"We have been eating the same foods for hundreds, even thousands of years"

On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, the Alimentarium in Vevey is inaugurating a new exhibition that probes deeply our relationship to food, in a world facing increasingly pressing environmental, health and social challenges.

Intended to be permanent, this exhibition highlights the tensions that run through the global food system: loss of biodiversity, waste, nutritional imbalances, inequalities… It invites a rethink of our modes of production and consumption on a planetary scale.

Added to this is the massive energy footprint of the food chain — from cultivation to distribution — and the greenhouse gas emissions it generates, reminding us of the urgency to reduce the "carbon weight" of our plate.

In Vevey, the exhibition poses a crucial question for the future: how to feed a planet of 10 billion people healthily and sustainably, without exhausting its resources or worsening climate disruption?

In a long interview, we cover all these issues with Boris Wastiau, anthropologist, director of the Alimentarium and author of the exhibition. Interview.

A recent IPES-Food study highlighted the significant consumption of fossil energy by our food systems — representing 40% of petrochemical products and 15% of fossil fuels worldwide. How can such dependence be explained and reduced?

Within the framework of the exhibition, we do not provide a direct answer to this question, but we highlight a few avenues mentioned by the scientific community. One of the references used is the report "Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems" (2019), because it presents the main directions to be adopted to consider feeding 10 billion people by 2050 while respecting the "planetary boundaries".

The first of these directions: reserve two-thirds of agricultural land for plant-based food production intended for humans. Today two-thirds of maize (1.2 billion annually) and five-sixths of soy (360 million tonnes annually) are used to feed livestock; sugar cane and rapeseed are also used for biofuel production… As a consequence, a reduction in red meat consumption will be necessary.

What is interesting to emphasize, in connection with your question, is that on a purely technical level, we today have the knowledge required to reduce the impact of the food chain on the planet. This implies the adoption of practices such as agroecology, agroforestry or integrated crop management, in order to restore soil health, strengthen agricultural resilience and reduce dependence on "inputs". 

The main issue lies in costs. To this end, we devote an entire section of the exhibition to the workers who are at the heart of the production chain: a social cost that is too often left out of the equation. Who are the people who feed us? How can their work be revalued and employment conditions improved, which raise societal, economic, and even basic human rights issues? Every food we consume offers us the opportunity to consider the labor invested by these many people along the value chains of the food system.

Aren’t we currently in the opposite logic, where the consumer primarily seeks to pay as little as possible for their food?

Naturally. It is legitimate and understandable for many households who must out of necessity turn to the cheapest food. But in the price of a food item, the production cost is often minor.

According to Jean-Marc Jancovici, founder of the "Shift Project", of the price paid in store for a food product, only 15% goes back to the producer. The rest is absorbed by transport costs, large retailers, taxes, or advertising and marketing operations. It would therefore be essential to rethink our priorities in terms of production and value chains.

In Switzerland, as in many other countries, it is now possible to consume burgers, sushi, kebabs or dim sum. Does this internationalization of food not go against the principles of sustainable eating?

On the question of the globalization of our food, as an anthropologist, I was mainly interested in the notion of "need" — a very fluctuating notion that often reveals more consumer desires or cultural justifications than genuine objectively verifiable necessities.
Do we really "need" such a diversity of products from the four corners of the world? Do we need fruit in every season, or even exotic fruit?

Take the banana, for example: it is the most consumed fruit in the world (180 million tonnes/year), and it is now perceived as a staple food in Switzerland. Yet, in terms of transport, terrible impact on soils, precarious economic and social systems, the ecological balance of this fruit is disastrous.

To answer your question, we should indeed better defend the consumption of local products. And this, not only for ecological reasons, but also social ones — to support our producers. Recently, I learned that the average wage in the vegetable sector in Switzerland is 17 francs per hour. A derisory remuneration. How can we demand that they decarbonize their activities with margins that give them such low incomes?

Each year, about nine million people still die of hunger or malnutrition worldwide.

To this globalization of food are added the problems of overabundance and waste, in Switzerland as in many other countries…

We must be cautious with the notion of opulence, as it varies greatly by context. Each year, about nine million people still die of hunger or malnutrition worldwide. It is estimated that 800 million individuals suffer today from undernourishment, while two billion are, conversely, in a situation of overnutrition.

My professional path has confronted me with these very contrasting food realities. For my anthropological research, I notably spent long periods in Africa. I have a striking memory of my time in the Congo (formerly Zaire), where I discovered an incredible culinary wealth, made possible by an abundance of fruits and vegetables.

I then chose a more difficult field of study, in Zambia, in an arid region where I lived for nearly two years. There, feeding oneself is a constant concern. The shortage is such that people even eat fish bones. "You don't know the technique? You have to crunch them," the locals would explain to me.

These experiences profoundly marked me. They made me aware of how, in the Euro-American world, this opulence sometimes makes us forget the elementary good fortune represented by the mere ability to eat.

Decarbonizing agriculture appears today as an absolute priority, all the more so as it is among the first victims of climate change...

While agriculture is indeed one of the main sources of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, it is also its main victim. Climate change represents a huge challenge for the agricultural world in view of the extreme weather events it generates. Added to this is the proliferation of new pest insects and fungi, which threaten increasingly homogeneous crops concentrated around a few strains. It is important to mention that over the course of a century, the diversity of vegetables, cereals, tubers and fruits grown and consumed has been considerably reduced.

Moreover, while the increase in atmospheric CO₂ can temporarily stimulate plant growth, it ultimately reduces nutritional value and yield in the long term. Without a change of paradigm, scientific data clearly show that the current production system is creating the conditions for its own decline.

Isn’t the future of our food also tied to water resources?

It is obvious: without water there is no agriculture. On our "blue planet", barely 3% of water is fresh, and only about 1% of that fresh water is easily accessible for human use. Of that limited portion, nearly 70% is used by agriculture. Even though we have made great progress in wasting it less — using drip irrigation techniques, for example — water is more than ever a source of strategic and political stakes.

Land desertification is accelerating: it already affects 40% of the regions of the globe. It is a long-standing phenomenon, often linked to agricultural practices. In our exhibition, we mention for example the Fertile Crescent — this historical region shared between Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Iran and even the Nile delta, once presented in history books as "the cradle of agriculture and the cradle of civilizations…". It is today confronted with chronic droughts, water stress, the drying up of aquifers. Agriculture there has largely declined over the past century.

Climate change, pollution and overexploitation severely weaken the freshwater resource, and compromise "ecosystem services" such as natural water purification, flood and climate regulation, and the preservation of aquatic environments and their biodiversity. Its management will therefore become increasingly complex and force trade-offs between trivial uses, like filling a swimming pool, and vital uses, like growing fruits and vegetables.

Between 1960 and 1990, the Green Revolution standardized production, concentrated crops on a few species, relying on fertilizers to compensate for their unsuitability to local soils.

Agrivoltaics, new irrigation techniques, biotechnologies, robotization, GMOs… Can technology help our food system?

What deeply interests me is the way knowledge is mobilized over time. I always try to make past, present and future dialogue. What do we eat today? Since when? And what will our food look like in the future?

It is interesting to note that, fundamentally, humanity today consumes the same major types of food as five centuries, five thousand or even ten thousand years ago. We have not invented anything radically new in terms of foods. However, what we have lost is an immense diversity. According to studies conducted by the FAO, in less than two centuries we have drastically reduced the number of species and varieties cultivated. This erosion of the genetic capital of food is an important aspect of current food insecurity.

When it comes to technology or innovation, I prefer to turn to an enlightened science — a science that integrates history — rather than fall into the trap of techno-solutionism. Producing a hundred GMO varieties a year will never replace the tens of thousands of varieties developed by human societies over millennia.

Between 1960 and 1990, the Green Revolution standardized production, concentrated crops on a few species, relying on fertilizers to compensate for their unsuitability to local soils. Result: today, 40% of the calories consumed worldwide come from only three cereals. By comparison, people used to consume eight main ones, not counting the hundreds of varieties adapted to regional agricultural contexts.

Fortunately, some regions, like Europe, have preserved a spirit of conservation, through seed banks and the transmission of ancient agronomic knowledge. It is time to return to these time-tested knowledges to face contemporary agricultural and climate challenges.

What consequence has this standardization of crops had on the way we eat?

It has influenced our tastes, our appetites and even our sensory tolerance. Today, our palate is largely shaped. Even though there are cultural or individual differences, it is difficult to return to tastes, textures or flavors that have disappeared from our daily lives for decades.

Take bread as an example: even well-informed people concerned about their diet tend, in tests, to prefer the taste of breads made with standardized industrial flours and yeasts, rather than breads made from ancient flours, fermented with sourdough and yet far richer nutritionally and in flavor.

This conditioning of taste will have to be deconstructed if we want to reintroduce a more nutritious, sustainable… and diversified diet. 

Microplastics, mercury, lead, PFAS — these "forever pollutants" — and other chemical substances: can we still hope to eat healthily?

This is a sensitive question that deserves serious in-depth treatment. What can be said from the outset is the role played by agriculture. Chemical fertilizers (phosphates, nitrates), pesticides, fungicides, herbicides: these inputs used to guarantee high yields and reduce the risk of crop loss contribute to massive degradation of our environment.

The food system is also responsible for a considerable production of plastic waste — from packaging to agricultural tarps (including in organic farming), not to mention microplastics ingested by farm animals, or those that infiltrate soils as they fragment. It's catastrophic.

Added to this are animal waste, veterinary medicines, hormones and antibiotics, which contaminate groundwater. And that's where the circle becomes vicious: we drink that water. We see our sources slowly becoming polluted, sometimes to the point that they are no longer potable without treatment. But again, reducing these pollutions will have a cost that must be passed on along the value chain so that farmers retain an income commensurate with their efforts.

The word "sustainability" has become a label used to create new markets, to do business, sometimes in total contradiction with its original principles.

In this logic of reducing meat consumption, how do you view the trend of plant-based substitutes like Beyond Meat, or this need to reproduce meat in a plant-based version?

As an anthropologist, I find it fascinating. As a consumer, I am deeply suspicious of these false good ideas, often presented as sustainable solutions. What I see behind these products is above all a market and marketing logic — far more than a genuine desire for ecological or social transformation.

The word "sustainability" has become a label used to create new markets, to do business, sometimes in total contradiction with its original principles. We are offered ultra-processed foods — chickpea steaks, fake chicken, fake sausages — sold almost at the price of meat or fish, and packaged in plastic. These products are presented as emblems of a "new diet" that is both healthy and sustainable. But what is their real added value compared with the direct consumption of the basic foods from which they are made?

We sometimes seem to forget that there have long existed, in almost all culinary traditions, complete, balanced and tasty vegetarian dishes. They are found in India, in Asia, but also in Europe and in Switzerland, where Dr Bircher-Benner — inventor of the bircher — already advocated a vegetarian and dietetic cuisine a century ago. In my view, there is therefore no specific "need" for new food inventions, but rather the necessity to reconnect to an extremely rich food heritage to return to a diet that is less meat-based and less sugary.

Isn't the best response to these counterproductive dietary trends played out at school?

I am convinced that there is a huge amount of work to be done in education. In recent days, I immersed myself in the Plan d’études romand — which frames all school subjects across the different cycles. With the person responsible for scientific and cultural mediation at the Alimentarium, we reviewed this curriculum to identify, at each level of education, what is taught to students: origin and classification of foods, connection with the five senses, nutritional needs, and later, the environmental impact of food production.

With each new exhibition, we develop an educational pack for teachers. I am not a specialist in teaching, but I am committed to the museum providing such tools so that teachers can address these topics with their students. Because ultimately, everything we talk about here relates to a fundamental question of education, awareness, openness, and, as they grow up, ethics — in its original sense: the art of making informed and responsible choices, based on values.

If we consider that science, knowledge and respect for living things have value in themselves, then school has a central role to play. It is there that the scientific, biological and geographical foundations are acquired, which allow understanding of food systems and their consequences. And it is from there that we can begin to measure how each of our choices — individual, family, professional or political — can weigh on the environment.

Will we be able to feed a planet populated by 10 billion human beings?

I remember that when I took up my duties at the Alimentarium, in 2022, I was struck by an exhibition titled "Food 2049": a futuristic retrospective that explored the ways in which, in the past, people imagined the future of food — through industry as well as fiction. It was both fascinating and revealing: the visions ranged between utopia and dystopia, but almost always rested on an unshakable faith in technology. One saw nutritional pills, vertical farms on the Moon, or tomatoes grown on Mars. Ideas that nevertheless forgot a simple biological reality: no living being survives without a microbiome and more broadly without an ecosystem.

Today, the global food system faces a colossal challenge: to feed up to ten billion people by 2050, while preserving at least half of terrestrial and marine surfaces from exploitation — a condition scientists deem essential for the survival of ecosystems. This implies a profound transformation of food governance, at all scales, to refocus production on real needs, and not on logics of overconsumption for the benefit of the more privileged. It is about promoting a balanced diet, respectful of planetary boundaries and biodiversity.

Major international recommendations, such as those of the EAT-Lancet Commission (2019), go in this direction: reduce the consumption of red meat, sugar, salt, palm oil; increase that of vegetables, legumes, nuts and seeds. This is not a vague injunction to sobriety, but a very precise reorientation of our diet. For me, the challenge is not to reinvent cooking, nor to abandon traditions, but to value a balanced, rooted, joyful, fully alive cuisine. One can be moderate with certain ingredients while cultivating a cuisine rich in taste, culture and invention — and profoundly human.

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