“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” -James Clear, Atomic Habits
It is common in business to talk about designing for success. That means intentionally crafting systems and strategies that consistently deliver a product to customers efficiently, reliably and profitably. The faster and smoother we produce, the greater our efficiency— and the higher our profits. In short, “success is found in the systems you build.”
The same principle applies to personal health. We work to align exercise and nutritious eating to hopefully improve overall fitness, strength and health. By understanding our physiology and how our body specifically reacts to different treatments (e.g., running, swimming, calorie reduction, weightlifting), we learn over time to augment the behaviors that lead to the outcomes we want. Conversely, we also learn to deprioritize activities and behaviors that lead to outcomes we don’t want, such as consuming too many calories, uneven weight training, too little cardio and smoking.
An increasingly popular tool being used to speed our learning abilities is that of wearable technologies, like the Apple Watch, Oura Ring, WHOOP, Google Pixel and FitBit. These technologies aim to deliver real-time personalized feedback on our overall system attributes (i.e., temperature, sleep patterns, blood pressure, heart rate, weight, body fat, heart rate variability).
With this information, these tools visualize variables about our baseline systems—when we are awake, asleep, sick, injured, exercising, stressed or lounging. Basically, these technologies translate our current state into individual and relational measurements that unearth patterns and trends that aid in unlocking which behaviors positively impact physiology. These tools help us fine-tune our actions to prevent illness and improve performance. By clearly defining our baseline, we can better detect early warnings and proactively manage our health.
Let’s shift the narrative away from food safety failures and instead focus on what characterizes success.
Fresh produce is a complex system that is both scientifically and artfully managed through deep understanding and expertise of growers and processors. Briefly, a crop is planted, grown, harvested, cooled, processed, packed, shipped, stocked, shopped and plated. That’s a lot of systems to optimize, and certainly a lot to manage (directly and indirectly) successfully. Throw in uncontrollable weather, wildlife, etc., and you can begin to comprehend just how much it takes to get a veggie, salad or fruit safely onto a consumer’s plate.
We have too many food safety events in fresh produce. Leafy greens, a leading category linked to illness, has a recent study that estimates the category alone contributes to 2.3 million foodborne illnesses per year. That is a very real and significant concern.
But here’s the counterpoint to that statistic – those illnesses represent 0.046 percent of the estimated 500 billion servings of leafy greens consumed per year. That means that 99.964 percent of servings are both safe and nutritious.
Why does the counterstatement matter? Managing complex systems is, well, complex, and when 99.996 percent of servings are safe, it makes figuring out what went wrong in those 2.3 million (or 0.046 percent) really difficult to study.
If water treatment failed or contaminated inputs were used, those are easier to identify and correct. But those simple scenarios don’t describe the reality of today’s growing practices. The 0.046 percent of failures are likely caused by a confluence of subtle factors and interactions, not a single point of failure.
This is where the concept of “wearable technologies” for agriculture becomes powerful. Let’s start by better characterizing all the behaviors, practices, weather, adjacent land features, controls and processing events that lead to a successful, safe serving. By better understanding the agricultural vitals for health (baseline), we can start identifying patterns that show instability and potential for rare event failures to occur. AI and predictive tools could then detect early risk indicators, helping us prevent the rare failures and further drive up the 99.964 percent of safe servings.
Success in fresh produce food safety isn’t about eliminating all risk—it’s about deeply understanding the system, building smart feedback loops and using data to keep improving.
Let’s stop fixating on and only studying the failure. Let’s get better at defining, measuring and scaling success.
