Nevin Cohen: "In the United States, three out of four meals cooked in restaurants are no longer eaten in restaurants"

BarcelonaNevin Cohen (Brooklyn, New York, 1962) is an expert in food public policies and director of the Urban Food Policy Institute – belonging to the City University of New York –, and advocates for actions that can lead to more egalitarian, sustainable, and healthy food. He visits Barcelona to participate in the first international congress of the FARO observatory on the future of food, held at the University of Barcelona, where he is amazed by its historic building. “How beautiful to be studying here,” he says, taking a picture of the cloister.

Can a city like New York be self-sufficient?

— No. We have eight million inhabitants, it is very dense, and even with an aggressive increase in urban agriculture it is simply impossible. We need to get our food from Central America or Mexico. Although I believe local food is very important, it will never be enough to feed the city. Even so, New York has one of the largest urban agriculture systems in the world. Urban agriculture is important for social justice, it is not just about growing food, but about creating spaces that bring people together.

Could I make a diagnosis about Barcelona?

— Catalonia has lost a lot of agricultural land in the last two decades and this is a big problem. It means that food has to be imported from afar. If there is an opportunity to revive agriculture, it should be done. It could be a small and intensive production of specific foods that are unique to the local cuisine.

If the world population continues to increase, will we have enough food for everyone?

— We will have to change our diet. The planetary healthy diet is based much more on plants than our current consumption. As incomes have grown around the world, meat consumption has increased significantly, and meat production affects the climate and occupies large areas of land that would otherwise be available for direct food production, such as legumes and vegetables. It is a very inefficient process. So, the question is: will people be able to make this change over time? If they have no other option, I think they will. And it is not a bad future to eat vegetables and legumes. It is a healthy diet.

But its government has changed the food pyramid and turned it upside down, putting meat at the very top.

— The Trump administration has attracted different groups of people. The Make America Healthy movement, if it can be called a movement, does not believe in established notions of nutrition and embraces unscientific approaches. Keto diet fanatics, for example. The new food pyramid is an attempt to make these different interest groups feel empowered. There is decades of scientific evidence that says we should reduce our intake of saturated fats and increase our intake of fruits, vegetables, and grains.

Common sense, right.

— It is completely contradictory, and at the same time, the administration has cut food assistance and food stamps, so perhaps a million people will be disqualified from receiving them. Therefore, it is a contradiction to say, on the one hand, that you should eat more beef fat because it is healthy and, on the other hand, cut food benefits.

Is there a lot of hunger in the USA?

— In New York City, 20% of the population depends on coupons to have food on the table. That's insane. And between 13% and 15% suffer from food insecurity, meaning people don't know if they'll be able to eat at the next meal. It's a very serious problem. The reason I'm going from New York to Europe is that the most politically relevant issue in the US is hunger, and it's less so in the European cities I visit. The social safety net is stronger here. That's the reason Mamdani won the mayoral election.

Zohran Mamdani has proposed opening public supermarkets in New York.

— It has been controversial, but the government has been in the supermarket business for 100 years. In the United States, we have supermarkets, about 240 of them, which are for the military and their families. Congress requires them to have a market price that is 23.7% lower. Mamdani's goal is to use public infrastructure to reduce the cost of food in neighborhoods where low-income people live. And that is revolutionary. The challenge is to ensure that it is not just a pilot program, but to scale it up. We need at least 20 supermarkets to have efficient volume and supply chains. Locations are being sought.

I understand that in disadvantaged neighborhoods.

— In New York there is public housing where people with very low incomes live in the middle of very rich neighborhoods. In these neighborhoods there are many supermarkets, but those in public housing cannot afford them, for them it is like a food desert. They live there, but they cannot buy anything there. So they have to borrow a friend's car from time to time and drive to New Jersey to buy and fill the car with long-lasting food, because perhaps they only have a small refrigerator in the apartment. So maybe there should be a public supermarket in some rich neighborhoods, but in the basements of public housing.

Juan Roig, owner of Mercadona, said that by mid-century there will be no kitchens in our homes. What do you think?

— The trend is undoubtedly towards prepared food. There is something we call time poverty. Low-income people do not have time to prepare fresh food. And food companies are realizing this, and they are obviously meeting a need, but the problem is the system.

And we must add the impact of technology.

— I am now focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) as a commercial determinant of health. Commercial determinant is a term we use in public health. Businesses and trade affect health in many ways. And AI is potentially problematic for several reasons.

Whose?

— The cost of AI, data centers, the energy it requires, and the return investors must have are so great that advertising will be a central feature of AI. The problem is that advertising will not simply be banner ads, like those you see when you search on Google. There will be conversational ads, sponsored content in the output of conversations people have with chatbots. And this is the scary part.

How does this advertising work?

— There have been studies showing that people don't detect it, even when you tell them there is sponsored content in the conversation. It's subtle. It's not just about chatbots mentioning specific products, but also suggesting behaviors that make people consume in a certain way. For example, suggesting you take your colleagues for a night out after work, and it's sponsored by an alcoholic beverage. Then there's agentive AI, where you can say, "Buy me a healthy lunch today," and the chatbot will place an order, and you'll never know if it's actually a sponsored relationship. It's the ultimate stage of advertising. "Subliminal" is the term used in the fifties to describe this type of advertising. Subliminal is the term used in the fifties to describe this type of advertising.

I understand that it will have to be regulated.

— In the United States, the AI industry has captured the government and there is no effort to think about regulation. But I think this will be a big problem in terms of predatory marketing of unhealthy products. It is different from marketing directed at specific consumers because it targets vulnerable consumers. Children, for example, who cannot distinguish an advertisement from other content. Low-income individuals who may be vulnerable to advertisements suggesting that if you buy a particular product, your status will increase.

Another technology that has turned around the way we eat are delivery platforms. The other day it was raining cats and dogs and the city was full of riders.

— There is a disconnect because you are using an application and not thinking about the human being delivering the food. We have research on the health effects of working for a platform. In New York City, delivery workers have a much higher rate of accidents and injuries than even construction workers and hospital nurses, who are like two high-risk job categories. Every time the city government passes policies to protect workers, the platforms redesign their model to find a way around them and maintain their profits. To give you an idea of the scale, the National Restaurant Association has just published that three-quarters of restaurant meals in the United States are no longer eaten in a restaurant.