School celebrates Food Day Oct. 24
| October 24, 2012 | |
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An engaged coalition of students, faculty members and alumni has organized a series of events to promote the second annual Food Day, a national movement for healthy, affordable and sustainable food developed by the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest and celebrated on Oct. 24.Chapel Hill’s Food Day was coordinated by UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health alumna Jillian Mickens and UNC public health Food Day interns and master’s degree candidates Alison Doernberg and Maryka Lier. The student organizations Nutrition Coalition and Fair, Local and Organic also coordinated events on campus.
“North Carolina’s Food Day activities are all about highlighting healthy, local food options,” said Mickens, who is program coordinator for Chapel Hill’s Community Nutrition Partnership. “Food Day is a great opportunity to celebrate what’s going right with our food system and help people make healthier choices across the state. The event also brings to light other issues about food, including fair and safe working conditions for farm workers, humane treatment of animals and reducing hunger.”
Chapel Hill Food Day hosted a Food Day Film Festival Oct. 22-25, featuring food-themed films followed by panel discussions led by experts from local organizations. The films include:
The Oct. 24 Food Day Fair featured local organizations, including the Carolina Campus Community Garden, that promote healthy, affordable and sustainable food.
Other Oct. 24 events included a Food Day Fair, at which local nonprofit and student organizations presented information about their efforts to promote healthy, affordable and sustainable food; a Carolina Campus Community Garden Food Day Workday, on which volunteers worked in a community garden that provides free vegetables and fruit for lower-wage workers at UNC; and a “Dine Out for Food” event, through which local restaurants serving local, sustainable foods donated 20 percent of Food Day profits to Community Nutrition Partnership to help with their mission to increase access to local and healthy foods to all members of the community. Nutrition Coalition sponsored a food drive from Oct. 19-27 to collect healthy, non-perishable foods for the Salvation Army. During Food Day week, they conducted nutrition education events in three dormitories on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. Others celebrations throughout North Carolina and on college campuses in the Triangle area were among the 3,100 national Food Day events. “All around the country, people are coming together to make a change for the better, whether it’s a positive change in their own diet, or a change for the better in the food policies of a campus, a business, a city or a state,” said Food Day founder and Center for Science in the Public Interest executive director Michael F. Jacobson, PhD. “It’s exciting to see so many diverse events and so much momentum building for a food system that is healthy, environmentally sustainable and fair for all.”
Chapel Hill Food Day was made possible through the generous support of the Southeast Public Health Training Center and the UNC Media Resources Center.
UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Linda Kastleman, communications editor, (919) 966-8317 or linda_kastleman@unc.edu. |
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