Month: October 2011

The Grandview Woodland Food Connection (GWFC) is fully expressing its solidarity with the Occupy Movement. Our organization is a community based group which supports the right to healthy, affordable and clean food for all people, particularly those most struggling financially in our community of East Vancouver.

Food security and food justice are critical issues in our times. In light of increasing economic disparity, loss of the social safety net, corporatization and comodification of our food systems, environmental collapse, dietary related illness, and more, we are seeing a food crisis emerge that is alarming on a scale both local and global with significant numbers of people even here in Vancouver who are having trouble accessing affordable and healthy food.

Our entire food system requires a radical reassessment and restructuring.

Most critical is that food insecurity, or the lack of access to good food, especially for the most vulnerable, stems from poverty which itself stems from a woefully unjust society in which a few reap most while many are provided with little. We must demand our governments work to create income equality, decent employment, affordable housing, accessible education, universal childcare, financial regulation, and the many conditions that support a healthy, thriving and just society.

For this reason, we add our voice to those in the Occupy Movement calling for a new society that is based on equity, justice and environmental sustainability, for a world in which poverty ceases to exist, where food is not a weapon of control, where food nourishes and not kills, and where food is a basic human right for all.

Ian Marcuse
Grandview Woodland Food Connection Coordiantor

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/feed-a-student-feed-the-future/article2196186/

This article caught my attention recently and further backs up evidence that well fed students are better students. In this case, a particular school in Toronto that had been experiencing high levels of violence including the killing of a student, instituted a healthy eating program as a way of stemming the violence.

“The administrators wanted a nutrition program – they wanted to make sure every kid was fed,” said Mena Paternostro, co-ordinator of student nutrition with the Toronto District School Board. “They came out loud and clear and told us a hungry kid was an angry kid.”

“After some creative fundraising by the Toronto Foundation for Student Success, the school board’s charitable arm, a universal morning meal pilot program was implemented at seven schools – three high schools and four primary schools that feed into them. Now, three years later, there are strong signs that the principals were right: Not only do satiated students exhibit less aggression, they attend more classes, get fewer suspensions and receive higher grades”.