DEPARTMENTS
YOU CAN!...
MORE ABOUT HUNGER NOTES

Center for Science in the Public Interest launches new Food Day, invites participation of all

Hunger Notes

(May 24, 2011) The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has launched a new Food Day, to be held October 24 for the first time.  Food Day is the key event in a new nationwide campaign to change the way Americans eat and think about food.  Food Day  is planned to encourage people around the United States to sponsor or participate in activities that encourage Americans to “eat real” and support healthy, affordable food grown in a sustainable, humane way.

Modeled on Earth Day, organizers hope Food Day will inspire Americans to hold thousands of events in schools, college campuses, houses of worship, and even in private homes aimed at fixing America’s food system. A Food Day event could be as small as a parent organizing a vegetable identification contest at a kindergarten class—or as massive as a rally in a city park, with entertainment and healthy food. Health departments, city councils, and other policymakers could use Food Day to launch campaigns, hold hearings, or otherwise address communities’ food problems. 

Food Day is not the same as World Food Day, also held in October.

The campaign will advocate progress toward five central goals:

• Reducing diet-related disease by promoting healthy foods. The American diet is too low in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains and too high in fatty meat, soft drinks, and salty packaged and restaurant foods—contributing to hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year due to heart disease, diabetes, stroke, and cancer.
• Supporting sustainable farms and stopping subsidies to agribusiness. Billions of federal dollars a year would be better spent helping environmentally conscious family farmers than huge agribusiness operations.
• Expanding access to food and alleviating hunger. Far too many Americans don't know where their next meal is coming from, or have access to fresh produce in their neighborhood.
• Reforming factory farms to protect animals and the environment. Farming of animals can and should be done without cruelty, and without degrading the quality of life in rural America.
• Curbing junk-food marketing to kids. Food companies should not be targeting children with foods that promote tooth decay, obesity, and other health problems.

Activities and events spurred by Food Day will help foster a robust dialogue on how to promote better nutrition and health, lessen hunger and increase access to food, enhance opportunities for farm families and rural communities, and conserve natural resources, according to Senator Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, and an honorary co-chair of Food Day.  For more information.

If you are interested in participating in a Food Day event, contact:
FOOD DAY
1220 L Street, NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20005.

Phone: 202.777.8392
Fax: 202.265.4954
Email: foodday [at] cspinet.org,

Hunger Notes Home Page