From Beijing to Boston, the food on our dinner plates is starting to look more and more alike. It used to be, we ate the local fruits, vegetables and grains native to where we live. Now, with the rise of industrial agriculture and cheap exports, the Western diet is taking over the globe. 

Turns out that’s a big problem – and not just for health reasons. As the world grows dependent on an ever-narrower selection of nutrients, we’re at greater risk of a widespread food crisis from an unexpected shortfall of wheat or other key crops.

Bloomberg journalists Jasmine Ng and Jin Wu join this episode from Singapore to talk about how and why the world’s diets converged. And Stefan Schmitz of Crop Trust–which promotes global food diversity–comes on the show to give a preview of what our dinner plates will look like in the future.

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