Problem

School and hospital food systems are flagships of food policy. With childhood obesity and other food related health concerns on the rise, the pressure is on schools and hospitals to serve fresher, local, healthier food to children and patients. Sustainable public food service initiatives remain isolated islands of good practice. The issue is how to connect the islands to facilitate wholesale changes.

The Gift

A principal root of the problem has been that in order to add variety and diversity to public/institutional menus and simultaneously reduce personnel, infrastructure and contract costs, one option has predominated: prefabricated, ready to serve, processed food, often laden with ingredients unhealthy to body, mind and environment. This is now being reversed and the challenge is how to change the entire public/institutional food system to one based on the principals of sustainability and away from convenience and lowest short-term price…to one where menus based on fresh, seasonal and sustainable produce set a new purchasing and education framework and establish viable markets for more socially and environmentally responsible products. These changes require new alliances. Your gift will pay for meeting expenses (venue, food, facilitation) in order to coordinate wholesale changes to the way food is procured, distributed and prepared.