What's the story?

Over the last few weeks, I seem to keep running into the same aphorisms. This normally happens at the beginning of the year, but in 2026 it’s gone into overdrive

The first is the famous quote by Antonio Gramsci:

‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters’

Written a long time before Trump was born. Bart de Wever, the Belgian PM even used it yesterday in Davos.

Are we in a Gramscian ‘interregnum’ now? Canadian PM Mark Carney calls it a rupture.

And then (unsurprisingly) there’s WB Yeats a decade earlier, after the first world war:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

Back in the food world, I’ve been hearing a lot about the power of stories and framing.

One goes like this:

‘things are not bad and getting worse; they’re good and getting better, but not fast enough’

This has been around for some time e.g. Hannah Ritchie’s Not the End of the World . More recently I heard it in ‘food futurist’ Jack Bobo’s talk at the Oxford Farming Conference (the Big Food-sponsored one of the two) held two weeks ago.

Now, I’m a complete convert to the power of stories, and I’m not a doom-monger but this one really grates.

Why?

Well, first, I think it’s the casual way such a framing airbrushes out the realities of so many people. People with limited power who are working in, or dependent on, the food system.

It’s a framing that defaults to population averages and trend lines on a graph. (Hans Rosling was the master at this.)

It does not focus on those left behind – or rather, actively held back – by structures and systems that are built to maximise profits for a few (including OFC’s donors), not to ensure equity.

The story of averages is about linear growth, while the story of gaps is about equity.

Second, it’s a framing that implies we just need to stay on the same path – the one that’s brought us to this implied peak in human progress. We just need to continue doing what we’re doing but do it faster.

This implies we don’t really need to change what we do.

Incrementalism not transformation. Accelerated business-as-usual.

I just don’t buy it.

This often leads to questions about optimism/pessimism like – do you see a glass that’s half-full or half-empty?

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

What if you see a glass that’s cracked and leaking? Maybe we need a new glass.

A third reason I don’t like the ‘good and getting better’ story is it defaults (conveniently) on to continuing innovation. But a type of innovation that follows the logic of the system – that is therefore technological, usually dominated by large corporations…or philanthropists who’ve made their billions from tech. Not social innovation which rarely makes money for anyone.

It’s a statement that’s almost designed to dampen down any discussions of the politics of food – of who wins and who loses.

In his talk, Bobo argues there’s a trust deficit.

I agree with him – but I’m not sure we agree on why that is.

A large part of the trust deficit relates, I think, to the persistent and pervasive infiltration of science and policy spaces by actors and organisations for whom public health and well-being are not the main goals. They’re striving after a different goal.

This skews the political discourse in ways that lead to false narratives and straw men. Such as this selection of industry-propagated tropes relating to ultra-processed foods, highlighted in a recent post and this paper.

• There’s not enough evidence, more research is needed; challenging the UPF industry is ideological; there’s nothing wrong with ‘food processing’; unhealthy diets are due to nutrient imbalances, not ultra-processing; unhealthy diets are due to poor choices, a lack of awareness, poor education – it’s an individual responsibility; don’t touch UPFs, they’re convenient, they also generate economic growth; UPFs can be reformulated to make them healthy; nanny state regulations restrict our freedom; leave it to us – the industry can regulate itself; regulation stigmatizes poor and vulnerable individuals who can only afford cheap UPFs…

And on and on…

If science and policy processes have been polluted by powerful actors pursuing profit, not public health and nutrition security, then we’re bound to have a trust problem.

Five years ago, mistrust was frequently invoked as a roadblock in the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) process. Summit leaders even blamed activists who asked basic questions about governance and power.

If there’s still a trust deficit, why not address it?

So, what’s the real story?

Well, obviously there are several – we need to select the right one at the right time.

It will never be enough to highlight problems, even if we do frame them more positively as challenges. We need to go further and focus on change – both what and how.

In this, we need to go below the waterline.

Photo by Woody Kelly on Unsplash

In their excellent book Inflamed, Rupa Marya and Raj Patel remind us that ‘diagnosis’ comes from ‘dia’ (apart) and ‘gnosis’ (to know). A diagnosis is a story pulled apart. Many diagnostic narratives, they argue, are out of joint because the story begins in the middle with a symptom – not at the beginning with the underlying cause. To figure the solution, we need to dig deeper into structures and systems.

We cannot have revolution without revelation. In between the two, there may be anger and outrage, but this can be useful. Complacency is not useful.

We need a proper discussion of problems – including the voices and perspectives of those who have been held back. Human rights are key, not a trend line showing growth of population averages.

This 2022 opinion piece by Nason Maani et al still resonates:

‘Policy is to a large degree shaped by who prevails in framing problems and their solutions. All too often, the choices we make about what we say and how we say it are influenced by and reflect corporate interests. In this way, corporations can define the world of the possible and the impossible, the blameless and the guilty. We need to find better ways to tell the stories that matter, and better ways to counter the pollution of discourse on health.’

We need better stories and better storytellers – both infused with a hefty dose of radical hope and radical realism.

Rhett Butler wrote about this last week in ‘Beyond the doom loop: the case for informed optimism’

‘Problems still come first. But they are not the final word. In program work, it means breaking large, abstract challenges into visible outcomes that people can recognize in their own lives: cleaner water, steadier incomes, fisheries that recover, and forests that once again support livelihoods. These outcomes matter not only because they improve conditions on the ground, but because they restore a sense of agency.’

Hope is fed by evidence and by experience of the real world.

Radical realism, in turn, demands a confrontation with hard truths without sugarcoating or doom paralysis. But crucially it requires using a proper diagnosis of the problem as a springboard into transformative change.

Of note…

I’m behind on reading this week – bit distracted by insane geopolitical crises and orange monsters — but a couple of things rose to the surface…

On UPF fetishism

One of the main drivers of the inertia and lacklustre response to UPF-saturated diets is the dominance of ‘UPF fetishism’ in scientific, public, and policy discourse, argues Ben Wood and colleagues.

Drawing on Marx’s concept of ‘commodity fetishism’, the paper investigates the tendency to view UPFs only in terms of their final qualities or characteristics at the point of purchase (price, quality, convenience), while failing to consider all the socio-ecological processes, relations, and activities involved in their provisioning (e.g., intensive agriculture, value extraction).

Product obsession/fetishism lends itself to distracting binary discussions about Product X versus Product Y. It obscures the multiple harms and inequities that lie deeper and it forecloses discussions on alternatives and approaches to improving diets for everyone. A deliberate myopia that bogs us down when we could be ‘illuminating meaningful opportunities for collaboration within the vast ecology of values-aligned movements seeking better diets, food systems, and economies for people and planet.’

On change, activism and social movements

Finally, here’s a great new initiative by Duncan Green and Tom Kirk at LSE – aimed at combining research, training and discussions on how to expand people’s ‘freedoms to be and to do’, (a la Sen) in the face of the insane brutality of the woodchipper. They ask:

‘How can small groups of dedicated activists influence those in positions of power to bring about change?’

What tactics, modes of collaboration and response work? The initiative draws on Duncan’s work at Oxfam on ‘From Poverty to Power’ and this excellent book How Change Happens (now in its 2^nd edition) which, a decade ago, influenced Transform Nutrition’s stories of change programme.

‘Til next month!