How a food sustainability expert’s No 1 book shapes everything her Hong Kong-based business does
- Heidi Yu Spurrell, founder and CEO of food sustainability consultancy Future Green, read the 2017 book ‘Sustainable Diets’ as part of a master’s in food policy
- The book taught her the importance of questioning food labels, buying from ethical brands and farmers’ markets, and the power of big agriculture
Sustainable Diets: How Ecological Nutrition Can Transform Consumption and the Food System (2017), by academic food policy experts Pamela Mason and Tim Lang, is a manifesto for addressing the many issues of sustainability, public health and governance in the system of food supply.
Heidi Yu Spurrell, founder and CEO of food sustainability consultancy Future Green, formerly known as Food Made Good Hong Kong, tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.
I was responsible for purchasing food and feeding my young children when we lived in Boston, and it became very apparent that it was crucial by default to read the food labels, because there was so much controversy around unhealthy foods being the norm in supermarkets.
We moved from Amsterdam to Belgium (about 10 years ago) when my husband was headhunted; we uprooted and settled in Brussels. The beautiful irony is that our moving allowance included a specific fund to support studying in the new country, which I used to immerse myself in learning.
The master’s programme I chose was food policy (at City, University of London), which has a module on sustainable diets. Sustainable Diets, which I read as part of my studies, is the book that I go back to time and time again.
It helped me gain a holistic perspective on the topic. There was nothing that hadn’t been thought of in their approach to why we need to shift to eating more sustainably.