and good for the planet.
And this can start from something as simple as the next mouthful.
Thank you.
(Applause)