How I built a machine that feeds millions | Felix Brooks-church

**Elise Hu** (0:04)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh.
Salt, cooking oil, flour, ingredients that are in most kitchens almost everywhere in the world. Staples that are so basic, and for many of us, they can easily be taken for granted. But social entrepreneur Felix Brooks-church sees them as something else, an untapped way to get essential nutrients to people who might otherwise go without.

**Felix Brooks-church** (0:33)
If you want to get nutrients into people, the most efficient way isn't to change the food that they eat, but instead to improve the daily food that they already rely on.

**Elise Hu** (0:43)
Felix works on food fortification, which is the practice of adding vitamins and minerals to common foods to increase their nutritional value. It's not new. Think iodized salt or fortified bread. But as Felix shares in his talk, in many parts of the world, the food system still doesn't deliver nourishment to the people who need it most. Kids can have full stomachs and still be missing the nutrients their bodies and brains need to grow.

**Felix Brooks-church** (1:08)
Bellies are full, but full bellies are not enough.
If you're only eating that starch, which is often the case, you're literally starving from lack of nutrients. That's why it's called hidden hunger.

**Elise Hu** (1:19)
He shows how a small device installed in local flour mills is helping to fight hidden hunger at a massive scale, and how starting with everyday foods can help millions around the world. And stick around, we caught up with TED guest curator Angus Hervey with more on Felix's work and why this kind of quiet, practical progress deserves more of our attention. That's coming up right after a short break.
And now our TED Talk of the day.

**Felix Brooks-church** (1:55)
I'm willing to bet that all of us this week ate a meal that contained at least one of these ingredients. Salt, edible oil, flour. No matter where you live in the world, you're cooking with that. That's the foundation of everything we eat. That's why it's called staple foods, and that's why they're so important. If you want to get nutrients into people, the most efficient way isn't to change the food that they eat, but instead to improve the daily food that they already rely on. That's the idea, and that's the idea behind food fortification, something I know a lot about.
We probably all benefited from this already this morning and didn't even realize it. If you ate eggs, cooked in oil, the oil had vitamin A.
Had toast, that bread had zinc and iron. Even the salt that you sprinkled onto that breakfast was iodized. This isn't some overly-processed GMO approach. This is simple, safe, proven science. It's about 100 years old. In fact, malnutrition caused by lack of nutrients has all but disappeared in countries where food fortification works. But only works where the system works. And unfortunately, in many countries in the global south, that system is either broken or nonexistent. A farmer grows a crop like maize. A miller buys that grain, grinds it into flour. A mother buys that flour, takes it home, feeds their kid. Bellies are full, but full bellies are not enough. If you're only eating that starch, which is often the case, you're literally starving from lack of nutrients. That's why it's called hidden hunger. It's a big one. It affects 3 billion people. And of course, kids suffer most. Stunting. Delayed brain development. Lifelong deformities. And today, unfortunately, thousands of kids will die from preventable sickness and illness.
But there is hope, and there's some incredible people working on very innovative ways to solve this problem. This is my buddy Kurt in Guatemala. His company Samia Nueva is on the forefront of biofortification, helping farmers to grow nutritious crops from the start. Jahil, one of my board members, based in Kenya, his company Hello Tractor is connecting farmers with mechanization and digital platforms, increasing yields and livelihoods. It's like the Uber for Tractor. Super cool. My other buddy Gayatri, based out of Rwanda, her company Earth Enable is replacing dirt floors in village homes with more sustainable materials, ensuring kids don't get sick and can actually absorb the nutrients they deserve. Different approaches, same mission.
So as Kurt and Jahil sit at the farm, and Gayatri at the family, where do I fit? Here, at the mill, in the middle, between where food is grown and food is consumed. At Sankhu, a social enterprise I co-founded with David Dawson, the aha moment was, if we could build a machine that sits on that green mill and adds nutrients into the flower, we're going to fortify the entire village. And credit to David who saw this super early over 20 years ago, that although individually small these mills, about the size of a bedroom, collectively thousands of these mills feed entire nations.