Why you’ll never eat Pringles again: Te Whare Tūroa welcomes the AUT Centre for Critical Food Studies
What if shopping at your local market could be the best decision you make for the planet this week?
Usually when people want to help the environment, they think of things like planting trees, buying electric cars, and maybe choosing chicken over beef.
But Professor Tracy Berno (AUT) argues that we should be revamping the entire food system – how each product is grown, transported, processed and packaged.
Tracy says “The majority of ecological and environmental problems the world faces today have their origins in the food production system.
“Our contemporary food systems are at the heart of an unhealthy planet and unhealthy people. Therefore, changes to contemporary food systems are key to both sustainable, regenerative environments and human health.”
That’s why Te Whare Tūroa RegEN is excited to welcome the AUT Centre for Critical Food Studies to our network. The Centre hasn’t yet had its first birthday but is already launching into research with practical applications in sustainable and regenerative food systems.
They have teams looking at urban agriculture and food sovereignty, New Zealand’s food identity, and recently hosted the 10th anniversary hui of EatNZ.
Tracy is a Co-Director of the Centre and says “food politics” isn’t a common conversation topic, but once she starts talking about it, she can quickly change how people view food.
The professor also doesn’t mind ruining a shopping trip or two; pointing out the sheer amount of plastic you can see with a quick trip around the supermarket. Not to mention the more processed a food is, the more petrochemicals have been used to get it to its current state. And there’s so much more you might not want to know.
“By the time my post-grad students leave at the end of the semester they say things to me like ‘You’ve ruined my trip to the grocery store . . . I will never eat Pringles again!’”
Collaborating with Te Whare Tūroa RegEN
Tracy says she’s hoping to change the conversation when it comes to talking about regenerative practices.
“I'm really hoping that, through this collaboration, when people think about regenerative environments or ecological systems, they start to think about where food might sit within that. It's not always obvious. But you don't have to look terribly far to see how it impacts.
“For example, if you're looking at a waterway in Auckland, often you're looking at the effects of fertiliser and petrochemical runoff that's compromising the integrity of the water, that's then going into the sea and damaging it. But at the heart of it is food production.”
She says if we really want to take a systems approach to address regenerative ecosystems, it’s imperative we include food production systems within that.
We can’t wait to work with Tracy and her team, and come up with some new ways of making our world a healthier, more regenerative place.
