Team Mission Statement

Shared Vision and Values

WHO: Food for Thought

WHAT: 

Issues surrounding Food Consumerism: community supported agriculture (eating locally), food waste, coffee and fair trade practices, issues around corn, finding locally available food sources  

HOW:  Education ourselves and the public about food consumer issues

Time Lines:

Frame work - Oct 6; working on it on Wednesday but try to answer as much as possible on our own

Planning Paper - Oct 6; individual parts

Presentation - Nov 24

Share resources and progress on blog - on going

FOR: People of Regina - general public, our class (future teachers), our group members

WHERE:  local

WHY:  Everyone who eats but more specifically people of Regina and surrounding area.

Steps thus far...

Here are the steps that our group have taken thus far in our Action Learning Project

Step 1: Reflect on Your Environment, Community, and Your Living Practices

Step 2: Form an Effective Group

Step 3: Choose an Issue and Generate Ideas for Action

Step 4: Research, Analysis, and Decision Making

Our group’s interested in doing our action project on the topic of food consumerism and we have been establishing what part of food consumerism each of us wants to pursue by reflecting on our own environments, community and living practices. Through this we have looked at many video’s, articles, talking with people that we have interest in the topic, and looking at our own health. When moving to the second step we found that it was easy to form an effective group as we all have the same interests and goals for completing this project. We were able to form deadlines for our individual projects and ways of communicating to share and combine our findings. In order to do step three we each had to go our own separate ways to do our own research and explore our individual topics that we are interested in. From this we were able to come up with potential action that we were interested in pursuing. After collecting background information we were able to come up with our own rationale.

Step 5: Build Motivation

Sharing of resources has been our greatest motivation so far.   In trying to decide on course of action, Jenny watched the DVDs King Corn, Food, Inc. and The Future of Food.  Greatly effected by what she learned, she decided to learn more about corn consumption.  

As part of our action, we created a blog.  We share resources like videos and news articles as well share our own experiences.  Becoming more informed on the issues, makes us uncomfortable with our current practices which spurs us on to change.

Step 6: Choose an Action and Make a Plan

Food consumerism is a broad area, and as individuals coming to the group we had different ideas of what food consumerism meant to each of us.  We decided that all of our concerns were important and warranted research so we chose to jigsaw the issue of food consumerism.   Each individual is doing research on an aspect that is important and/or relevant to their personal lives.  By doing this our group is able to learn more about the different aspects of food consumerism and thus are able to better educate ourselves and in turn act on educating others.  We have created a blog in which we are able to share our research and resources as well make it available to the general public so that they can also become informed through our research.  We are hoping that it may inspire someone to want to create their own action plan.

Step 7: Defining and Measuring Success

One definition of success is a favourable or satisfactory outcome or results (Neufeld & Guralnik, 1991). Tools to measure the success of our actions are the blog and our presentation.  Favourable outcomes for these tools are followers and comments on our blog and the presentation changed attitudes of classmates. 

Step 8: Identifying Barriers and SupportsThe stakeholders of our project are grocery stores, coffee corporations, farmers, fair trade organizations and consumers. For most grocery stores and coffee corporations the affects of our actions will be negative. For farmers, fair trade organizations and animals our actions will have a positive affect.  For the consumer our actions could cause concern, but for the most part be positive. We are just giving the information; it is up to the consumer to change. 

Step 11: Celebrate and Communicate

At the end of the project, we are going to have a potluck. The potluck we will implement our knowledge by having local organic food, no coffee, little waste and limit the amount of corn products. We try to eat within a 100-kilometre radius of Regina.  

Neufeldt, V., & Guralnik, D. B. (Eds.). (1991). Webster’s New World Dictionary of American English. Cleveland: Webster’s New World Dictionaries 

Out of the mouths of babes...

Wasted Food, Wasted Energy: The Embedded Energy in Food Waste in the United States

New report that the US could save the energy equivalent of about 350 million barrels of oil a year — without spending a penny or putting a ding in the quality of life: Just stop wasting food.

This work estimates the energy embedded in wasted food annually in the United States. We calculated the energy intensity of food production from agriculture, transportation, processing, food sales, storage, and preparation for 2007 as 8080 ± 760 trillion BTU. In 1995 approximately 27% of edible food was wasted. Synthesizing these food loss figures with our estimate of energy consumption for different food categories and food production steps, while normalizing for different production volumes, shows that 2030 ± 160 trillion BTU of energy were embedded in wasted food in 2007. The energy embedded in wasted food represents approximately 2% of annual energy consumption in the United States, which is substantial when compared to other energy conservation and production proposals.

Fast food not just a problem for the poor

Realizing that fast food restaurants strategically place themselves where there are few other options just shows that  eating locally and healthy requires planning:

In the sustainable foodie world, there's a perception that fast food restaurants prey on folks of low socioeconomic status. That stereotype is partially correct — fast food joints like McDonald's, Burger King, and Wendy's offer high-fat foods at low, low prices. They also tend to plunk themselves right in the middle of food deserts, areas lacking grocery stores, food coops, or farmers' markets, which are disproportionately found in low-income neighborhoods. But as Slashfood reports, new evidence suggests that affluent Americans are just as addicted to fast food as those who don't earn six figures or more each year.

It's Not Just Poor People Eating Fast Food, Sarah Parsons,  October 01, 2010 12:30 PM (PT)

Goodbye School Junk Food?

Interesting idea, I look forward to learning more about it:

A group of researchers at UC Berkeley in Berkeley, Calif., say schools can break out of their lunchtime ruts by offering students time in the garden, the kitchen and the lunchroom cafeteria.

This newly revealed road map for school cafeteria nutrition is the result of an experiment to teach a generation reared on junk food about eating healthy, where their food comes from and the environment, according to The San Francisco Chronicle. 

For the last three years, science classes at Berkeley grade schools have been taught weekly in school gardens. English, history and math courses are held regularly in the kitchen, and processed food is gone from school cafeterias. 

Everything is made from scratch.

Now, the results are in. The UC Berkeley study, "Changing Students' Knowledge, Attitudes and Behavior About Food," shows that a radical program where kids garden, cook and learn about nutrition, really does work. The kids have better eating habits than their peers.  - Goodbye Junk Food? School Study Finds Teaching Good Nutrition Can Change Kids' Food Choices - by Mary Beth Sammons , Sep 29th 2010 8:00AM

Heading Towards a Prairie Diet

I  am currently being treated for my food allergies using immunotherapy. Any food that I am being treated for, I must consume at least once a week or the immunotherapy shots can make me ill. At the time of my next allergy testing (mid-December), it is possible to ask my doctor to use avoidance treatment for certain foods. My known food allergies:

• beef
• chicken
• pork
• milk (can avoid)
• cheese (can avoid)
• eggs
• malt
• barley
• wheat
• corn
• tomatoes
• apples
• oranges
• carrots
• lettuce
• potatoes
• beans (can avoid)
• soy
• cinnamon (must avoid)
• lavender (must avoid)

I am also a university student who lives with my parents. I often do not get to choose where my food comes from so I’ll try to do as much of this as possible:

• Learn how to preserve food that is locally available 
• Learn where my food comes from and find local sources 
• For food that can only be imported, find local alternatives to replace them in my diet 
• Plan for spring where I will assist my mom in her garden 
• Start an indoor herb garden 
• When I cannot control my food options, eat the most healthy option 
• For foods I am not allergic to, exclude them from my diet if a local source is not available 
• For foods that I am allergic to, if a local source is not available eat only once a week.

I have lots to learn but I'm trying to make gradual changes so it isn't overwhelming.  Baby steps...