Throughout the nation, people are gearing up for Food Day. A day when events are held in almost every state, to help promote healthy foods and food policies. How can you get involved? Host an event! Like an apple crunch event!
Join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, food day chats are are on the 24th of every month, just follow #FoodDayChat.
Attend a local community event To see your local meet up or to get involved, register here ...
San Diego (33.2% Latino) is sprinkling the city in gardens. Healthy foods from the local corporate gardens are just outside the door. Urban Plantations, an organic gardening company offers its landscaping services to corporate, residential and assisted-living clients. Bringing organic fresh produce to locals, the company is all about making edible landscapes a norm in the city. However, more needs to be done in encouraging people to want to use produce of edible foods within their companies cafeterias, mentioned Karen Contreras, the founder and president of the company. Many companies and campus clients utilize the food in their cafeterias, but not to the majority that would be harvested on a farm, Contreras explained in a recent article. Contreras leads clients to utilize the ...
How do we see through false advertising claims from unhealthy food ads? One third of American kids are overweight or obese. These numbers of obesity rates rise in lower income neighborhoods and cause disease, diabetes, and joint deterioration. We make poor food choices, but what are they influenced by? Taking advantage of knowledge about food advertising, and food literacy education, the new Food Fight Toolkit helps schools, students, parents and staff learn how to make better buying decisions with health in ...
“You can grow anything. People have grown some crazy stuff with the towers,” Nate Storey, a tower farmer in Wyoming stated in a recent article from Civil Eats. “We’ve grown tomatoes and very large statured crops, watermelons. It works until they’re about 20 pounds apiece and then things start falling." Growing indoors in rural Rocky Mountain West, tower farms like these help rural areas provide fresh produce to locals without strain of the harsh climates during winter. Wyoming is considered to have the largest ranches and farms, but the fewest number of vegetable farms of any state. Having an easily accessible source for local fresh produce is important to Wyoming as many foods are shipped in from other areas and may not stay fresh as long. Latinos living in rural ...
Latino kids consume more sugary drinks than average, part of the reason they're more likely to be overweight/obese than their peers.
What can be done?
You're invited to join a webinar at 2 p.m. ET Wednesday, Sept. 30, to learn about new local and national efforts to improve Latino kids' access to healthy drinks.
The webinar, sponsored by the national Council of La Raza (NCLR) and including Salud America!, is bringing together a panel of experts to highlight successful efforts from across the country to improve beverage choices and healthy environments in schools and other community settings: Rosalie P. Aguilar, MS, Project Coordinator, Salud America!, Institute for Health Promotion Research UT Health Science Center at San Antonio (the team behind SaludToday)
David Thomsen, ...
100 gardens in New York Schools, future jobs and college opportunities for underserved students...these are all just "Si se puede! moments", states Stephen Ritz, a 4th grade teacher that is changing the Bronx from the inside out. In food insecure (37%) and highly Latino populated Bronx County (54.8% Latino), New Yorker and 4th grade teacher, Stephen Ritz became a game changer for healthy foods. Starting gardens in classrooms since 2005, Ritz has relied on free resources, his own passion for healthy changes, and a heart for underserved kids to birth the Green Bronx Machine. Producing over 30,000 pounds of healthy fresh produce a year, changing students futures, and re-designing cities with living green graffiti walls, Ritz's passion for kids and communities to have ...
Need help on getting funds for your school or communities initiatives for food projects, want to know how to engage the community towards healthy food access projects? Healthy food access portal was launched in 2013 by PolicyLink, The Food Trust, and The Reinvestment Fund to help communities looking to have healthy food access with resources to develop their ideas and businesses. Webinars are available as a resource on subjects like funding healthy food projects with the USDA, helping with store designs, as well as on subjects like women and entrepreneurs of color starting food projects. New information is always being added, so check out the full site ...
Inspiring every child to get outdoors and be active, is the new initiative, "Every Kid in a Park" program. This program is an Administration-wide effort in partnership with the Department of the Interior, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Education, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Offering kids free passes, the program's efforts are on removing barriers for youth from underserved communities to get to their parks, public lands and waters. Latino kids are likely to benefit from this program and as many Latino Kids have little access to active spaces, studies show. Access to more active and green spaces may assist in building a culture of health and help in lowering the high rates of obesity in Latino ...
Physical activity is a necessity with many cities dealing with high obesity rates, but how can physical activity be promoted within neighborhoods? Street connectivity and walkability are two built environment factors that may assist in physical activity within neighborhoods. Educational tools that analyze a support for walkability are helpful in understanding ways to change the built environment to help the community increase physical activity daily and in helping combat obesity. A recent report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used a 15-item environment audit tool, called MAPS-Mini to evaluate neighborhood design and physical activity in four age groups. MAPS stands for, Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes (MAPS), it works to measure street design, ...
