It’s World Food Day, and this year’s theme—Healthy Diets for a #ZeroHunger World—reminds us of the complexity of the task in front of us. A Healthy Diet demands “sufficient, safe, nutritious and diverse foods”, but also fresh, locally produced foods—foods that support farm families, and enable them to produce food for their communities in a manner that regenerates biodiversity, soil and water.
Seek out these farms on your regional Buy Local Food Guide, because Healthy Diets aren’t just healthy for today, they are healthy for generations, and they enable the farmers who supply the food to build viable, stable enterprises, and supply healthy diets for generations. As we discussed in our Bring Food Home event last week, ‘sustainable diets’ must include the long-term health of the ecology, community, farmer and eater, which is why our conversation about “good food” must go beyond the essential components of nutrition, accessibility, affordability and cultural relevance.
The UN World Food Day backgrounder concludes “nutritious foods that constitute a healthy diet are not available or affordable for many people”. That is the case in our local communities as well. Healthy Diets for a #ZeroHunger World asks us to take concrete actions that encourage transformation toward a food system where healthy, nutritious diets and universal access are accepted as the basic standards by which our communities are measured, standards that brook no exceptions. Take action!
http://www.fao.org/world-food-day/take-action/en/
