One of the UK's leading food reform campaigners has been chosen to deliver the last in a decade-long series of prestigious talks at Aberdeen University.
Henry Dimbleby, the outspoken former government policy tsar and independent national food strategy author, will deliver the 2024 Carnegie Lecture on November 6.
The occasion marks the 75th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to the Rowett Institute’s founding director Lord Boyd Orr for his work improving global nutrition.
Boyd Orr’s pioneering research demonstrating the link between poverty, poor diet and ill health had a major impact, inspiring everything from school milk to war-time rationing.
After leading the Aberdeen-based Institute for three decades, he became the first director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949 “for his lifelong effort to conquer hunger and want, thereby helping to remove a major cause of military conflict and war”.
Today, 75 years on, the food landscape may have dramatically changed but we still find ourselves grappling with stark inequalities when it comes to diet and health.
And echoes of Boyd Orr’s pleas for action – and of his frustrations at the pace of change and political will to force it – can be heard in the work of Mr Dimbleby.
The Leon restaurants founder and co-author of the bestselling book Ravenous: How to Get Ourselves and Our Planet into Shape, will use the lecture to further explore his forensic analysis of our malfunctioning food system and how we can fix it.
The Andrew Carnegie Lecture series, a ten-year programme of public talks at Scotland’s ancient universities (Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews) is a project funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York to celebrate its centenary.
Mr Dimbleby will afterwards join a panel discussion featuring Rowett Institute Director Professor Jules Griffin, Professor Alexandra Johnstone, the institute’s theme lead for Nutrition, Obesity and Disease and leader of the £1.6m Food Insecurity and Obesity (FIO Food) project, and Food Standards Scotland chair Heather Kelman.
“John Boyd Orr’s contribution to improving British diets – and his clear understanding of the wider importance of nutritional health to our world – was immeasurable,” Mr Dimbleby says.
“It is hard to know quite what he would make of the way problems with the food system have evolved since he was putting his expertise and drive behind global reform.
“But it is a great pleasure to be able to go to Aberdeen – where the pioneering work that underpinned his achievements was done at the Rowett – to talk about how scientists, politicians, industry leaders and others can take a leaf out of the Boyd Orr book.”
University of Aberdeen Principal Professor George Boyne said: “For more than 500 years the University has been at the forefront of driving research which goes beyond the status quo, works across borders and delivers sustainable solutions to the challenges facing society.
“In Henry we are delighted to have a speaker delivering this special anniversary lecture who so clearly shares these principles and demonstrates the same commitment towards changing lives.”