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The Leading Voices in Food

The Leading Voices in Food

By: Duke World Food Policy Center
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The Leading Voices in Food podcast series features real people, scientists, farmers, policy experts and world leaders all working to improve our food system and food policy. You'll learn about issues across the food system spectrum such as food insecurity, obesity, agriculture, access and equity, food safety, food defense, and food policy. Produced by the Duke World Food Policy Center at wfpc.sanford.duke.edu.Duke World Food Policy Center Hygiene & Healthy Living Science Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Captain and Cat's Explorasaurus on Healthy Food

    Captain and Cat's Explorasaurus on Healthy Food
    Jun 10 2026
    Today we're talking with Kevin Hoban and Jordie Simkovic, the creators and starring characters of Captain & Cat, a popular YouTube kids show with 200,000 subscribers and over 200 million views. The educational show for preschoolers tells stories using entertaining songs and narratives. They've just launched a new series called Explorasaurus: Healthy Food and You, aimed at teaching kids about healthy food and how it's grown. Their first episode about SugarBee apple growers in Washington State has over 500,000 views on YouTube. Interview Summary So, for people who aren't familiar with your show, for those few people out there who may not be, tell us about Captain & Cat, the characters, what they do, and how did you guys get started doing this? Kevin - Gotcha. Well, Jordan and I have been best friends since college. We went to Northwestern University in Chicago, and we were in a band together. We would perform live on campus, in the streets. And we realized that kids would stop and really enjoyed what we were doing. And I think that was the seed of the whole thing was, "Hey, maybe our act that we have, this two-man show is something for kids." And then we graduated. We both moved out to LA. Jordan came out here to act. I moved out here to produce TV shows, and on the weekends, we started performing for kids. Jordie - Yeah. Actually, we did a show called The Bubble Show. And we were doing probably six to eight shows a weekend for about 10 years. And then during the pandemic we started putting our stuff online because all live performances stopped. And for about three years it was nothing and crickets, and really just our parents watching. And then we won the award for best kid song of the year in 2023. And then that kinda put us on the radar of YouTube Kids who invited us to be one of the featured channels on their platform. And for a while we were doing jingles and music and educational songs and stuff like that. And then towards the end of last summer, we had connected with SugarBee Apples and that whole kind of growing cooperative out there about doing an apple song. And they actually were like, "You know what would be even cooler than that? Why don't you come out here and meet the farmers and see the harvest in action?" And we're like, "Whoa, this is really cool." And honestly, it was a life-changing experience. We now say that we have aunts, uncles, and cousins out in Central Washington. And honestly, I grew up in Miami, I went to college in Chicago, and then I've lived in Los Angeles ever since. I had never stepped foot on a farm, really, in any significant way. And just to be able to get exposure to this incredible pocket of people that otherwise I would have never had a chance to see and meet was completely eye-opening. Kevin - I would say I went out there thinking, "This is a huge apple company. They sell them all across the country in every grocery store." I went out there thinking, "Well, this is sort of like a big industrial corporate farm," right? Must be just one giant farm with robots harvesting apples. And what we found was it was a co-op of family-owned farms. Smaller families. We met the families. We met the grandparents, the parents, the kids, the grandkids. And we learned so much about apples and how you grow them. That every apple is picked by hand, first and foremost. Jordie - We honestly expected there was going to be like a machine just going around and shaking the apples off, you know. Because you have no idea. And there's been so much dialogue around factory farming, which has become kind of like the negative word. And honestly, yeah, as Kevin was saying, we expected just a giant faceless corporation there. And it was the exact opposite. Can I ask you guys a question? I'd like to dive in a little deeper than this, because you're saying something that resonates with me very personally. When I moved to North Carolina from Connecticut, I was offered the opportunity through the North Carolina Farm Bureau to do a tour of farms. Two-day intensive tour of farms in Eastern North Carolina. And we went to a blueberry farm that harvests millions of pounds of blueberries a year. Soybeans, corn, hog farmers, chicken. I mean, we did everything. And it was incredibly interesting. And there was the technology part of it, or the lack of technology that I was learning about, just as you related. But there was also a very moving human part of this. The people, I thought, were really interesting. And the generational nature of farming and all. So, tell me a little bit more about the people part of it. How much that affected you. Jordie - We met the farmer who like seven generations back, their family introduced the Granny Smith apple to the United States, you know? It's going back and we literally see it's a whole family working and living very close to where they farm. And so, kind of just, it's Uncle Farmer Peoples now, you know? And so, we were kinda talking to him about chemicals and pesticides ...
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    30 mins
  • E303: Amy Beros on centering community in food banking

    E303: Amy Beros on centering community in food banking
    Jun 10 2026
    North Carolina is one of the nation's top agricultural producing states. And it is also a state where one in seven residents don't have the resources to provide food on their table every day. Today, I'm talking with Amy Beros, president and CEO of the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina - the state's largest food bank. Each year, this organization provides 95 million meals distributed through more than 700 partner agencies, food pantries, congregate meal sites, backpack programs. And they do this in 34 counties in the state. In our conversation today, we will explore the policy issues that this food bank and many food banks face. Interview Transcript Amy, I want to ask a really simple question about what got you to this place. So how in the world did you get involved in food banking? Oh, gosh. Well, you know, when I was growing up, I didn't know what food banking was. But I knew that it was our responsibility to make sure that neighbors helped neighbors. So, I grew up volunteering what I know now is a partner agency of the local food bank in my hometown. And as I moved across the country, I found ways to get involved. When I moved here to North Carolina about 16 years ago, I found food banks. I've been working professionally in food banking for a little over 12 years now. But I believe that food is a basic human right, and it has been my life's work to make sure that we're doing everything we can to ensure everyone has what they need. Thank you for sharing that. And I can imagine over the years, as I've also been involved in food banking but on the board side or as a volunteer, that this is a work that we sometimes think it's just about moving food and providing that. However, there's a whole policy framework that, sort of, surrounds and influences and shapes what food banking and what the work of the partner agencies, the food pantries on the ground, what they do. I wonder if you could help make this a little bit more real for us. Could you tell us a little bit about how policy becomes personal in your work? Can you share a moment when that really came true for you? Oh, I think the most recent blinding moment was last year during the government shutdown. Well, one, there's a lot of noise on TV right now, right, and in the media, but you hear of these massive numbers, and we know that our elected leaders are looking at these numbers on spreadsheets. And we see the humans behind those numbers and their stories. And these are thousands and thousands of stories like the ones that we hear about each day. Last year, during the shutdown, a father of five reached out to me and said, "I have five children. I work at the federal prison. I'm missing my second paycheck. For the first time in my life, I don't know how I'm going to put food on the table." Or the SNAP delay and disruption that we had. For the first time in our history during that shutdown, a mother reaching out and saying, "I don't know what to do. I've told my children to eat everything they can at school because I don't know what we're going to have when we get home, if we don't have these benefits." And that's just two stories and one crisis. And so many of our neighbors are living a crisis every day. These systemic issues. And we see those humans and hear their stories each day. And I think that's when it becomes personal. These decisions, one stroke of a pen, impacts food for hundreds of thousands of neighbors. Thank you for sharing that. I teach a class called the Economics of the Public Sector, and we often talk about policies that provide support to individuals. And it can be easy to talk about these policies as if they're just decisions that policymakers make, but there are real people who are dependent on these policies. And when they don't work or when rules change, it has significant implications for how people navigate. And so, I appreciate the work that you all are doing. I want to take a step back and talk about food banking. And while I know a lot of our listeners are familiar with food banking and food pantries, I do know that people kind of mix those two terms up. Amy, would you just tell us, broadly speaking, what's a food bank, and then what are the partner agencies. And how do they relate to one another? Yes, absolutely. Our food bank serves 34 counties in North Carolina. And as you shared, we work with over 700 partners. We work with growers. We work with over 80 local farmers in North Carolina. We work with manufacturers in North Carolina. We work with all of the retail chains to get food out into the community. And we do that primarily through those partners because they are embedded into the community. And what we're really proud of here, and I think something of how food banking has changed, you know, many people still think of a food bank as a dimly lit church basement pantry. And that maybe was food banking 30 years ago. But today it is part of the modern food system. We are a critical piece of infrastructure ...
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    18 mins
  • E302: Do GLP-1 drugs reduce overall healthcare spending?

    E302: Do GLP-1 drugs reduce overall healthcare spending?
    Jun 9 2026
    For many people, the FDA-approved drug class called GLP-1s has been a game changer for managing type 2 diabetes and weight loss. An estimated one in eight US adults is using this type of drug, which mimics a natural gut hormone to regulate blood sugar, slow stomach emptying, and suppress appetite. Researchers and the public have been scrutinizing the pros and cons of taking these drugs for many years. One critical question that remains is does the use of GLP-1s translate into lower medical expenses for consumers, healthcare providers, insurance companies, and the government? Today, we're speaking with Duke University health economist Jonathan Zhang on the answer to these questions from his multi-year study of veterans who use GLP-1s. The results are surprising. Interview Summary Jonathan, first, let's talk broadly. Would you briefly describe the kinds of health benefits people are experiencing with GLP-1s, particularly in terms of changes in behavior and overall health? Yes. So GLP-1s are medications that manage body weight and improve metabolic health. The primary health benefits are via better blood sugar regulation and weight loss via reducing appetite. But there's larger health benefits that are much broader. So, trials have also shown that they lower blood pressure, reduce strokes and heart attacks, among other cardiovascular benefits. Overall also improves, so things like obstructive sleep apnea, improvements in inflammation-related measures. And recently it was FDA approved to treat MASH, which is a form of fatty liver disease. Finally, people also report feeling less hungry. They get full faster, fewer cravings, and reduction in what is often called food noise, which can potentially help people make a range of better behavior decisions and changes relating to food and perhaps even beyond food. However, the evidence on that seems to be promising, but new and less strong. Thank you for sharing those. I know a lot of our listeners have heard some of those issues and some of those points about how GLP-1s could change the way we behave, and some of the health outcomes. So, let's dig into your particular study. In your working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) you and your co-authors describe a natural experiment involving patients and doctors in the Department of Veteran Affairs, and their access to and use of GLP-1s. Would you lay out the general parameters of your study for our listeners? Yes, absolutely. So, like many medications, what we know about GLP-1s primarily comes from randomized controlled trials, which have small sample sizes and often select for quite sick patients. As GLP-1s reach a broader population, the population becomes less pro-comparable to those in trials, so the real-world impacts become less obvious. Moreover, there are some outcomes such as healthcare utilization or spending costs that are incredibly important for policy but not directly studied in trials. We were interested in studying in a very large healthcare system, that is the VA, the Veterans Health Administration, the real-world impacts of GLP-1s using readily collected data from the healthcare system and a quasi-experiment. So that is we try to emulate a real experiment where some patients get GLP-1s from their primary care doctor and others do not. And the reason one patient might get it while the other doesn't is because their doctors differ in their likelihood or propensity to prescribe these drugs. And we focus on the Veterans Health Administration, the VHA, because the veteran population is quite diverse, at least in terms of comorbidities relative to the trials per se and also in age, say, compared to Medicare. And GLP-1s are provided in the VA to eligible patients at a pretty affordable cost. So, sort of a nice policy playground for us to think about what outcomes might look like when GLP-1s become readily available and affordable to all Americans. Great. Thank you for sharing that because now we have a good sense of the quasi experiment that you all were able to exploit. That there were providers who had a high tendency to prescribe GLP-1s versus those who didn't. And looking at that difference, you were able to see how GLP-1s may have affected the outcomes that you were interested in. So now tell us a bit about the findings, and I think there's some surprising results here. So, first we replicate many of the findings from the randomized trials for this diverse, veteran population. We see reductions in body weight, we see hemoglobin A1C blood glucose levels improve and blood pressure improvements as well. Even a reduction in heart attacks and strokes for patients with existing cardiovascular conditions, and even a small reduction in moderate drinking risk as well. The trial evidence seems to hold up in this large and diverse population of we have 1.4 million patients that we're studying. Second, despite these improvements though, we do not see a reduction in healthcare spending. This...
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    19 mins
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