Danielle Nierenburg is a 1995 Monmouth College Graduate who has excelled as a world -renowned researcher, speaker and advocate on all issues relating to our food system and agriculture. She is the co-founder of the Food Tank non-profit organization that is focused on building a global community for safe, healthy and nourished eaters. Recently, she spoke on the WRAM Noon Agriculture Hour about how Food is Medicine concept is growing:
“It is really the first medicine, and I think many of us with busy lives have forgotten or never knew how to eat as well as we could. I think there is a big shift in how school systems and medical schools are thinking about nutrition. For so long there was only about an hour throughout medical school, so the seven or so years that medical students were in school, they only had about one hour of nutrition training. That is changing thankfully and it is thanks to people that I had the pleasure of working with at the Food is Medicine Institute and others to push for that. We are also seeing on the kindergarten through 12th side, a lot of more education around where food comes from, how to cook it for kids; I think that is really, really important so they grow up with that knowledge. So many of us grow up and didn’t know how to cook. I was very fortunate, my mom was a great cook and taught me from an early age, but not everyone has that.”
Nierenburg is also publishing original articles daily and partners with over 250 major organizations including academic institutions such as George Washington University and Tufts; U.N. organizations like the FAO, WFP, UNEP, and IFAD; funding and donor community organizations such as The Rockefeller Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, and the Overbrook Foundation; and global nonprofits such as Slow Food USA and Oxfam America. She also runs the largest network of food studies faculty in universities, representing all 50 U.S. states; the largest network of Chief Sustainability Officers, and is about to announce the establishment of a non-profit network connecting all 36,000 food, climate, and health organizations in the United States.
Meanwhile, Nierenburg also conducts extensive on-the-ground research, traveling to more than 70 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America. She has met with thousands of farmers and farmers’ groups, scientists and researchers, policymakers and government leaders, students and academics, and journalists, documenting what is working to help alleviate hunger and poverty while protecting the environment. Source cited: FoodTank.com
