Recalling a Food Pioneer

K. Dun Gifford was an early advocate for most now-familiar healthful-eating movements.

| Saturday, 15 May 2010 | 14:01

K. Dunn Gifford

In every movement, there are people who get things going and people who know how to spread the word.

K. Dun Gifford was both, and the word he spread -- the healthful benefits of traditional eating patterns and concern about chronic diseases propelled by American eating habits -- was important. And Gifford, who died of a heart attack on May 9 at 71, proclaimed it long before the fat-and sugar-laden standard American diet became daily fodder for the media and the inspiration for a kitchen garden at the White House.

His vehicle was the Oldways Preservation Trust, a nonprofit culinary think tank in Boston that he started in 1990 with colleagues from the American Institute of Wine & Food. Its focus became the positive health implications of the Mediterranean diet, which, with an emphasis on fruits and vegetables, grains, legumes, nuts and just a little animal protein, is now widely acknowledged as a particularly healthful way of eating.

Spreading the word about healthy diets

Soon enough, Gifford, a Harvard Law School graduate who began his career in government, realized that conferences and symposiums that united academics, scientists, chefs and journalists were an effective way to spread the word. The first conference, held jointly with the Harvard School of Public Health in Cambridge took place in 1993 and became a model for others that followed. Many of these conferences looked at traditional eating patterns (in Asia, Latin America, China) but others took up subjects such as cancer, obesity and diabetes, whole grains, aquaculture and even pasta -- long before these subjects were focused on by the press, the government and the media.

A sophisticated man who enjoyed good food and wine, travel and sailing, Gifford, as Oldways president, set up conferences in a variety of locales. Boston, where Oldways is located was the easiest, but others took participants not only to California, Texas, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore but also to China, Italy, Morocco and Spain.

Conferences, of course, cost money, especially in faraway places. Gifford managed to negotiate the tricky waters of putting paying sponsors and some paying attendees together with academics, scientists, nutritionists, food marketers, chefs and journalists. He understood that if straightforward stories about conferences didn't entice editors, sooner or later information learned there would emerge, and with luck, mention the conference and satisfy sponsors.

Besides, journalists who had been to one or another of the conferences had easier access to scientists and doctors who could comment on various food and health issues -- the Mediterranean diet, whole grains, fish politics, raw milk cheeses, trans-fatty acids -- in the news.

A wholesome-food advocate early on

Gifford was a terrific and articulate source too, and many of the Oldways programs -- among them the Whole Grains Council, the Latino Nutrition Coalition, the Managing and Understanding Sweetness program, the food pyramids appropriate not only to the Mediterranean diet, but also to Asian and Latino cultures -- were well ahead of the news.

Now that local and national efforts to promote healthful eating are almost commonplace all over America, it's hard to believe how different things were when Oldways set up shop 20 years ago. Gifford and his staff, including his companion and the organization's executive vice president Sara Baer-Sinnott, helped transform the nutritional landscape as we know it. His intelligence, energy and enthusiasm will be missed.

Judith Weinraub has won two James Beard Foundation journalism awards. She is a 25-year reporter and editor at the Washington Post, where she wrote about food and politics, as well as arts and culture. Weinraub has also been a W. K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow. Last year she conducted an oral history project recording the memories of people who have changed the way Americans think about food for New York University's Fales Library.

Photo: K. Dun Gifford. Credit: Oldways Preservation Trust