Real, whole foods grown with environmentally conscious practices are vital for people’s health and our planet. Eat REAL’s work and the real food movement are centered around creating equitable access to real food and supporting regenerative food production for our planet. Good health starts with real food.
The real food movement is growing, and we’re proud to be at the forefront of expanding real food access and supporting sustainable food production. With everything that is going on with the world today, it can be overwhelming considering how you can make a difference in your own life. Luckily, there are many ways to become a real food advocate – from small daily decisions to large-scale advocacy work.
“[When it comes to what you eat], your vote is tallied immediately. And you get to vote twenty-one times a week—every meal, three times a day, every day.” – Robert Lustig, M.D., M.S.L. Chief Science Officer Eat REAL
One of the best places to start is with the food you eat. Choosing locally grown whole foods like organic produce and grass-fed animal protein can help protect our environment and your health against processed food-related disease. Simple weekly meal planning can drastically reduce your food waste. Globally, food waste accounts for 8% of the world’s carbon emissions.
Supporting community initiatives like neighborhood kitchens, food banks, and urban agriculture are great ways to increase equitable access to real foods, especially in communities experiencing food apartheid. You can also support food system equity by advocating for local and national policies that increase real food access like nutrition incentive programs and free school meal initiatives.
Becoming a real food advocate is more crucial than ever, as the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rise in food insecurity. Eat REAL partnered with the FarmLink Project last year to connect schools with local farmers who provided donations of excess food that would have otherwise been wasted. The Farmlink Project recently won the 2021 Congressional Medal of Honor Citizen’s Service Award.
Eat REAL empowers school district food service leaders to increase access to high quality real food options and inspires students, schools, parents, and communities in their real food awareness journeys, building the next generation of Real Food Advocates. Ensuring that all students have regular access to real food at school builds a sense of security and ownership over the food they eat. Kids today are more connected to the world than previous generations. By providing them with a foundation in nutrition education and environmental awareness, they learn how the food they choose to eat is at the core of both.
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