There is an ongoing campaign in Ecuador to get 250,000 families (5% of the national population) to sign up as Consumeros Responsables de Alimentos (“Responsible Food Consumers”, RC). To qualify as an “RC” a family must meet five challenges:

1. eat a locally-produced food,
2. buy directly from a farmer,
3. decrease sugar and salt consumption by 50% in one month,
4. grow some food of their own, and
5. inform a new family about RC.

This campaign is part of a broader effort to make Ecuador’s food system sustainable.

Our Ecuadorian partners, EkoRural, led the successful development of a proposal to IDRC to research and evaluate the campaign. We are calling the project “EkoComer”, or “Ekomer” (Comer means “to eat” in Spanish, and E stands for ecological, or equity, or Ecuador, or EkoRural). The project has two overall objectives: To research the campaign and consumers to better understand who is following RC and who isn’t, in order to help the campaign do better, and to measure the RC uptake, to see if the target of 250,000 is reached. Of course, a family can “consume responsibly” without registering for the campaign and we want to study those non-registering families as well.

The ultimate goal of the campaign is not to simply meet the 250,000 target, but to transform the Ecuadorian food system into one that promotes personal, environmental and community health. While Ecuador has some progressive policies in place, including food sovereignty in the constitution, and a “traffic light” labelling system on processed foods to warn of high levels of sugar, salt and fat, more needs to be done to counter the growing levels of overweight and obesity, and the rising prevalence of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), such as diabetes.

I have a technical support role on the project, along with colleagues from University of Toronto, Université de Montréal, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and FLACSO Ecuador (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales). We met in mid-February in Ecuador to learn more about the campaign and to further develop the methods to be used in the study. During our “field day”, we visited an agroecological market in Otavalo, during which we were interviewed live for the radio program “Minga por la Pachamama” (roughly translated as “Community work for Mother Earth”). The interview can be streamed here , (select “20-02-16”. My moment of fame starts around the 11 minute mark, followed by my colleagues Donald Cole and Malek Batal).

I spoke about the good food available in the market and how eating well in Ecuador really requires only two things: to eat from a wide variety of food groups to maximize dietary diversity, and to minimize the consumption of highly processed foods. But, oh shoot, I forgot to put in a good word for breastfeeding. Next time.

No countries have yet successfully addressed the growing incidence of overweight and obesity. Not one. There is not a single country (of those not suffering from an acute food crisis or war) where the incidence of overweight is not increasing. If the 250,000 family campaign is successful, it may help Ecuador to reverse the overweight epidemic, and set an example for other countries. This will be a fun, challenging, and important project.