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Interview with Professor Tim Lang
02 October, 2009 
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"Many of us in my world think water is going to be the crunch issue"
Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University since November 2002. He was Director of the Centre for Food Policy at Thames Valley University from 1994 to 2002, before it moved to City University. He was Director of Parents for Safe Food, 1990-1994 and before that Director of the London Food Commission, 1984 to 1990.
In 2006, he was appointed Natural Resources and Land Use Commissioner on the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission. He is a regular advisor / consultant to the World Health Organisation at global and European levels. He has been a special advisor to four House of Commons Select Committee inquiries (food standards [twice], globalisation and obesity). In 2006-07, he was an advisor to the Foresight Obesity programme, and since 2005 has been a member of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House)
‘Food Supply in the 21st Century’ Working Party and team. He has been a consultant on many occasions for the World Health Organisation, also for the European Commission and Food & Agriculture Organisation. In 2005-06, he chaired the Scottish NHS Executive’s Scottish Diet Action Plan Review. He is a Vice President of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health and a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health. In 1999-2005 he was Chair of Sustain, the NGO alliance, of which he was a founder member. He has been a Trustee of Friends of the Earth and was Secretary of the Public Health Alliance, predecessor to the UK Public Health Association.
Tim was winner of Observer Food Monthly's lifetime achievement award in 2007, and well known as the man who coined the phrase 'food miles'.