Laois woman to speak at United Nations conference

The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP29, will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Laois woman Dr Laura Kirwan will give a talk to an international audience on November 21, explaining the importance of sustainability within the food industry.

Originally from Borris-in-Ossory, Dr Kirwan now lives and works in Dublin as Sustainability Lead for Dublin-based company Nutritics. This is the second year that the European Climate Pact Ambassador has been asked to return to the UN Climate Change Conference.

"I studied nutrition in college, I think I have always loved food," Dr Kirwan told the Leinster Express/Laois Live.

Pictured: Nutritics team members Karen O'Brien (left) and Dr Laura Kirwan (right) at COP28 in 2023.

"My passion behind nutrition definitely comes from my love of food. My Granny Nan Meade in Ballacolla always made the best Sunday roasts, I definitely found inspiration in her Sunday dinners!" Dr Kirwan said.

"I've always loved her cooking. My Mam was a Home Economics teacher in Mountrath Community School too, so I think we always loved food growing up. I cook and bake a lot as a result of it, I love going out to new restaurants and trying new food," she explained.

After studying Nutrition in University College Dublin, Dr Kirwan moved to Italy to work for the European Food Safety Authority.

"It was working here that I realised I would need a PHD to continue in a job beyond that one," she said.

"I went back to UCD and got my PHD in sustainable diets. I was working on the National Food Consumption Surveys with Dr Breige McNulty. I was looking at the cost of diets, nutritional adequacy, environmental impacts, and modelling small changes to Irish diets in children, teens and adults to ensure that they are both healthy and sustainable," Dr Kirwan explained.

Dr Kirwan then made the move to Nutritics, a Dublin based company that allows users to measure the environmental impact of their diets, and tailor their diets as such.

"Food has a massive amount of emissions, up to one third of global greenhouse emissions comes from food systems," Dr Kirwan highlighted.

Pictured: Dr Kirwan speaking at COP28 in Dubai.

"In Nutritics, we work with companies who deliver food at a large scale, for example one of our customers in the UK delivers 2.6 million meals a day. We also work with small independent kitchens and restaurants, and individual users," she said.

"They use our system to see the environmental impact of their food preparation. That's how they decide their recipe designs, what ingredients they use, portion sizes and what they put on the menu. We help them study their menus to see the nutritional value, allergens and environmental impact, where no other company in the world offers the same," Dr Kirwan said.

When chefs are designing their recipes, such as a new curry or stew for example, they can just look at all of the data in real time using the Nutritics system.

"Nutritics started out as a platform for athletes and healthcare professionals, so a lot of our users enter their food intake into the system to keep a record," Dr Kirwan said.

"Then they get feedback on both their nutrition, and their sustainability. A lot of the athletes within the Paris Olympics used our system, the UK team used it to track their diets."

Dr Kirwan will speak at COP29 on Thursday, November 21. 

Last year, Dr Kirwan and her colleague Karen O'Brien, Senior Technical Executive at Nutritics, were on site at COP28 in Dubai. The pair provided workshops, training sessions and talks to attendees from across the world.

Pictured: Dr Laura Kirwan at the United Nations Climate Change Conference

"Last year was amazing, it was such a large event," Dr Kirwan said.

"My colleague Karen is from Tipperary, so it was great to see two women from the Midlands on the stage!" she laughed.

"Speaking at the event was quite scary, I was quite nervous. The stage was quite large compared to what I was used to," Dr Kirwan said.

"It was a really lovely atmosphere, it was nice to actually help the chefs design the menus, and then go over and order what they had designed using our system. It was lovely to watch the process behind it take place," she said.

Dr Kirwan will take part in a wider session on chefs called chefs at the forefront of reducing emissions, as part of the climate talk which we are a technology partner in. The Laois woman will return to the stage for COP29 to present a talk on 'chefs at the forefront of reducing emissions'.

As an expert in the area, Dr Kirwan will discuss the importance of driving efficiency and sustainability in food service operations. 

"As Irish people, we are very good at spotting a problem and fixing it, so I think that it's really nice to see an Irish company develop a software to help accelerate change, and make such an impact at a global scale," Dr Kirwan said.

"We are the only company doing it, that does allergens, nutrition, costs and sustainability. The two owners are really lovely, they're from Dublin and they set up the company over 10 years ago. It's lovely to see an Irish company doing so well and reaching an international stage," she said.

"Laois people are out there across the world working as experts in so many different areas. I'm really happy to be speaking at COP 29, this year COP focuses on climate finances, and food is always really important and needs to be discussed," Dr Kirwan finished.

Elements of Dr Kirwan's presentation will be available on Nutritics website or LinkedIn.