Watch Eat to Live

Written by: The Exchange

It’s not news that fatty foods, sugary drinks, salty snacks and a sedentary lifestyle are bad for us. But recent trends in life expectancy in the United States are making it pretty clear just how bad all this is. For the first time since the 1800s, things aren’t going in the right direction. But wait! There’s good news! Our increasing understanding of the science provides us with the power to make change. Walter Willett, Harvard Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition, has spent decades carefully studying the impact of what we eat. Join him and television and motion picture director Oz Scott to hear about a roadmap for radically shifting the American diet in ways designed to give each of us the best chance at a long and healthy life.

Speakers:

Walter Willett is Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He served as Chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard for 25 years. His work has focused on development of methods, using both questionnaire and biochemical approaches, to study the effects of diet on the occurrence of major diseases. He has applied these methods to large cohort studies, including nearly 300,000 men and women, that are providing the most detailed information on the long-term health consequences of diets. Walter has published over 2,000 articles, primarily on lifestyle risk factors for cardiometabolic disease and cancer, and has written the textbook, Nutritional Epidemiology. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Oz Scott is an accomplished and award-winning television, theatrical, and motion picture director. Oz’s career got off to a great start by being the original director of the widely acclaimed For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf by Ntozake Shange. He is a seasoned entertainment industry veteran who has directed episodes for all the major networks, including SWAT, Gotham, Criminal Minds, CSI: NY, Everybody Hates Chris, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues, Archie Bunker’s Place, and the ever popular The Jeffersons, which he had the pleasure of directing for two seasons.


The statements and opinions expressed in this piece are those of the event participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or agency that provided support for this event or of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.