The last two decades have seen tremendous gains in reducing hunger worldwide. Now, beyond simply providing enough calories, we aim to improve nutrition, both in the US and around the world. The recently published 2026 US Dietary Guidelines provide nutritional advice that is best suited for improving public health of women, girls, and the elderly; but some aspects are suboptimal for the average American male. Applied on a global scale, such guidelines would vastly improve maternal and child health, but many cultural barriers exist. Somewhat controversially, agricultural biotechnology may fill immediate needs in such contexts.

In this talk, Felicia Wu will discuss the history of and current US Dietary Guidelines; then describe her work in the current World Health Organization Food-Based Dietary Guidelines Committee, and how her time with USAID revealed enormous gender inequities in diet quality worldwide. Dr. Wu will give a brief background on agricultural biotechnology and how it may both meet such challenges in a culturally sensitive way, while potentially imposing other cultural concerns - making the situation of optimally feeding the world a current wicked problem.

About Our Speaker: Felicia Wu is the John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Food Safety, Toxicology, and Risk Assessment at Michigan State University; and immediate Past-President of the Society for Risk Analysis. She works at the nexus of agriculture, food safety and nutrition, and public health to improve global human health outcomes. Dr. Wu is a Member of the Joint FAO/WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA), a member of the World Health Organization (WHO) Food-Based Dietary Guidelines Committee, and an elected Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis. She is appointed by Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as a Commissioner of Agriculture and Rural Development for the state of Michigan.

The Zoom link is: https://tinyurl.com/nauaacademy