E214: USDA Food and Nutrition Service Director Caree Cotwright - Championing MyPlate

Our guest today is Dr. Caree Cotwright, director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity at the Food and Nutrition Service at the US Department of Agriculture. Dr. Cotwright is leading a USDA-wide approach to advancing food and nutrition security in the United States. Part of her responsibility includes the charge from Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to make MyPlate a household name. MyPlate is the official visual reminder of the US government to make healthy food choices from each of the five food groups. Now, this turns out to be a tall but important order. About a quarter of US adults have heard of MyPlate, according to a recent survey.

Interview Summary

You came to USDA while on leave from the University of Georgia (UGA) where, by the way, you were the first Black woman in the Department of Nutritional Sciences to earn tenure. Congratulations for this, and please know how much I appreciate the important role that you've played in our field. So, let's start with discussing what drew you to food policy and what makes you excited about your role in public service at USDA?

I am really excited about this role because it's just a privilege. When I think about the fact that USDA has the title or has a position for the director of Nutrition Security and Health Equity, I get excited about that. It's been a privilege to work on advancing all of the things that have come about because of the White House Conference. I came to nutrition policy really in a kind of a roundabout way. I was working on my master's at UGA and I was doing an internship at the Center for Science and the Public Interest (CSPI). At that time, I was wanting to write on the Nutrition Action Health letter, but they had someone who was mentoring in nutrition policy and that someone was Margo Wootan. She kind of took me under her wing and helped me to learn about what nutrition policy was. 

After completing my master's and my PhD, I did my postdoc, and then did a RISE fellowship at the CDC. I was working on disseminating policy around early care and education obesity prevention policies and just really to understand the keen role that policy plays in the advancement of nutrition and policies in general. That was really eye-opening for me. I knew that during my role at University of Georgia as a faculty member that I would focus on both policy and intervention. I've had such a wonderful experience of being able to use different creative approaches, but also using policy. Some of those approaches have earned me the opportunity to talk to a variety of communities in different ways, including having a TED Talk. It's just been a joy to do this work.

You've had so many interesting experiences and I could see how you'd be passionate about food policy after spending time at CSPI, especially with Margo Wootan. There aren't many people that know food policy like she does. But one thing I wanted to ask you about is one of the highly novel part of your work and your approach to nutrition has been to incorporate the creative arts, including storytelling. Tell us about this if you would.

Storytelling has always been near and dear to my heart. When people ask me about that question, I've been doing it since I was about five years old when I was asked to come and give the commencement speech for my nursery school. I wasn't afraid, it was fun for me, and I just said, "Wow, this is really something that I can do." I enjoyed connecting and engaging with others. As I think about my work, I know that telling stories and using creative approaches to meet people where they are helps us to promote a variety of topics. Of course, it's kind of entertainment education, but using these approaches is a catalyst to get people interested in what we're doing. We know we're competing with so many things that pull people's attention now. 

Some of the things that I've done are I have a play about nutrition for young children, I have a hip hop song. I tell stories even in my speeches because I know that when I can connect, people will remember that story. And that's so important. Through my work, I promoted the Child and Adult Care Food program. I worked on the SNAP-Ed program at University of Georgia. We've done creative things like having skits and have enough care to call Healthy Bear that th