I flew to Parma, Italy before the world closed down amid the grip of a pandemic. I found my seat on the airplane and pulled out reading material I had brought along to prepare for my interview with Barilla.
Having previously worked at global corporations like Pepsico and Weight Watchers, I knew the pros and cons of working with these significant businesses. Barilla, a legacy Italian company with a global footprint, also focuses on making a difference in the world, which attracted me to this job. Its motto, “Good for You, Good for the Planet,” spoke to me.
Still, I was a bit unsure. At this phase in my life, my work in food science and nutrition had evolved. I wanted healthy eating and healthy lifestyles to be a catalyst for more: I wanted to help people live fundamentally better lives: Less stress. Better relationships. A clear sense of purpose, fueled by a healthy lifestyle and diet.
Would Barilla be a place I could do these things, to evolve my own career to my own sense of purpose?
As the airplane took off, I read an article written by Guido Barilla, Chairman of the company I would soon be interviewing with. I underlined the quote, which I didn’t realize it at the time spoke about something intrinsic to Italians like Mr. Barilla. He was describing benessere.
Its simple wisdom spoke to me and reassured me that this was a company that could help me do the work I’m called to do.
“When I was a child my family would always sit down for meals. My favourite was among the simplest: spaghetti pomodoro. We are fresh vegetables and fruit, and, starting in our teenage years, sipped a glass of red wine. We ate together. I indulged with a few slices of prosciutto and practised a wide variety of outdoor sports. This centuries-old Mediterranean Diet kept me fit and trim–and turned out to be good not just for my personal wellbeing but for the planet’s health too.” –Guido Barilla
Now as I work to lead Barilla’s global focus on wellbeing and nutrition during a global health crisis, I know we can make a difference. Led by science, focused on systemic change, I am confident we can collectively create wellbeing in a unwell world–benessere–and in fact, help the world be well, with us taking a proper place in it.
UN SDG #3: Wellbeing is falling short
The United Nations Global Sustainability Goals lists 19 priorities to make the world sustainable and healthy for all. Its third-highest priority is wellbeing.
Progress included “improving the health of millions of people, increasing life expectancy, reducing maternal and child mortality and fighting against leading communicable diseases,” according to a 2019 UN Secretary-General report. Also, the global suicide rate had declined since the launch of UN SDG.
But progress has not only stalled but reversed since the outbreak of Covid-19 as the formal Report of the Secretary-General on SDG Progress 2020 noted.
“Until the end of 2019, advances in many areas of health continued, but the rate of progress was not sufficient to meet most Goal 3 targets. The COVID-19 pandemic is throwing progress even further off track. The rapid increase in COVID-19 cases is causing a significant loss of life and overwhelming many health systems.”
The combination of crises of health and economy threaten us at the most basic level. They are interconnected, even if those connections haven’t been as obvious until now. But continuing on his report Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations, made this connection crystal clear:
Everything we do during and after this crisis [COVID-19] must be with a strong focus on building more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change, and the many other global challenges we face.
According to an article in the Lancet, during the Covid-19 crisis, “70 countries have halted childhood vaccination programmes, and in many places, health services for cancer screening, family planning, or non-COVID-19 infectious diseases have been interrupted or are being neglected.”
If people are going to live healthier lives, we have to create a new foundation for wellbeing that not only withstands the pandemic but helps thrive despite of it.
Food as the fuel for wellbeing
Food plays a significant role in wellbeing, which explains my career in food nutrition and my role with Barilla, a company that makes food.
In 2012, when I gave my Ted-X talk, I posited that we would be well served by creating a society that transforms its addictions from negative ones to healthy ones.
“Let’s create a society that is addicted to health,” I said.
That was said with conviction as I watched my mom deal with cancer in a hospital that viewed food as building an appetite versus healing the body.
We know so much better now.
But of course, we could have known it then. Think about this basic wisdom, more relevant today than ever:
“Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food.” –Hippocrates
Food as a powerful tool to boost immunity has heightened priority during a pandemic. Food’s role in our most stubborn illness and especially its role in the current epidemic of obesity, “globesity,” as the World Health Organization calls it.
I am curious about the dance of food in our lives and improving our relationship to it, especially in its role of bringing people together to talk through our own experiences. This intersection is one that I am certain is what I call, the leading-edge of wellbeing.
There are many parts of our holistic ecosystem that bring us to this leading edge. How to plant it, grow it, harvest it, blend it, heat it, chill it, package it, describe it, ship it, and serve it — so that we all can — find it, afford it, enjoy it, save it, up-cycle it, share it and heal from it. Whew!
And what all of that means in the world we now live in.
Benessere: A holistic approach to living well.
Wellbeing, to be effective, is holistic. It’s not a reductionist approach to basic elements, but a comprehensive approach that encompasses all of what we need to live well. The Italians have a single word that communicates this big, important truth: benessere. It literally means to be well, or more succinctly “wellbeing.”
The word inspires joy. It means eating well, living well, connecting with others, loving, and embracing the things in life that matter most. This word, benessere is an embodiment of where we can find our way to well in an unwell world. benessere. The way to well, and the inspiration for this platform dedicated to wellbeing.
Join us around the table of benessere.
