 New York City, it's your mayor, Eric Adams. Welcome to the Get Stuffed Dundcast. Let's get to it. Hello, New York City. I am really excited today. I'm joined by the amazing Kate McKenzie, the executive director of the mayor's offices of Food Policy. And we are just really, really, really leaning into food and the power of food. And so, let us get started. That's so corny. But it's right there. We've got to do it. You know, so Kate, summing up basically food policy, your office, and what it actually does. If someone's out there in the street, you had a dinner party, you know, you had a bar, restaurant, you know, some guy come up and hit on you, you know, how would you define your job? So the great thing about food policy is it's not just one thing, right? And so I could talk about the fact that we serve 230 million meals a year, and we do that following really great food standards. I could talk about the trucks on the road and how we're trying to make those trucks, you know, electric and also making sure that we're exploring things like water to move our food. I could talk about food and climate and the things that we're doing to acknowledge the role that our food system has in keeping our environment clean. I could also talk about M&WB food businesses and the fact that, you know, our more and more food businesses are doing business with the city. And also we have restaurants that have outdoor dining. So there's so many different things that this administration focuses on when it comes to food policy. And that's why I love it. That's, you know, there is no one thing that we're centered on here. This is about making the healthy choice, the easy choice for all New Yorkers. You know, and that's so interesting you state that because when we think of food, normally we sort of, okay, what am I putting in my mouth? What's on my plate? But food plays a major role in so many things, our mental health, our physical health. Sometimes we self-medicate ourselves with food when we're feeling, you know, depressed or lonely. So what do we want to walk away with with our message to New Yorkers in food? Yeah, you know, I think, Mayor, this is something that you have given great space for, which is acknowledging that food is really personal for people, right? It is how it got to be on our plate, why we're eating what we're eating. Sometimes we have the luxury of making those choices for ourselves, but so many New Yorkers don't know where their next meal is going to come from. Or, you know, they can't stop a particular, they are self-medicated and they are eating something that maybe they know they shouldn't be, but they are. And I think, you know, one of the things again from government here is to let people know that, you know, sometimes the deck is stacked against you. And no matter how much education you have about what you should be doing, sometimes you just can't act on that, whether that's the reality that you live in a neighborhood where what's available to you isn't particularly healthy or it's unaffordable, or you can't get to the stores when they're open because you're working two jobs. You know, these are the realities that sometimes the deck is just stacked against us. You know, you said something and it got me started jotting down. So let's peel back the layers for a moment. How it got on your plate, why is that important? So, you know, I have two kids in our city schools, right? And I am astonished by whether, you know, it's my eight-year-old daughter or my husband for that matter that sometimes don't think about all of the steps that got what's in our refrigerator there. So where something was grown, whether that was in upstate New York or whether that was in California or whether it's a banana from Mexico, right? Just to know then that it had to, somebody had to cultivate that. Somebody had to put energy and work into that. Then it had to get packaged somewhere. Then it had to come, you know, had to get through to a grocery store or put on our plate somehow and knowing where that food came from is really important from a food education perspective. You know, one of the things that got me into food policy was the recognition that, like, farmers make about 12 cents on the dollar for what we're buying, right? And, like, there's just so much energy that goes into the cost of food. And so I think it's really important for people to be connected to that and not take for granted the extraordinary, you know, quantities of food available in this city. Yeah, and how, you know, how it got on your plate was it done in a healthy way? Is the farm paying, you know, the proper wages? You know, the farm bill was an important bill. What conditions are in place to make sure the food is just properly carried out? Well, let me ask you something. I know that you had a long journey with food and I understand that you had, once you decided and took action to change your diet, you had Sunday prep days, right? And, like, so what was that? What was a Sunday prep day? Yes, no, it was, because we're all busy. And what I learned is that preparation keeps you on the course to your destination. And if you have to try to figure it out every day, then you're more likely not to stay in tune of what you're trying to change. So Sunday prep days, for me, I had my little veggie bullet where I would chop up my vegetables already, put them in separate containers so they're ready in the fridge. I would make my oatmeal already overnight and set it in, because you can actually prepare overnight oatmeal without cooking it, because you're sitting in the fridge overnight. And I would get my fruits and already have them chopped up, already have everything ready for me. And if I'm going to do a smoothie, everything would be in one bin or one of a bag, and I would just put it out, throw it in my smoothie blender, and sometimes I would do it the night before, but it was all about preparation, because if I had to chop up my items on that day while I'm rushing out the door or dealing with some type of crisis, it's just not going to happen. So I'll tell you, as you know, because you've seen this, we are working to do the same thing with all of our food service workers in the city. We have these great food standards that are introducing more plant-based options, because that's what the science says that we need, right? And it's also encouraging our food service workers to do things like cutting and using different spices and all these different culinary skills that they may have been out of practice on. And so those are the kinds of things that I, we just celebrated all those food service workers over the summer. They're so real nice. And from the Department of Correction to schools, to older adult centers, we are practicing these new habits of preparation because that's what's helpful to live these healthier diets. And it's not just enough to be told to do something, right? We have to give people the skills and help them to do it. Well, and that's so important. As far too often, we meet people where we are instead of meeting them where they are and taking them to where they want to be or want to go. And we take it for granted and we need to really sometimes hold one's hand, keep the training wheels on until they can balance themselves. That's crucial. And we also want to work with New Yorkers, getting them healthy by making sure they have access to fresh food, including fruit and vegetables. We will fight the continued crises of obesity and chronic diseases by expanding city investment and healthy food access for lower income New Yorkers, including the launch of groceries to go in green stands. You can't have whole foods and pop slopes and junk food in Brownsville. You can't have it the same way. Can't have it the same way. So we're talking about how it gets on our plate. Talk about what's on our plate. So, you know, what we do in this city, obviously, is provide meals to our city agencies. So this could be, you know, we are the largest school district in the country. We're providing breakfast and lunch to nearly a million school kids a day. But we are also feeding, clearly, our people living in our shelter, people going for meals in their older adult centers, lots of different ways in which we're feeding people. But we also are making sure that those food purchases, there's lots that's going on with those food purchases. Number one, any food that we buy has to be healthy and nutritious. So that's like non-negotiable. And we have very high food standards. In fact, they exceed the federal government's food standards, right? And then we prepare those meals, right? And we put them on people's plates. And I want to talk a little bit also about, there's the food purchases. But I also want to talk about my daughter and the fact that I'm going to be honest, sometimes I don't get the best reviews at the end of the day. But I also think it's important, you know, like I don't get the best reviews about my dinners all the time. And I think it's particularly important for our young kids to be constantly exposed to different kinds of foods. You know, and I remember in graduate school, and like I still recite this, that's like a kid needs like 15 exposures to a food before they can actually determine if they like it or not, right? And so it's really important that we are introducing kids to more and more kinds of foods at an early age. So, you know, what's literally on our plate is, again, we're going to talk about the beef. Love that you're recognizing that, and we're leading with that, that we are buying a lot less beef. We are putting caps on the number of times that red meat can be served in a week and introducing minimums for the number of times that plant-based proteins can and should be served. You know, we also are talking and looking at the ways in which, you know, we're buying more food from New York state. You know, how many M&WB businesses are we buying food from? How are we, you know, we talked about the beef and the dairy is not just for our individual health, but it's important for our climate's health too, right? And so these are these like ticking these boxes of what one action can do to advance the city's goals. And I, you know, no other city has made that kind of commitment to be able to address how our food system, and you know, this is right, you know, we're right after climate week here, and this was a big deal to be able to talk about that New York City is making a commitment to reduce the carbon emissions of our food footprint by 33%. So, you know, leading with things like that are why it's so powerful to have this office of the mayor's office of food policy. No, well said. And you know, all over the, you're like a rock star all over the country, you know, like people talk about the stuff you're doing. And what I like, what you're doing is that we have to be honest with ourselves. Not everyone is going to switch on a light switch on and off, that all of a sudden I'm going to change what I'm doing every day. That's just not the reality. And so you didn't say that, okay, we're gonna take beef out of schools. You didn't say that we're going to go to extreme. No, we want to, number one, introduce you so you can have healthy habits and then make the choice and then give you knowledge. And I like that 13, you said 13 times, right? 13 to 15 times, you know, just keep trying it. Right, because you know, there are items in my diet now that I would have never eaten before. And I always thought like, I don't like that. Like I never thought I would eat tofu, you know, but now I've learned how to cook it in many different ways. And I just totally disliked onions. But now they're part of my flavoring of my food. So to constantly introduce, push through that, hey, mommy, I don't like this. Well, you know, try it again. We're gonna try it again. Then once you get to that 15th, now you legitimately, you don't like it. So I want to ask you another question. You know, I have spent a long time before I came into city government really focused on anti-hunger work and then emergency food provision. And I know that you have a tradition on Wednesday nights. Tell us a little bit about that. That is one of my most rewarding and refueling myself because, you know, as any car, you know, you run out of fuel by the time you get to, you know, halfway through your journey, halfway through the week, hump week, and we go out every Wednesday and we feed New Yorkers. What's interesting, they're not just homeless. Many people think that those who are on the line, sometimes about 200, 300 people, that they are homeless and they're not. Every day, many of them are working-class New Yorkers. You'll see them in their uniforms, from their jobs. Yeah, coming back from one shift to go out to another. That's right, that's right. And we are there 34th Street between 17th and 8th Avenue and rain shines, snow feeding our fellow New Yorkers. And it has spurned off into other people doing feedings at different locations in their community. It is so rewarding. So there's two things I want to say. I think the first thing that you and I did together was it was a press release to acknowledge that we were going to distribute free food, free fruits and vegetables through our city. It's now called Community Food Connection Program. And so we are, again, one of the only, I think the only city that uses our city tax levy dollars to buy food to distribute to close to 700 food pantries. And you said, like, this is ridiculous. We have to not feed the healthcare crisis here. We have to make sure that we are promoting good foods to our most vulnerable. So that, number one, I was like, sign me up. We're all here for this. And we are also, the focus on emergency food right now is so profound, but I think it was through that Wednesday night distribution where you introduced us to rethink food too. Right, right. And again, another big focus that you've really stressed is the importance of culture and ethnicity as it relates to food choices for people. And when you think about it, the food pantries, it's almost like how do we solve more than one problem with our good action? One solution solving several problems. If we are serving healthy food, we're helping the environment, we're helping people not have to deal with chronic diseases and we are really sort of localizing our ability to serve the food within our state. Because we're a great producer. We have many farms upstate and throughout the entire region that we need to start leaning on as well. Yeah. Today, with the release of this roadmap, the Adams administration is acknowledging the role that food education has for our students. So, you know, the other week, DEP commissioner, Rick Agrawal and I, I thought of you a lot because you also used the term upstream. So we went upstream to the watershed, where we actually invest in farming practices to help keep our watershed clean. So again, like that's food policy, right? And again, like how we are supporting our farmers to grow the greatest product available and also, you know, some of that product is coming in through our health box program and our grow NYC farmers markets and community farmers markets. So, you know, again, different points of access for food is something that you really, you know, didn't need any convincing on. That's for sure. And like, we're just able to really showcase for our neighbors, for our vulnerable residents and for our other cities around the globe, just how important this kind of work is. You know, when I use food to reverse my type two diabetes and started studying and reading, I just realized how much we betrayed everyday low income New Yorkers and Americans. Because if you depend on government to feed you, you should not be getting unhealthy food. I mean, we were having that hard cheese, you know, with all that salt. That's why mom had high blood pressure and all of us had high blood pressure. We were eating the canned meat, the powdered eggs, the powdered milk. All of these items we were eating without realizing, we were wondering why, okay, why is everyone diabetic? Why is everyone high blood pressure? Why is everyone dealing with this chronic disease? And, you know, as I say over and over again, it was not our DNA. I didn't inherit that from my mom. It was our dinner was all the same. And everybody on the block that was eating that same food, you know, you could almost say, okay, this catchment area is has a high level of diabetes. We have a high level of bad food. Yeah, you know, I took a song from your playbook and I testified to the US Dietary Guidelines Committee this year. Nice. Because you did that before. But again, like these are things, you know, whether it is talking about the commodities that are coming and how we really want their federal commodities to look more like the food that we're buying and follow our standards. Or, you know, asking that in our schools, we have a non-dairy alternative because some, not because, like it's not because we have any vengeance against dairy, but the number of kids in our school system that can't digest dairy is really troubling. And so they need something for them in the same, and, you know, from an equity perspective. So, you know, that's another power that the office has is to be able to talk to, you know, leaders in Washington and beyond about how we can push the envelope for better policy. I like that. What about equity? We use that term often. What are we doing? What is your office doing around access to healthy food and equity? Yeah, you know, it centers absolutely everything that we do. And so the most obvious here is looking again at the meals that we serve to some of our most vulnerable New Yorkers to make sure that they are healthy and delicious, right? But, you know, also let's go back to emergency food. So we have a lot of money that we're able to distribute to pantries, but it's not just like, let's divide this up by 700 and give out all the money. We created it, this is gonna sound wonky, but it's not, we created a formula to be able to look at where are the areas that are in most need based on access to food, based on utilization at food pantries, or maybe they don't even have a food pantry in their area. And how do we make sure that we're directing food there? So again, it's that lens of where is this most needed? Looking a lot at, you know, what we called the racial inclusion and equity neighborhoods, right? And making sure that we're lifting up those particular areas. Also, you know, all of our partnering programs with the health department, health box, groceries to go, get the good stuff. These are all like food and nutrition security programs that we're targeting in communities of greatest need from an equity perspective. We haven't even talked about the Department of Education, but all of the work that we're doing there with food education, the cafeteria enhancements, so sidebar, my son, first day of school comes home, you know what he says? How old is he? He's 11. First thing he said, mom, we have booths in our cafeteria. So these are so important because it encourages kids to actually enjoy their delicious meals, the environment. So I don't mean to make light of the question because equity is essential to absolutely everything that we do and really working across our sister agencies throughout the city to make sure. And I, you know, I never like to be a watchdog, but we do like to say, like really look in and say, now how can we do even better? Because here's the areas where food and security is extraordinarily high or where we're seeing change. So how is the programming changing to reflect that? We continue to lead globally. We were recognized by our Good Food Purchasing efforts by the Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, a network of more than 200 global cities with innovative food policies and New York's Good Food Purchasing program was recognized as a leader. We're also incentivizing farmers in our New York City watershed to improve agricultural practices that reduce greenhouse gases. Tell me, how did you get started in this space? You know, like, did you like wait as a little girl while you walking around, you know, looking at carrots? No, you know, I was an athlete. Okay, okay, what sport? I was a swimmer. Okay, okay. And then coming into triathletes after that, but you know, I did not, I went to college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I really didn't, but I was in a pre-med program. And then my junior year, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. And I just had this very clear moment of I don't want to treat disease, I want to prevent disease. Oh, I love it, love it. And I was intimidated and scared by the word policy. But I was, I came to New York City in 2000 to do an internship at a master's program to become a registered dietitian. And I am a registered dietitian, but I never say it. I don't think it's because it rhymes with beautician and magician and all these things. But I just, I knew it's a special person who can do life changes one by one, right? To be that person to say, you know, Eric, this is what you need to do. Do your Sunday prep days or what have you. It wasn't me. And I just get really excited with like massive scale and like how a policy, like our city's food standards can change the meals for 230, you know, servings a year. And that is very, I think addictive too, of then like how we can in a city with so much inequity and so much disparity make that city even better of a place to live. So that's why I love food policy because you can do that. All right, no, no, no. And you know, this is a broccoli administration, you know, stuff that we do, you know, why people are eating it. They're like, you know, I don't want this. But later in life, they're going to look back over what you did with food policy. You're teaching good habits that can really prevent some of these chronic diseases. Dr. Fasson really shared with us the other day that 10% of the chronic diseases come from your DNA and 90% comes from lifestyle, behavior and other things. So you're teaching good habits. And then we are introducing people to new food, which is so important because food has to look good, has to taste good, but it has to be good for you. And that is something to be excited about. And then we're leading the country all over the country. People are watching what we're doing here because it's New York. And they're saying, you know, we're doing some bold things. No one thought we were going to have plant-based default at our H&H. You know, the people that was impossible, meatless Mondays, plant-powered Fridays, you know, hydroponic, growing food. So there's a huge amount of stuff that you're doing. Now, are you happy? Do you enjoy your work? Oh my gosh. Is there a level for filming? I have the best job. I have the best job. Again, like there is no day is the same. It is incredibly challenging. But look, if it were easy, everyone would do it, you know? And we just have so much opportunity here. We have so much opportunity. You've given, I think, so much also motivation to other cities because we make it look so easy. It's not, but we make it look so easy. And, you know, we just keep going. Yes, well said. Well, keep going. Kate McKenzie, you're doing some great stuff in food. We have a lot of lives to save, a lot of people to live, healthy lives, just, you know, mortality is a part of our journey in life. But while we are alive, we should be alive. And that is our goal. Thank you so much. Thank you. And this is the information I wanted to share today. I hope to see you for another episode of Get Stuff Done Pass.