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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-05-12 Daily Xml
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Ministerial Statement

GIFFORD, MR DUN

The Hon. M.D. RANN (Ramsay—Premier, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Social Inclusion, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Sustainability and Climate Change) (15:21): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. M.D. RANN: Members on both sides of this house who have followed Tasting Australia's progress in Adelaide over the years will share my distress at the news of the tragic and untimely death on Sunday of United States good food campaigner Dun Gifford. Dun and his partner, Sara Baer-Sinnot, have been frequent visitors to Adelaide both for Tasting Australia and as convenors of the Food Summit.

For years this wonderful couple have been on the front line of the battle for healthier, tastier, more authentic food as the developed world confronts epidemics of obesity, including the scourge of childhood obesity, diabetes and other diet related diseases.

Dun Gifford, President of Oldways, the food issues think tank based in Boston, was a great and prominent advocate of the Mediterranean diet, consistently judged as the world's healthiest diet over many decades. As Dun said:

The main reason is that its principal fat is olive oil, which is not only delicious, but it is a monounsaturated fat. In this country, as we all know, butter was the principal fat for some generations, and butter is a saturated fat. The differences have to do with heart health.

The Italians, Greeks, Spanish, North Africans, in other words all Mediterraneans, had a much better heart health profile than Americans did during the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s.

He went on to say:

Another reason is fish. Much more fish is eaten per capita in the Mediterranean countries than in the [United States]. This helps prevent obesity and hypertension.

Then Dun would talk about the importance of vegetables, where people in Mediterranean countries eat more vegetables per capita than Americans, which lowers their risk of colon cancer.

Dun Gifford engaged with people in the most positive, charming but convincing way to change food production and food consumption. He played a significant role in changing public opinion about food and in warning Americans of the dangers of junk food and fast food. He was once described in America as the 'guru of a new way of eating'. In fact, he was the champion of older, more authentic, more pleasurable ways of cooking and eating.

Dun was a great teacher. He brought science and good cuisine together. He loved coming to South Australia. He loved our big red wines and he loved our quality regional produce. He celebrated food and wine with character made by great characters. He also loved Adelaide's restaurants. Only last week Sasha and I took Dun and Sara to Auge, here in our city. I remember how much they enjoyed Enzo's and the Star of Greece a few years back.

He was not just a food activist; he was part of American political history. As a teenager he survived the sinking of the Andrea Doria in the Atlantic. After graduating from Harvard, Dun served in the US Navy, and then, after working in Washington DC, became a key adviser in the presidential campaign of United States Senator Robert Kennedy. Dun accompanied Bobby Kennedy during the June 1968 primary in California. When the results came in that Kennedy had beaten Eugene McCarthy and was therefore in a good position to win the nomination for president at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, Dun was with him in the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He was also walking behind Senator Kennedy in the kitchen of that same hotel when he was shot and fatally wounded. Dun helped to subdue Kennedy's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, and accompanied Kennedy and his wife, Ethel, in an ambulance to the hospital.

Dun had a long involvement and friendship with the Kennedy family and served as a legal assistant to Senator Edward Kennedy, but tragedy again struck and Dun, who was a resident of Nantucket Island in Massachusetts, had to identify the drowned body of Mary Jo Kopechne.

After leaving full-time politics, he was involved in a number of businesses, including setting up a cookie and muffin shop in Boston's Quincy Market, with a returned Vietnam hero, John Kerry, himself later to become a US Senator for Massachusetts and the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States. He owned and opened restaurants (including the famous Harvest Restaurant), was a great sailor and fisherman and served as chief executive of the Nantucket Electric Company.

I first met Dun Gifford in Adelaide in the year 2000 and later met him in Boston and many times during his visits to our state. I, like many others of his South Australian friends, found this gentle giant from Nantucket to be a lighthouse of decency and quiet wisdom. He had many stories to tell but was also a great listener—a rare combination. He inspired people to do good things and to make a difference. When we banned junk food in schools and outlawed genetically modified crops in South Australia, I was thinking of Dun Gifford. He was an activist in life who was deeply committed to public service and was a good and loyal friend.

On behalf of the government and this parliament, I would like to extend our deepest sympathy to Dun's beloved Sarah and his family and to his colleagues at Oldways and Tasting Australia.

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