A Perspective Piece by Diana Klatt, MPH Student
In our fast-paced lives, it can be hard to find the time to consider our health. Our newsfeeds are on constant refresh, our schedules are packed, and our meals are on the go. In a world where time is money and convenience is king, how can we ensure we’re giving the health of our communities, our world, and ourselves the attention it needs? Well, that’s where #feastofideas comes into play.
What is a feast of ideas? It is a global effort to crowdsource thousands of solutions to our biggest food-related health challenges through hundreds of guerrilla dinner parties. This year, as a UN General Assembly side ever, NCDfree hosted a feast of ideas to address community health issues with 150 changemakers from various backgrounds, ranging from WHO officials, policy makers, NGO employees, research fellows, journalists, photographers, and students hailing from Geneva, Norway, Australia, Sweden, and so many more places.
The overarching topic of discussion was big ideas for improving health and quality of life. You do not just jump directly into the deep end and go for the “how do we solve all of our problems,” you start small and work your way up. The evening started with appetizers and small talk for people around the table to introduce themselves and what work they do. The evening progressed from small talk to the first prompt: “how do you stay healthy and how do you motivate your friends and family to live a healthy lifestyle?” After taking time to write a response, the group discussed and it turned out, many of us are similar in prioritizing health because it is a gift that we have and should appreciate the fact that we are capable of doing so much. Which is not all too surprising since the event required an application and I am sure most of the people apply were similar-minded.
Where things get interesting is with the next prompt, how do we address promoting healthy lifestyles in community health? My table broke out into an all-out debate in which one person posed the concept of creating an anti-sugar campaign similar to that of the anti-smoking campaign. Consumption of excessive sugar is not good for your body; this isn’t news. However, do we think that the negative effects of sugar are so detrimental that we should campaign as strongly against even small amounts of consumption? How would we remove it from our food if it’s found as an additive in most things (at least in the United States of America)? Do we consider carbohydrates as complex sugars in this instance? This topic has so many layers of intricacy and whilst we can agree that there is more sugar than necessary in many foods, is that reason enough to attempt to ban it? This comes down to the sugar industry and the battle they have with the fat industry in blaming the other for the downfall of quality of health. This debate ultimately ended in a stalemate that left everyone staring at their dessert as we moved into the last topic: what is your big idea to improve health?
Although each response to this last prompt was slightly different, all goals had a common theme: freedom of movement and no borders. The phrasing of the final question was literally “What is your big idea?” which seemed to be quite tangential from the previous prompts that addressed individual and community health. It was not a big idea to address global health matters, per se. However, I think we can all agree that freedom of movement would help to remove many issues that lead to poor health. And really, after the major debate on whether or not there should be an anti-sugar campaign, nothing else really sounded quite as compelling.
So I pose this to you, is sugar damaging enough to human health that we should consider making an anti-sugar campaign?
