World Food Day

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Today is World Food Day.

When you sit down to eat every day, do you think about how the meal you’re eating is the product of a complex, and broken, global food system? This World Food Day, Oxfam America is teaming up with a host of allies across the US and around the globe. We have a simple yet compelling idea—to host a World Food Day dinner on October 16th or sometime this month that fosters a conversation about where your food comes from, who cultivates it, and how you can take personal actions that will make the food system more just and sustainable.

~ Oxfam America website

Now we’re not hosting a hoity toity dinner party. We’re sitting down as a family and talking about our food. We do a fair amount of that anyway, but this night it will be all about the GROW Method in honor of World Food Day.

I have three kids under 6. I feel like I can still make sense of the 5 steps of the Grow Method so that they can understand and start our family moving even faster in a direction that makes our food system more sustainable. Even if that means just our own family food system to start. It starts at home.

Today we start with the first principle. Reducing waste. Tonight at dinner I’ll talk to them about how I either make enough food that I know will be eaten, or make more on purpose for leftovers. We eat what we’re given and don’t leave food on the plate simply because. I also try to use all of the parts of the food I’m cooking limting the amount of waste. What I don’t use gets composted and given back to the earth. We don’t go to restaurants often with our little terrors, but when we do we always take the leftovers home.

Here’s a super informative slideshow on the GROW Method:

Here’s a handy guide for your family to help you have a great discussion at dinner. Or maybe at your hoity toity dinner party. Go on – I dare you. PLEASE talk about the Grow Method at your next dinner party. It starts with you, and me, talking about it and then doing it. One billion people shouldn’t go to bed hungry. Do something.
This post (and my sharing on social media) was inspired by my participation in a compensated program initiated by Women Online/The Mission List to raise awareness about Oxfam America’s GROW Method. All commentary and opinions are, of course, my own.