Barbara Bray: Being nutrient smart

By Olivia Cooper

Barbara Bray is the former co-chair of the Oxford Farming Conference and was awarded an MBE in the 2019 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for ‘Services to Food Nutrition’. Her Nuffield Scholarship, ‘Vegetable Production For Specific Nutritional Need’ reviewed biofortification initiatives and global food policies.

Barbara’s career has covered fresh produce procurement and the provision of food safety advice and nutritional compliance. She works as a consultant supporting small and medium-sized food businesses to implement food safety standards.

How did you get into food nutrition?

As a child, I was fascinated by food and that wasn’t just eating it; it was growing it; it was picking it. We had a lot of farmers’ kids at school so I was used to seeing food growing. I was really passionate about how you can transform something from a crop to a food. I ended up studying food technology which was multidisciplinary. It looked at food microbiology, food science, food engineering, food marketing and management of people. There were only 10 weeks of nutrition on that course and as I progressed through my career I needed some more knowledge in that space. I went back to university and completed a master’s degree in human nutrition and that’s how I fell into it.

Nutrition pulls from lots of other disciplines like chemistry, physiology and how crops grow, for example. I’ve approached nutrition from the science side and looked at how food is produced, how the body interacts with it and what’s right and what’s wrong, from a dietary perspective.

"I was really passionate about how you can transform something from a crop to a food", Barbara Bray.

What does your job involve?

I help small- to medium-sized businesses, mainly on the food safety side. As a consultant, I’ll go into businesses and help put systems in place to help them progress, maintain and manage particular food safety standards.

How did your Nuffield farming scholarship change things?

I looked at vegetable production for specific nutritional need and travelled around the world to see examples of how other countries were doing it, the way that we interact with food and how we can improve. I found that there was something coming down the track in the nutrition area - smart agriculture. I realised food companies had a big place in reshaping our food environment.

I wanted to get under the skin of those companies and find out what they could do to improve the nutritional quality of their products. But not just by saying ‘we’ll take a bit of sugar out or a bit of salt out’, it’s really to fundamentally redesign what they do and look at the whole supply chain. For example, to question whether they really need to buy a crop from a country that’s got drought issues. Bringing it to the UK is just exporting our water footprint.

So it’s not just how a product adds theatre to the shop shelf, that people like it or whether it’s a convenient snack. It’s thinking bigger about the whole purpose planet and how you manage everything.

Could you explain the concept of smart nutrition and agriculture?

It’s about having a multidisciplinary approach to the food system. Rather than nutritionists and dietitians talking about eating a certain way and not considering how food is produced, it’s about joining up all of the dots. Being nutrition smart means that we’re putting out good guidance and good decisions based on the sustainability of production. It’s about having a balance in food production and making sure that what we’re doing at ground level from livestock and crop production also works in a human nutrition space.

Historically, the UK has been very good at livestock production, and as a population, we eat quite a lot of meat. When you look at our consumption of fruit and vegetables we’re relatively poor at doing that. I don’t think we have, really, historically supported the production of fruits and vegetables in this country because we were getting a lot of our produce from our closest neighbours.

Maybe there is an opportunity for us to say, ‘if you want the UK population to be eating more fruit and vegetables, perhaps we need to be incentivising farmers to grow more?’ We need to be working with industry and the food service sector and public procurement to make sure that all of those foods are put in front of people and change the overall environment.

"We need to be incentivising farmers to grow more fruit and vegetables".

What are the major challenges that the world is facing in terms of food production?

There’s a whole range of challenges. If you look at the production end, depending on the region in the world that you are in, you might have food waste issues just getting the crop out of the ground. Whether it’s livestock or crops, there’s a lot stacked against farmers and you’ll never achieve a yield of 100%. Yields have been under a lot of pressure globally, with disasters including wildfires and locust plagues - in some instances, people have done well to get harvested at all. Then, further along the supply chain, you’ll have waste that accrues throughout between the farm and the retailer.

What role do you think technology has to play?

There are many entry points for technology. In particular, we need to look at minimising that food waste. At field level that means making production more efficient and wasting less, whether it’s drilling or harvesting or producing livestock. Beyond that, there is controlled atmosphere processing, packaging that reduces waste and shelf-life extension. Alongside this, technology could help predict shelf-life or food safety issues.

How do you think consumer perceptions of food have shifted?

There are different groups, with different attitudes. Some people have wanted a lot more convenience and have a sense of entitlement of having whatever they want, when they want it. Then there are other people who see food as fuel and are grateful that it’s there. And others who appreciate that they should be eating right and have to pay the right amount of money for their food. But they are all swayed by the trends, especially in the past few years; there’s been a lot focus on plant-based diets. People have gone to extremes about it and the “everything in moderation” message is being lost amid polarised views.

Has nutrient density worsened over time?

While breeders have prioritised plants that are disease-resistant or drought-tolerant over nutrition, it is not as simple as saying nutrient density has declined. When you look at food, the geographical location can affect the level of nutrients in it, as can the time of year and the way it’s produced. Nutrition is more about how an individual interacts with food. The biggest issue we have to overcome is that people have been eating less fruit and vegetables, and that has a far bigger impact than fluctuations in the levels of vitamin C in a product. The bigger problem is people are not too bothered about eating fruit and vegetables or they don’t have access to them, financially or physically.

The point is, our diet needs to have a lot of variety, so when you hear the term eat like a rainbow, that’s what it’s all about. The ideal is the five portions of fruit and vegetables, but if you’re eating a little bit of lots of things, it’s just as good.

Variety is important, if you are eating a little bit of lots of things, it’s just as good.

Back in 2018 the government said it was going to create an overall nutrient score rather than a traffic light system. Currently, for example if you’re buying, cheese, it is obviously going to be red for fat and possibly salt. But that doesn’t mean that cheese is a bad food. It is just flagging up that a 20g portion is recommended, but not 100g. But people just see a red traffic light and it puts them off. A nutrient score may be less off-putting because cheese might have a higher number as it is good for you overall.

In Belgium, researchers are looking beyond this to an Enviro Score, where they’ll flag up the environmental cost on a sliding scale.

What role does artificial intelligence have?

The potential role I see for artificial intelligence is in linking systems together and enabling different parts of the supply chain to learn from each other. AI could really marry things together, perhaps with online tools or apps which can closely match requirements to food types and nutritional content.

Platforms using AI could increase communication across the different isolated functions within the supply chain, so that you can get transparency from the seed breeders to the farmer, through the supply chain to the end consumer.

I think AI is going to help us with that challenge. But the multidisciplinary approach must be built in to the initial programming to bring in different elements of data and help people make better decisions.

Ultimately, it is that multidisciplinary approach – breeding priorities, production methods, agricultural and food policy, the environment and marketing, that should underpin future nutrition strategies and targets.

Artificial intelligence could link systems together and enable different parts of the supply chain to learn from each other.