Q&A with Ali Morpeth

At Chickpea Marketing, our ethos is to nourish with purpose, so we’re going to be speaking to a variety of inspirational people working in the food and drink industry doing just that.

We’re delighted to kick things off with Ali Morpeth, Registered Public Health Nutritionist and Healthy & Sustainable Diets Lead at WWF.

After approaching Ali on LinkedIn, we have learnt how as nutrition and food industry professionals we can help move the dial to meet sustainability and health focused objectives in order to drive positive change in our food system.

In our interview with Ali, we discuss her career journey so far, her advice on how to progress your career and how to get more involved in health and sustainability.

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C: Hello Ali! Firstly, thank you so much for putting time aside for us at Chickpea Marketing. Can you start by please telling us a bit about you and your current role?

A: Sure! I’m a Registered Public Health Nutritionist working on advocacy and policy to improve diets. My current role is looking at that through two lenses. One is how we create food environments and supporting policies that optimise diets for health and two is how we optimise people's diets for the planet. My main message around this is that health and sustainability don't need to be two different deliverables. Health and sustainability are two different sides of the same coin - and food policy can support diets which improve human and planetary health at the same time.

C: Couldn’t agree more! How did you get into your area of work?

A: That's a good question. I've had a really varied career journey and think the best way to describe my work is as a portfolio of different things. I started off my career working in a global communications consultancy, working with lots of FMCG brands. It was completely amazing and taught me so much about business and the way our choices are influenced by the power of marketing and brands. I then spent eight years working consultancy side for NGOs and business on really varied projects. That was also amazing as I was working on some really forward thinking projects and with people across the whole world on various nutrition agendas - it opened my eyes to the power of global policy in setting national agenda.

So for example, with the World Health Organization and a team of academics at Leeds Uni I developed a nutrient and promotion profile model that assesses commercial infant foods for their suitability in the marketplace. Here, I brought in some of that marketing expertise from my earlier career to work with our team to build in promotional criteria to the model so products would be assessed on how nutritious they are and on the way they are marketed to consumers. This is the first time marketing criteria has ever been built into an NPM, even though we know people’s purchasing behaviour is inherently influenced by the way products are promoted to them.

Off the back of that, I started a PhD looking at the dark nudges that influence our food choices- influences that are subtle and we might not even be aware of. Then more recently, I’ve been working at WWF to lead their work on healthy, sustainable diets across the retail sector, which has been quite a journey because it's an environmental NGO and I'm the only Nutritionist working on diets. What I’ve tried to do there is bring scientific expertise in nutrition into an environmental organization - to show health can absolutely be a part of a sustainable diet strategy and vice versa.

C: love hearing about people’s career stories but yours is particularly interesting and rich with different areas of expertise. 

A: It's very wiggly! There’s a couple of other things to mention. I've had amazing mentors throughout my career and so I’ve been super lucky in having these incredible people that have popped up while I've been at work that have believed in me and set me on weird and wonderful paths.  One of those people is Janet Cave at the University of Leeds. She’s been such a role model for me - she approaches everything with an attitude of making it happen and she's just such an amazing person. Off the back of having those amazing people in my life, one thing that I really want to focus on in my career is giving that mentorship back. So, I'm an AfN mentor to associate nutritionists who are on the pathway to becoming registered nutritionists and I also give lectures at Leeds and things like that. My goal is to build capacity in the system as much as possible so the next generation of nutritionists have knowledge and skills that will help them work at the intersection of health and sustainability.

C: Thank you for sharing – I’m a huge fan of mentorship and believe it’s a crucial part of professional and personal development. So, what are you most excited about in your work at the moment?

A: Well, to flip that for a second, there's a lot of working in food in 2023 that is really difficult. There's so many barriers and inaction by government and policymakers on a lot of the critical levers that we need to see in health and sustainability. It can feel quite overwhelming.

However, I am so inspired by the community around me. I think we have some of the best talent in the whole of the UK working in nutrition! I know that when we come together and we have a clear strategy, as well as a common vision and goal, when we want to go after something we can absolutely do it. So, although I feel like the situation is quite overwhelming and none of us can tackle it alone, the thing that I'm most excited about is using the power of collaboration to shift the dial on some of the really important questions that we have facing the food system.

The second thing that I'm really excited about is that there is a lot more understanding in the health sector on the need to build sustainability into health and vice versa. In the environmental sector, there's also an understanding that health is an important driver when you're talking about what people eat. That cross-sector understanding brings me hope that together, the sectors can move together to campaign into government and policymakers around some of the issues that are really important. Whether that's breaking the junk food cycle and having a more responsible marketplace for children's foods or having diets which are higher in plant foods, all of that can come from having one common vision. Plus, I'm seeing that there's willingness across both sectors to move in the same direction. I think that's really exciting.

C: In order to make that happen, do you think there needs to be someone employed in a company that's solely responsible for sustainability or do you think that the skills can be within the teams that exist currently?

A: It depends on where you're looking. If you're looking to food businesses, it's great when you talk to people in a food business who have nutrition and sustainability within their job role because it means that you can talk around a goal which has dual outcomes.

In the NGO sector, we tend to be more specialists. You tend to have people who've got expertise in health or expertise in environment. We need to build those combined skillsets more because as Nutritionists we need to represent both things. For instance, we've got a childhood obesity crisis, we've got sky rocketing levels of diet related diseases in general and we've got a climate crisis. Food can be the leading solution to each of those things. So, we need experts who can tackle all of those things in their job role.

C: Brilliant thank you. If you could provide one tip for someone looking to learn more or gain more experience in your line of work, what would that be?

A: I would say building your network is my first tip. We’re living in a post COVID world now and whilst it can be tempting to not go to events or attend networking opportunities, I really think its valuable to show up. Show up, learn and listen to people. We have such amazing people working across health and sustainability and I'm always really inspired when I go to events. Even if it's just things like joining webinars, being proactive is so important to upskilling and finding your allies. Reach out to those people and work with them.

I have a team of people at work that I’m with on a daily basis. But I also have a really strong group of allies outside of my job who I speak to multiple times a week and class as my inner circle. We all get it and we are all in roles where we can make a difference, but not on our own. So we need to learn from each other and share and plug each others skill gaps. That kind of collaboration is totally invaluable and something thats not measured in job KPIs. So yeah, my top tip is definitely to collaborate.

C: So true. Networking is so fundamental. Especially as in the food industry, and even more so as nutritionists and dietitians, job roles aren’t usually in abundance.

A: No they're not. You do have to have that little bit of network building to help build relationships and progress your career.

C: Sadly, we are coming to the end of our amazing chat. Do you have a favourite chickpea containing snack or meal that you could share with us?

A: I definitely do. My favourite chickpea meal is a lemon and herb Stew from Anna Jones's book. It is so simple to make. It's literally a can of chickpeas, a can of coconut milk, some stock, and then loads herbs. It tastes absolutely wicked. And you can freeze it and warm it up from frozen. I love it.

C:  Delicious! Adding that to the recipe wish list. My last question is where can we follow you/contact you/find out more?

A: My LinkedIn page. I have tried in the past to branch out onto managing multiple social media platforms and I just can't do it. I find it hard enough just to manage my inbox! So, LinkedIn is the best place to find me.

C: Perfect! Thank you so much for your time Ali! Your insights and words of wisdom will inspire many of those working in the food and drink industry.

If you’d like to get in touch with Ali, follow her LinkedIn here.