A Movement for Healthy Eating.

Last week I was one of the many in the audience at Broughal Middle School who watched the documentary "Cafeteria Man" and stayed to talk about how to change the food culture in the Lehigh Valley.  You can read the article out today in the Morning Call, but I wanted to add my views on what looked to be the start the of a great conversation about how to change how we think about food and children in our community.  The people that brought the movie to Broughal were Kellyn co-founders Eric Ruth and Dr. Meagan Grega.  (Thanks to the SouthSide Film Fest Organizers as well.)  They made it clear from the start that they didn't just want to have people watch the film and go "that was great," and then go home.  They wanted us to start talking about what we could do here and now to change the food culture in the Lehigh Valley.  Most of us stayed late, buoyed no doubt by the wholesome free food that was offered before the movie in the cafeteria, and there was a lengthy and detailed discussion of not only the macroeconomics and logistics of food production and distribution, but also what need to happen for more it to become more feasible to bring more locally produced fresh produce and commodities into our homes and schools.  For example, Dr. Grega pointed out a study by the Penn State Cooperative Extension that if every family in the Lehigh Valley spent $10 a week at farmers markets in season, just in season, the effect on local producers would be to increase their income by not double or treble, but by a factor of thirty.  These ideas, and the presence in the audience and on the panel of local farmers, growers, educators, and food service professionals from Sodexo, made it clear that the first step to transform the food culture in the valley was to get everyone at the table who had a stake in the issues, and to recognize that the only way forward was to get everyone involved, even those who had traditionally been at odds.  I was cheered to hear, as I am sure were others, that multinational agribusinesses like Monsanto and others were now looking to find ways to become to support local sustainable agriculture.  Certainly there are political hurdles to be overcome, but it seems that the wave that was the postwar marriage of petrochemicals, technology, mass distribution and big farming has crested, and we are seeing a sea change (pardon my metaphors) in how and what we eat.  We want to know where it came from, how far it had to travel, was it grown with chemicals or in harmony with nature, and what kind of energy and labor went into its growth and production.  As the Richard Chisholm, director of Cafeteria Man said, vote with your fork.  Happy National Food Day!