Food Day

October 24, 2012 marked National Food Day, a celebration and a movement for healthy, sustainable, affordable, fair food. The Flying Carrot is the perfect example of a local effort to support this movement. To educate about the goals of Food Day, my fellow graduate students and I started a club ("The Local Food Club") at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and brought the Flying Carrot to campus. 

Upon hearing the words "free food," many students were drawn to our booth. With a captive audience enjoying butternut squash soup (made using local squash, potatoes, and sage), whole grain bread, and hot apple cider (also locally sourced), we were able to educate about the importance of eating locally and seasonally. We used this event as a platform for promoting the Local Food Shift, which seeks to shift our food economy along the Front Range to locally-produced food and to make caring about your food a responsibility. 

"We're not protesting. We're not demonstrating. We're not occupying. Instead we are learning to truly inhabit our foodshed, to be food citizens and food producers, not merely consumers."

Several students expressed an interest in signing the Food Shift pledge to commit 10% of their food budget to buying local food. As it stands now, in most communities, less than 3% of food consumption is locally grown and locally produced.

To further interact, we asked students to join a "photo petition" expressing their reason for eating or supporting real food. Check out their responses!

Count 'em up, 41 reasons to eat REAL!

For more info about Food Day and how to get involved, click here.
To learn more about the Local Food Shift and to take the pledge,click here.