Patriotism on a plate | Robyn O'Brien | TEDxMileHigh

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

Do you know what you are eating? In this extraordinary personal account, Robyn O'Brien tells the story of how she started paying attention to what's in food. The answer may surprise you and it will certainly inspire you to be more deliberate about your food choices.

I'm such an unlikely crusader
for cleaning up the food supply.

I grew up in Texas,

eating my fair share
of Doritos and Ding Dongs.

(Laughter)

I wasn't a foodie.

What I was, was the oldest of four kids
and like you often hear about,

I inherited absolutely every single one
of those Type A overachieving genes

that you read about
in first born children.

Thankfully, I learned how to
channel that into academics,

and I received a full scholarship
to business school

before graduating
as the top one in my class.

I then went on to work
as a food industry analyst

and when the management teams
of places like Whole Foods and Wild Oats

would come to our offices,
we just kind of thought it was

"lifestyle of the rich and famous"
or some hippie thing.

We didn't really get it.

After doing that for a while,
my husband and I decided to have kids,

so I traded the brief case
for a diaper bag.

Using all of that Type A energy,

I had four kids

in just over five years.

(Laughter)

Up until that point, I really
hadn't given a whole lot of thought

about what was in the food supply.

I figured if it was on grocery store
shelves, it was safe.

Please don't tell me what to eat,

and don't tell me what to feed my kids.

Then one morning,
over breakfast, life changed.

And in all candor, that morning,

that breakfast was
L'Eggo My Eggo waffles,

tubes of blue yoghurt,
and scrambled eggs.

Our youngest child started
to have an allergic reaction.

As her face started to swell shut,

I was so unfamiliar with
what a food allergy actually looked like,

that I looked at my older three and said,
"What did you put in her face?"

They all gave me
those blank little kid stares.

And I got really scared.

So I raced her to the
paediatrician's office and she said,

"Robyn, what did you
feed the kids for breakfast?

It looks like she is having
this allergic reaction."

I said,"I fed them L'Eggo My Eggo waffles,
blue yoghurt, and scrambled eggs."

And she says, "Well, those are
three of the top beta allergens",

and she starts rattling off all
of these statistics about food allergies,

and how food could kill a kid.

All I could think was, since when?

Since when has food become so dangerous?

As we got everything under control,
we got back home,

and I put all the kids down for a nap,

every single analytical gene
in my body went off.

I wanted to dig into that data.

Because I hadn't known anybody
that had a food allergy when I was a kid.

As I turned to the research,
I learned that morning:

from 1997 until 2002, there had been
a doubling of the peanut allergy.

I also learned that one out of 17 kids
under the age of three

now has a food allergy.

Then I learned from
the Centers for Disease Control

that there had been a 265% increase

in the rate of hospitalization
related to food allergic reactions.

That was doctors checking people into ER,
that wasn't moms diagnosing it.

So I wanted to know,
what is a food allergy?

A food allergy is when your body
sees food proteins as foreign.

It basically launches
this inflammatory response

to drive out that foreign invader.

It just begged the question to me:

Is there something foreign in our food
that wasn't there when we were kids?

Again, I turned to the data and I'd heard
from the Wall Street Journal and CNN

that milk allergy is the most
common allergy here in the US.

I learned from
the US Department of Agriculture

that beginning in the 1990s,

we began to engineer new proteins
into our food supply.

And it started in our milk.

In 1994, in order to drive profitability
for the dairy industry,

scientists, using this new technology,

were able to genetically
engineer new proteins.

It was a synthetic growth hormone.
and it's injected into dairy cows,

and it helps them make more milk.

Now, the analyst in me,
that made absolutely perfect sense,

it was a brilliant business model

that could help drive profitability
for the dairy industry.

But at the same time, no human trials
had ever been conducted on that.

Animal studies were showing
that it increased rates of mastitis,

ovarian cysts, lameness,
skin disorders that resulted

in an increased antibiotic use.

For that reason, governments
around the world said,

"This hasn't yet been proven safe."

So Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand,

Japan, all 27 countries in Europe,

they didn't allow it
into their food supply.

On top of that, studies started
to come out that showed

that this synthetic growth hormone,
elevated hormone levels

that were linked to breast,
prostate, and colon cancer.

When I learned that, I wanted to know:

what are the rates
of cancer here in the US

versus these other countries
that didn't accept this growth hormone?

So I turned to incredible organizations

like the American Cancer Society
and Livestrong.

I learned that the US has
one of the highest rates of cancer

of any country on the planet.

And that migration studies show
that if you were to move here

from somewhere like Japan,

your likelihood of developing cancer
increases fourfold.

I also learned that one out of two men
and one out of three American women

are expected to get cancer
in their lifetime.

I then went on to learn
from the Centers for Disease Control

that cancer is the leading cause
of death by disease

for children under the age of 15.

Correlation isn't causation.

So I wanted to look
at some of these other allergens.

I turned to soy because I had learned

that soy had recently become
one of the top eight allergens.

According to the US Department
of Agriculture, in 1996,

in order to drive profitability
for the soy industry,

because it's primarily used
to fed livestock,

a new protein was introduced
into the soy bean.

Again, as an analyst,
it made perfect sense.

The soy bean was engineered

to withstand increasing doses
of wheat killer.

So it drove profitability for the industry
by increasing sales with that wheat killer

and then on top of that, you were
patenting something new in that protein

that you could then license,
and charge royalty fees,

and trade fees, and licensing fees for.

And again, because no human trials
had been conducted,

and the one human trial
that had been conducted

showed a 50% increase
in the rate of soy allergies,

governments around the world said,

"We're going to exercise precaution.

We're not going to allow this
into our food supply

because it hasn't yet been proven safe."

And yet, here we said,
"It hasn't yet been proven dangerous."

And we allowed it.

As I kept looking, I wanted to know:

Were there other new proteins in our food?

I learned that a few years later,

through the growing concern

of the spraying of insecticides
over corn fields,

scientists using this new technology

were able to engineer that insecticidal
protein into the seed of a corn plant.

So that as it grows,
it releases its own insecticide.

Again, because no
human studies had been done,

governments around the world said,

"We're not going to introduce this
into our food supply.

Or if we do, we are going
to insist on labeling

so that consumers
can make an informed choice."

In some countries, they didn't want it
fed to their livestock.

In some countries,
like in France, in New Zealand,

they were so concerned,
they didn't want it planted in their soil.

As you can imagine,
upon learning all of this,

there were some pretty
dark nights in our house.

When I thought, "How many bowls
of cereal have I poured this milk on

not knowing that it contained
this synthetic growth hormone?

How much of the soy have I fed my family

not knowing that consumers
in other countries

were able to make an informed choice?"

As I sat down with my husband, I said,
"I cannot unlearn this information.

I have to do everything I can
to try to teach other people about this.

I don't know what they will say."

Together, the next morning,

we sat the kids down
at the breakfast table and I said,

"You know how mom has learned
some pretty tough stuff

about what's going on in our food?

It's not in food in other countries,

and it's especially
not in food fed to kids.

I'm going to have to do
something about it."

One of the boys looked
at me, and he said,

"Mom, how many people are on your team?"

(Laughter)

I said, "Well, it's you four. And daddy."

(Laughter)

And he said, "Mom,
you need a bigger team."

(Laughter)

He was absolutely right.

At that point, people were saying,
"You should reach out to Erin Brockovich,

you should really reach out
to Erin Brockovich."

All I kept thinking was, "Who am I?

Who am I to reach out to Erin Brockovich?"

But at the same time,

I thought maybe if I could get through
to somebody like that,

we could start to create this change.

Truly harnessing every single one
of those Type A genes,

I spent two weeks crafting
a four sentence e-mail to Erin Brockovich.

(Laughter)

When I fired it off, I don't know
if I ever really expected her to reply.

But when she did, I suddenly thought,

maybe one person really can
make a difference.

As I continued to look into this research

and the research that was
being presented by the industry

about how we needed this new
operating system on our food supply,

that we needed these
genetically engineered proteins,

and all the chemicals that went with it,

I realised that they had done
an incredible job manufacturing demand

by creating this fear of scarcity

that we needed this technology
to feed the world.

But at the same time,
the USDA was reporting

that the US was throwing away
96 billion pounds of food, every year.

27% of the food that we were producing
wasn't even making it to our plates.

So I realised while it was
in the interest of industry

to drive a need for increased production,
this was also a distribution issue.

On top of that, reports were
coming out of the United Nations,

they were saying
that conventional agriculture,

without the use of all
these synthetic chemicals,

was actually doing an incredible job
of meeting this demand.

As I stepped back from that I thought,
"How can we eat this way here?

Without all of these synthetic chemicals

and without all of these
newly introduced proteins

for which no human trials
had been conducted?"

I kept coming back to organics.

In all candor, it was
driving me absolutely nuts

because of the high price for those foods.

So I looked into the business model there.

I learned that as a national family,
sitting down to our national dinner table,

with our national budget, our resources
are used to subsidize the growing of food

with all of these genetically engineered
proteins and all of these chemicals.

And at the same time, the farmers
that are growing things organically,

which by law means without the use
of these synthetic chemicals

and without the use
of these genetically engineered proteins,

these guys are charged fees
to prove that their stuff is safe.

On top of that, they're charged fees
to then label it, and then on top of that,

they don't get the same crop insurance
and marketing assistance programs

that these guys get over here.

So I reached out to these farmers that had
adopted this new operating system.

That's when I learned that the farmers

that had been feeding
our country for generations,

are suddenly having to pay new costs
with these new technologies

because of the patents in those seeds,
they can no longer store seeds

as their grandfathers did
and their great grandfathers did.

But rather, they've got to license
the use of that technology

and pay royalty fees,
and trade fees, and licensing fees

for the privatization of these profits
to these shareholders.

As I reflected on the fact that the US
was one of the few countries in the world

to have so boldly adopted
this new technology,

and all of these chemicals
that it was dependent upon,

I wanted to know,

"What are our rates of disease here
versus the rest of the world?"

I learned that the US
spends more on health care

than any other country on the planet.

That 16 cents of every dollar we spend
is spent managing disease.

As an analyst, I reflected
on that. and I thought,

we can't drive our profitability
towards our core competencies

at the corporate level
because we're busy managing disease.

Our global competitiveness
could very well be at stake.

So as I stood in my kitchen,
having learned all of this,

looking in my cabinets and realizing
that these synthetic ingredients

and these genetically engineered proteins
were in just about everything.

I turned to the Grocery
Manufacturers Association

to learn how I could avoid them.

I learned that 80% of our processed foods

contain these genetically
engineered ingredients.

But at the same time, I learned
that Kraft and Kellogg and Coca Cola

aren't using them in the products
that they formulate in other countries.

When I first learned that,
it was kind of depressing.

But then I thought,

We're not asking them
to reinvent the wheel.

We haven't called upon them together
to exercise the same level of precaution

and to either label these ingredients
so that we can make an informed choice

or remove them from the products
that they sell here in the US,

and place the same value on the lives
of the American eaters

that they've already placed on the lives
of eaters in other countries.

In all candor, that day,
standing in the kitchen,

we simply began to make changes

by trying to eat
a little bit less processed food.

Because it wasn't about the perfect
being the enemy of the good.

It was about progress, not perfection.

What I came to realise is that each
and every single one of us

has something that we're uniquely good at.

When you leverage that with something
that you're passionate about,

it can serve as a rocket fuel
to create extraordinary change.

The bottom line is
that our country was founded

by courageous and creative entrepreneurs.

So I invite you to lend
your talent so that together,

as a nation of 300 million Americans,

can create the change that we want
to see in the health of our families,

in the health of our food system,
and in the health of our country.

Thank you.

(Applause)