More than 95% of Indonesians don't eat enough fruits and vegetables, in one of the world's richest food landscapes. Dr. Eva Monterrosa and Sutamara (Tama) Noor of GAIN Indonesia explain why nutrition information alone doesn't change diets, and how food culture could help build healthier food systems.
Episode Notes
Indonesia has more than 17,000 islands, over 280 million people and hundreds of ethnic communities, which gives it one of the most diverse cuisines on earth. Yet more than 95% of Indonesians don't eat enough fruits and vegetables, almost half drink sugar-sweetened beverages every day, and adult obesity keeps rising. Governments have invested in nutrition education for decades, so why haven't diets changed?
In this episode, hosts Mark Gachagua and Stephanie Sargeant ask a different question: instead of how we teach people to eat healthier, what shapes people's relationship with food in the first place?
Guests:
In this episode:
Key takeaway: "Healthy eating becomes easier when it's practised together, not prescribed individually."
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Bite the Talk – Episode 34: Indonesia's Food System
Transcript
Mark: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Bite the Talk, where we explore the ideas, innovations and people shaping healthier food systems around the world. I'm your host, Mark Gachagua.
Stephanie: And I'm Stephanie Sargeant.
Today we're taking you to Indonesia, a country famous for its incredible culinary diversity. With more than 17,000 islands, over 280 million people and hundreds of distinct ethnic communities, Indonesia is one of the richest culinary landscapes in the world. Its food tells stories of history, migration, religion and family.
But here's the paradox. Despite this rich food heritage, more than 95% of Indonesians don't consume enough fruits and vegetables, while unhealthy foods continue to become more common. Adult obesity has increased steadily over the past 15 years, even as progress has been made in reducing child stunting.
Mark: For decades, governments and development partners have invested in nutrition education, yet diets remain difficult to change. So perhaps we've been asking the wrong question. Instead of asking how we teach people to eat healthier, perhaps we should be asking what shapes people's relationship with food in the first place.
Stephanie: Helping us answer that question are two outstanding guests. First, we're delighted to welcome Dr. Eva Monterrosa. Dr. Eva is a nutritionist and scientist with more than 15 years of experience in maternal and child nutrition and consumer behaviour.
Her work focuses on understanding why people choose the foods they do and designing public health and market-based interventions that create demand for nutritious and sustainable diets. Her expertise spans food choice, consumer insights, social marketing, intervention design, and monitoring and evaluation.
She holds a master's degree in human nutrition and metabolism from the University of Alberta and a PhD in nutrition from Cornell University. Eva, welcome to Bite the Talk.
Eva: Thank you for having me, Stephanie. It's lovely to be back. I also worked with GAIN for seven years, helping to establish the consumer demand programme, so that's a little bit about my background and my relationship to everyone on this call.
Mark: Nice to have you, Eva. And joining Eva is Sutamara Noor.
Sutamara serves as Project Coordinator for the Food Culture Alliance and Consumer Demand Generation at GAIN Indonesia. His work focuses on integrating food culture into food systems transformation, helping translate cutting-edge research into practical policies and programmes that influence how people think about, choose and enjoy food. He's also one of the lead authors of today's featured policy brief. Sutamara, welcome to the podcast.
Tama: Hello everyone, thank you for having me. I'm Tama. I'm based in Indonesia and have been working with GAIN for almost three years now. I'm also a public health nutritionist here in Indonesia, and I'm looking forward to our discussion today.
Mark: Thank you, Tama. It's a big, beautiful GAIN family today, and we're excited to have you both.
Eva, you've spent years studying food choices and food culture. It seems that information alone doesn't change diets. Why is that?
Eva: No, it does not, unfortunately. I wish it was that simple. But food choice is really about the foods that we like to eat, and what we like is based on emotions: how we emotionally connect to the food, how we feel when we're buying it, how we feel when we're cooking it and, obviously, when we're eating it. So that's the first part.
The second element of our food choices is that they're highly influenced by who we're with. There's a big social dimension to it: who we're eating with, who we're cooking for, and what the food says about my connection to my family members. Am I a good wife because I make tasty food? Am I a good mother? And so on.
And the last thing to say about food choice is that it's extremely complex. It always has been. There are no silver bullets.
I think we've placed a lot of faith in information. Information is obviously necessary; we need good information out there. But that is never going to be enough to shape food choices, and we have to live with and understand that complexity, and be comfortable working in it.
Stephanie: I really like your last point about complexity, and that even having that information there doesn't always influence what people eat and the choices we make. Many of us assume that if people know what's healthy, they'll naturally make healthier choices. But life doesn't really work that way, does it?
Eva: It does not. The real world always has something to say about the choices we make. Even if we know what we like and want to eat what we like, we don't always get what we want. That's a fact of life in every aspect, and food is no exception. Our choices face constraints of time, money and availability. We all know those very well.
Our routines and habits are also shaped by these forces, as well as by the force of culture. We slip into these routines and habits through the rhythms of life: what time of day I have to get up and go to work, or what time work starts in general for society. How far do we have to commute to get to school or to work? Do we have children who go to school? That changes our rhythm of life as adults and parents, too.
Then there's what time we eat dinner and lunch, and which is the main meal where our families sit down together and connect. All of these rhythms of life are culturally bound. Yes, individuals in the household have some flexibility, of course.
But by and large, as you probably know in Kenya, the main meal is dinner, and most people sit down to have dinner together as a family. So those are the ways in which the real world affects what we want to choose and do.
Mark: Thank you. You've just talked about dinner time, and it's such a lovely time for people to come together, culture-wise. But I was looking at this statistic, and I thought I didn't have my glasses on. I looked again: despite decades of investment, more than 95% of Indonesians still consume insufficient fruits and vegetables. That doesn't taste very good. What does that tell us, Eva? And Tama, feel free to come in too.
Eva: That statistic is striking, isn't it? Especially for a country that, as you mentioned in the introduction, is associated with such natural diversity, biodiversity, and diversity of foods and dishes. It should raise alarm bells for anyone working in this sector. If 95% of the population is not achieving a goal, it means something structural is happening. This isn't the whim of one person choosing not to do it.
In the food and nutrition sector, we often go to the same places to search for that structural explanation. Is the food available? That's an obvious place to start, and an obvious assumption to check. Is it affordable? That's the other structural question we often ask, and also a very good place to start.
But I think we need to start asking another structural question: are these foods desirable, culturally and socially? We don't ask that question in our sector. A recent paper by Koslow et al., published this year in Food Policy with GAIN colleagues from the Indonesia office and from our knowledge and learning teams, painted a very compelling picture: in Indonesia, it's neither cost nor availability that's driving low consumption of vegetables, legumes and nuts. In fact, consumption of these foods is relatively stable across income quintiles.
Looking from the lowest to the highest income, you can literally draw a straight line across. And in Kenya, when we did our work on Vegetables for All, we saw a similar pattern for fruits and vegetables. It didn't matter what your social class was; that consumption pattern stayed relatively the same.
So that answers the question about availability and cost; it doesn't have to do with affordability in the wider sense. In fact, the data from Indonesia showed that most of the population can afford a low-cost healthy diet, and that even households in the lowest income quintile already spend more on food than a low-cost healthy diet would cost.
That extra spending goes to discretionary foods. For those who don't know, discretionary foods are things like sweets, packaged goods, biscuits, sauces, cakes and chips: anything we don't need to have, hence "discretionary". It also includes the mixed dishes we often get as takeout.
The other striking thing the paper showed was that even households that couldn't afford a healthy diet reserved a portion of their income for these discretionary foods. That shows you that, socially, these foods are valuable. People need to have these foods in their basket as part of the food experience at home, and this signals the importance of food culture.
So it's a really great study, just published. Go out and get that paper, read it, examine it. It's super interesting, and it provides really strong evidence for this other structural question we need to ask about social desirability.
Mark: Tama, do you want to add to that?
Tama: Yes. In another project, we also did some social research, and interestingly, vegetables are set aside on our plate. In our meal structure in Indonesia, our staple is mainly rice, followed by side dishes, sometimes proteins, of course. And vegetables are sometimes just a couple of complementary items; it's okay if we don't have them. It's really sad.
It's really sad, because Indonesia is very rich in vegetables and plantations, but socially we don't consider them a regular food. Forget about healthiness; it's just not in our soul that vegetables are part of our daily meal structure. Let's put it that way. These statistics are also part of our thinking when we develop briefs and talk with relevant stakeholders, to nudge them that we need something really innovative that puts vegetables into the conversation.
It's not just about affordability, and it's not just about labelling. We need to seek other opportunities that can make vegetables and fruits more desirable in Indonesia.
Stephanie: Thank you both, Eva and Tama, for those responses. Super interesting things are being said, but also, like you said, quite sad.
Tama, I actually studied in the Netherlands for my master's, and of course there's a very large Indonesian population there, so I think I was eating Indonesian food at least once a week.
So I'd love to hear from you, especially after you've told us that rice is a staple and vegetables aren't considered a regular food. What is the most popular Indonesian dish? Feel free to describe it so we can all start salivating.
Tama: Okay. Indonesia is huge: thousands of islands, many different ethnic groups, and six religions associated with the way we think about food.
But thinking about our culinary landscape, I'll go with nasi goreng, one of my favourites, which we call fried rice. It sounds humble, but it's actually a brilliant illustration of Indonesian food culture in miniature. The stir-frying technique came from Chinese traders centuries ago and was fully absorbed into what Indonesians consider authentically Indonesian.
In our research, that's part of the receptiveness dimension, because we adopted it and made it ours. And it's built from whatever's on hand, served everywhere from street carts to hotel breakfasts. Eva was there too, seeing fried rice at breakfast.
That's also what we call simplistic abundance: the whole philosophy built around simply prepared, locally available ingredients.
Mark: Fantastic. Tama, nasi goreng is very popular on YouTube. I'm a big fan of street food, and I've been exploring, so it's not the first time I'm hearing that word. Just so our listeners can get a picture of what we're talking about: let's say we're walking along a popular street in Indonesia. What street food are we likely to come across? Something interesting that will stick in our minds?
Tama: There's a lot. I can't pick one, because wherever we are, there are traditional dishes as well as traditional snacks.
But I would say most of our food is fried. We have the term gorengan, or deep-fried food, made from tempeh, tofu and everything. But if I had to pick a healthier option, I'd go with porridge.
We have mung bean porridge, which is very tasty. It's sold from carts, and it's everywhere. It's made from mung beans and coconut milk, all in a single bowl. So if you visit Indonesia, you should try mung bean porridge.
Mark: I will. And I know Eva is also familiar with Kenyan porridge. It's very filling.
Tama, you and your colleagues at GAIN Indonesia have worked on a wonderful policy brief called Integrating Food Culture into Indonesia's Food Systems Agenda: The Case for a Cultural Dimensions Approach. In this policy brief, you identified four cultural dimensions. Please walk us through them.
Tama: Okay. At the beginning, we started with eight dimensions from our working paper, which we did with Eva. Then we narrowed them down to the four with the strongest cross-regional pull: simplistic abundance, receptiveness, fraternity and negotiation. Allow me to explain them one by one.
Let's start with simplistic abundance. It's the everyday structure of staples, vegetables and side dishes: simple preparation, locally sourced, and nutritionally complete almost by accident. For example, take lalap from West Java. It's just raw, fresh vegetables, such as cucumber, cabbage and long beans, eaten straight with a sambal dip. Sambal is made from tomato and chilli. There's no elaborate cooking and no technique required, just fresh produce and a bit of chilli paste, and that's already a complete, satisfying dish. It's simple and abundant at once, all on a single plate.
The second dimension is receptiveness: Indonesia's centuries-old comfort with absorbing outside influence, like nasi goreng. It's a legacy of sitting on the spice route, and much of that comes down to geography.
Our islands sit on volcanic soil, which makes the land unusually fertile and mineral-rich: ideal conditions for growing spices. That's exactly what drew traders from all over the world to our shores for centuries, turning Indonesia into a genuine melting pot, a role it still plays today. Indian spices, Middle Eastern skewered meats, Chinese noodles, and European chillies and potatoes were all fully Indonesianised within a generation or two.
The third is fraternity, which is rooted in gotong royong, literally "carrying the load together": a mutual support ethic. The community pitches in on each other's work without being asked, whether that's harvesting, building a house or organising a wedding, reinforced by Islamic values of communal giving. Today you see this spirit in nongkrong culture: young Indonesians gathering at a warung, or coffee stall, with no fixed agenda, just to talk.
If I could pick an example from Kenya, it's like the Harambee spirit of pulling together (correct me if I'm wrong, Mark), or the American habit of catching up over coffee. Indonesians tend to do it almost every evening.
The last one, negotiation, is the one people find surprising, including me. It's not political negotiation. It's about humans and nature being interdependent, almost like a truce between the two. You see it in irrigation systems in Bali, for example; some of you may already be familiar with Bali. They reflect a careful balance between humans and the natural world.
So overall, that's a brief overview of the four dimensions.
Stephanie: Tama, you mentioned that the fourth cultural dimension, negotiation, was the one people found most surprising. Were any of the other findings also surprising, or was it mainly the fourth one?
Tama: In my opinion, and from what others have said too, what surprised us was how well negotiation and receptiveness translate into urban, contemporary spaces. We assumed these were traditional, rural dimensions.
But when we tested concepts, for example with a Catholic women's group in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, such as reframing sustainable eating as harmony with nature for city audiences, or using regional food identity to build new wellness communities, they landed just as strongly with younger urban Indonesians. So from those four dimensions, I'd say food culture in Indonesia isn't static; it's finding new expressions.
Mark: Fantastic. Thank you, Tama, for sharing those insights and those dimensions. Steph, I think we need a trip to Indonesia. What do you think?
Stephanie: I completely agree.
Mark: We need to go and sample all those wonderful foods as we consider the dimensions.
Stephanie: I'm already packing, Mark.
Mark: That's the spirit. Now, let's talk about the science behind food culture. I know Eva has done a lot of work around this. One of the things I really appreciate is that it's not just about preserving tradition; it's about using culture as a tool for healthier diets. Is that correct, Eva?
Eva: That's right. When we talk about food culture, the first thing that comes to people's minds is traditional meals and traditional foods. That's certainly an element of it, and it doesn't go away in our conceptualisation of food culture.
But as Tama points out, culture isn't static. It's not something that belongs in a museum. It's not a relic.
It's a living system, and because it's a living system, it's worthy of study and investigation. But in the nutrition sector, we're not all that familiar with culture.
Many of us aren't trained in culture the way anthropologists or sociologists are. And frankly, when we work within our own culture, we take it for granted. It's so deep and embedded in us that sometimes we can hardly feel it.
It's just part of who we are. Scientists and practitioners working in this space, even very policy-aware ones, can see culture almost like the weather: something you need to adapt your programmes to suit.
We talk a lot about culturally appropriate interventions, and that's why we devolve activities to countries to lead, because they understand their own culture. So we adapt interventions for that.
But at the Food Culture Alliance, we take a different perspective. We see culture as an underused and extremely powerful lever for food system transformation. We define food culture as the way society thinks about, feels about and values food.
So there's a very simple question we need to start asking, and asking it at the policy level, which is what Tama's policy brief is doing: how does your society value food, and what kinds of food does it value? Those are two key questions that policymakers and people working in policy circles need to keep in mind. It sounds like a very simple question, and the answer will often be, "Oh, we value our traditional foods, the foods of my grandmother, my ancestors," and so on. That's a great starting point.
But it's much more complex than that. We're not looking for simple answers. We tried simple answers before: just give people information.
So let's not jump to the simple answer of "it's just my traditional dishes." We have to work to understand culture, and this is where science, methodology and research come into play.
Tama talked about the four dimensions earlier, and that's the first step we take. We call it a desk review, or a landscaping of food culture, which involves looking at historical documents.
We're looking at history. We're looking at geography, as Tama mentioned. We're even looking at how policy, over centuries or thousands of years depending on the country, has shaped the food landscape we have today.
Through that, we discover the core dimensions, which is very important. From there, we still have to dig deeper.
These dimensions describe things in very general terms. Some of them may even be historical or symbolic ideas that show up very differently in today's culture.
Tama mentioned fraternity. In the past, it showed up as "let's go help build the house" or "let's go help harvest the fields." In today's urban landscapes, it shows up very differently: "let's connect over coffee at the end of the day and see how our lives are going." So when we go from dimensions to codes, we use a different methodology to understand those codes. We do a kind of semiotic research.
The other kind of research we do is to understand trends. Tama discussed some of that work earlier: understanding what a country is eating and what that looks like across income quintiles, to get a good sense of food consumption trends. Then we piece all of this information together into a comprehensive picture.
There's interpretation involved, and we do this together with our Food Culture Alliance members and, of course, people in the country who understand the context intimately. So there are dimensions and codes, and the other element we bring into our work is our NIBS framework.
The NIBS framework, which I'll talk more about later, is the final piece. It's a framework that helps put things together to develop a food culture strategy. That's the essence of how we use research and science and then move to a strategy for food culture.
Stephanie: Thank you for sharing. We're definitely interested in hearing more about the NIBS framework. Could you tell us what it is, and explain it in simple language for people like me who may not be so familiar with this topic?
Eva: Of course. NIBS is an acronym that represents the broad components of food culture.
N is for narratives, I is for identity, B is for beliefs, and S is the S in culinary systems. In simple terms, narratives represent stories.
And these are real stories, not documentaries. In the nutrition sector, when we say "let's tell stories," we tell documentaries, not real stories with plots, characters, heroes and protagonists. Those are the kinds of stories the narratives represent.
We focus on the stories we tell around food, or the absence of stories around food in our sector. In nutrition, and especially in the policy space, we're very much about facts and figures, and we lack stories around food. So that's an important area to develop.
Identity represents the social groups we belong to and how food signals that belonging. For example: "I am a man, therefore I eat meat, and I get the best piece of meat." That's related to our social identity. And we belong to many different social groups, not just our gender: social class, religious groups, ethnic groups, and lifestyle groups such as youth, retirees, mothers and so on.
Beliefs is shorthand for our mindsets and mental frameworks. I think that's pretty self-explanatory. And finally, culinary systems represent the rules, culinary tools and culinary norms that establish everything about our cuisine.
The culinary system, in turn, shapes the broader rhythms of life you find in communities, regions and cities. So narratives, identity, beliefs and culinary systems are all components of food culture, and each of them is important if you're going to develop a food culture strategy.
Mark: Fantastic, very scientific. Thank you for explaining that, Eva. Since you're talking about stories, protagonists and all these wonderful characters, do you have a unique food story that you've come across? It could be from your culture, or something you came across somewhere else.
Eva: I'm sure they exist, but I haven't seen anything that strikes me as a food culture story. Often in our sector, narrative is confused with broader messaging or broader values.
Like, what's the narrative we have around food? For example, in many Western countries there might be a narrative of abundance. Tama talked about simplistic abundance in Indonesia; in some countries, that might be the narrative.
But I haven't seen a really compelling story being developed around food. That shows there's a gap, and it also shows an opportunity. It's something we could invest in, to shape how people perceive food. And going back to the emotional part I talked about earlier, stories are really the entry point to our emotions.
Mark: Thank you for that. As I was listening to you, I went down memory lane. I remember when I was about 10 years old, on my way back from school, there was a fruit vendor, since we're talking about healthy diets.
This vendor used to sell very green mangoes, but when you cut them open, they were super orange and yellow inside: very delicious to look at and very delicious to taste. And the vendor had some cayenne pepper and a tinge of salt.
So that was my snack on the way home. Steph, I don't know what you had on the way home from school, but I'd recommend that to everyone who hasn't tried it.
Stephanie: That sounds incredibly yummy. I lived super close to school, about a five-minute drive.
And my mom went the very traditional "Black mama" route of cut-up fruit before dinner. So I wish it was a bit more interesting, but it definitely taught me the importance of having fruit before my main meals, and it's something I still do now.
Mark: Good. So let's move to practice. We've heard a lot from the research side and applied a scientific lens to food culture, but now we want to focus on turning research into policy.
Eva touched on asking these structural questions at the policy level. So, Tama, suppose you're briefing Indonesia's ministers tomorrow morning. What's the one thing you want them to understand?
Tama: I'd like to start with why a demand-driven food systems agenda is really difficult to achieve in Indonesia. From a food culture point of view, food culture isn't just heritage, like batik. Batik is a dyeing technique using wax resist, and the word is also used for patterned textiles made with that technique. Food culture, by contrast, is active infrastructure, shaping what 280 million people in Indonesia eat every day.
And it looks different everywhere. In the eastern islands, for example, the same abundance shows up through fish instead of rice and vegetables.
I frame it humbly: socio-cultural factors are already recognised as a driver in most food systems frameworks, but they're rarely activated with real impact. We're not proposing something new, just giving culture a proper seat at the table to activate the demand side, not only supply and information. Why does it matter? As we mentioned at the beginning, over 95% of Indonesians still don't get enough fruits and vegetables, even though our landscape is rich in them. And almost 50% drink sugar-sweetened beverages daily.
So knowledge and access clearly aren't the only bottlenecks.
Mark: Tama, in the brief you talk about the Ministry of Culture and the National Nutrition Agency. It sounds like Indonesia is very serious about this. Tell us why these two institutions, and how they can help with food culture in Indonesia.
Tama: I've been working on the food system transformation agenda and on nutrition initiatives with the government in Indonesia. The Ministry of Culture has never formally been at the food systems table, despite holding exactly the mandate needed: cultural promotion, heritage, creative industries and public engagement, to shape the narratives and identities that determine what people find desirable to eat. Meanwhile, the National Nutrition Agency now holds the largest nutrition budget in the country's history.
It's one of the most feasible institutions in Indonesia's development agenda right now. But its programmes are still anchored in individual dietary targets, not in the cultural environment that determines whether people actually hit those targets. So pairing the two, one shaping the why and the other delivering the what, is where I think the real leverage sits.
Stephanie: And how do you see government efforts influencing programmes like the Free Nutritious Meals Program, or MBG, and Indonesia's broader food diversification agenda?
Tama: Yes, I forgot to mention that. The MBG, or Free Nutritious Meals Program, is a massive lever precisely because of its scale. Our recommendation is to make simplistic abundance the core design standard for the programme's procurement and menus: simple preparation methods and diverse local produce, rather than defaulting to processed convenience food, which is what's currently happening.
Then use receptiveness deliberately: rotate in regional variations so menus don't become repetitive, while building familiarity with the breadth of Indonesia's own food culture rather than reaching for imported alternatives. We call this concept Ruang Makan Baru Indonesia, or Indonesia's New Dining Space: upgrading the canteen, kiosk or community kitchen experience, including the MBG programme, so that fresh, local, simply cooked food is the obvious everyday default, not the effortful choice.
Mark: Fantastic. Thank you, Tama, for those wonderful insights. Eva, looking ahead 10 years from now, what will success look like in this space?
Eva: Entire societies where vegetables, legumes, nuts, fruits and plant-forward eating are valued and prioritised. Where they're considered joyful, delicious and comforting, and we relish knowing that these foods are good for us, good for humanity and good for Mother Earth as well. That's my dream for 10 years from now, if we could get there.
Stephanie: I love that, Eva. Thank you for sharing. And Tama, what excites you most about where this work is heading?
Tama: That we're moving from insight to pilot. The next step in our policy brief is a funding mechanism for NIBS-based pilots across priority provinces, actually testing whether these cultural levers shift preferences on the ground, not just in a working paper. That's the moment food culture stops being an interesting idea and starts being an accountable intervention.
Mark: Time for some rapid-fire questions. Eva, Tama, are you ready? First question, Eva: what's your favourite cultural food?
Eva: I'm originally from El Salvador, so I'd have to say my favourite Salvadoran food is pupusas. Look them up on Instagram. They are so good.
Mark: Fantastic stuff. Steph, more bags for El Salvador.
Stephanie: Very well noted. I'm getting very hungry as we go through this rapid fire.
So, Tama, what's one Indonesian food everyone should try? And if you had to describe Indonesian food culture in one word, what would it be?
Tama: Okay, as I'm from the eastern part of Indonesia, I'll introduce kapurung, K-A-P-U-R-U-N-G. It's a sago-based sour soup from Luwu in South Sulawesi, with vegetables, fish or chicken, and a tangy tamarind broth, all in one bowl. It's not just a dish; it's diversity you can eat.
So if I had to describe Indonesian food culture in one word, it would be diversity.
Mark: Eva, one ingredient from El Salvador that you think deserves global fame. This is your opportunity.
Eva: Pupusas already have global fame, and I should probably spell it out like Tama did with kapurung: P-U-P-U-S-A-S. That's the dish I was suggesting.
And the ingredient from my culture that I think deserves global fame is morro, M-O-R-R-O. It's a fruit tree that grows in the dry areas of El Salvador.
It's climate-resilient and critical to the local ecosystem because it's pollinated by bats. In the local gastronomy, the seeds of the fruit are dried and toasted with peanuts, cinnamon and vanilla to make a refreshing drink, because it's very hot in El Salvador, called horchata, H-O-R-C-H-A-T-A. And bonus points if you drink the horchata from the shell of the morro fruit rather than a regular glass.
Mark: Wow. I know what to order when I go to El Salvador.
Eva: Exactly.
Mark: Thank you for spelling them out. Now I can't get them wrong. Tama, finish this sentence: healthy eating becomes easier when…
Tama: Healthy eating becomes easier when it's practised together, not prescribed individually: a communal habit, not a personal rule.
Stephanie: Amazing. Thank you both so much for today's wonderful conversation, which reminds us that healthier diets aren't built only through information. They're built through stories, families, communities, traditions and culture.
Mark: I agree with you, Steph. We've heard that knowledge alone can't change behaviour. Lasting dietary change comes when policies engage with the narratives, identities, beliefs and social systems that shape food preferences. Eva, Tama, thank you so much for helping us see food systems through a completely new lens.
Stephanie: And thank you to everyone listening. If you enjoyed today's conversation, please subscribe, share this episode, and join us next time as we continue exploring the ideas transforming food systems around the world.
Mark: Until next time, keep biting the talk.