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Changing Our Food Culture

February 20, 2009 on 4:45 pm | In Main Category | No Comments

Food culture is a term we use to describe how we eat, what we eat and most of all, why we eat the way we do. For most of us, eating habits sank in early and remain unchanged. At Open Hand, we find that getting people to change habits can be difficult; when you’re raised on a diet of processed food, even the freshest produce can seem weird. That’s why a change in food culture has to start with kids and Berkeley’s own Alice Water has penned a prescription for change in today’s NY Times:

Many nutrition experts believe that it is possible to fix the National School Lunch Program by throwing a little more money at it. But without healthy food (and cooks and kitchens to prepare it), increased financing will only create a larger junk-food distribution system. We need to scrap the current system and start from scratch. Washington needs to give schools enough money to cook and serve unprocessed foods that are produced without pesticides or chemical fertilizers. When possible, these foods should be locally grown.

You can read the whole editorial, here.