Walking with your food glasses on!

Walk in the Neighbourhood

Put your “food glasses on”! This means we are walking around finding things related to food, food production, consumption, storage, etc. Walk with your friends around the neighbourhood, what do you see that makes you think about food?

Perhaps you will see :

• Fields of corn or millet that can be used for making ugali

• An empty tin lying in the ditch that someone has carelessly

  thrown away

• A lorry transporting milk from a farm to the dairy

• Someone carrying shopping bags on his or her way home from the supermarket

• A cow that makes you think about a breakfast of bread, cheese, and butter

• A lake or a fish

• A ship with bananas

• A cat hunting mice

• Animal droppings

• An orange tree

• A leaf that has been nibbled by a caterpillar

Report: Tell each other what you have seen and experienced.

• Identify the food chains: Try to create a food chain, its path from cradle to grave. Example: ORANGE: core-tree-orange fruits- factory-juice-juice packaging-grocery store-kitchen-waste.

Sustainable use: Discuss with your friends and try to imagine the journey of that food and make a drawing of it, or use some cards to imagine it. Use cards to write the different steps, one on each card, and identify the chain of connection. Or draw diagrams with markers.

Is the food chain sustainable? How can it be changed for the better?

Now suggest a new chain of connection. Add more steps if you feel it’s needed or remove some that are not sustainable. You can also use markers if you don’t have cards or Post-it.

Sustainable Food Chain project (SUSTAIN - The Alliance for Better Food and Farming)

When we talk about sustainable food chains we mean food, agriculture and practices that enhance the health and welfare of people and animals, improve the working and living environment, promote equity, and enrich society and culture.

‘Sustainable food’, according to some authors, refers to food which meets a number of criteria including;

• Proximate – originating from the closest practicable source or the minimization of energy use

• Healthy as part of a balanced diet and not containing harmful biological or chemical contaminants

• Fairly or cooperatively traded between producers, processors, retailers, and consumers

• Non-exploiting of employees in the food sector in terms of pay and conditions · Environmentally beneficial or benign in its production (e.g. organic)

• Accessible both in terms of geographic access and affordability · High animal welfare standards in both production and transport

• Socially inclusive of all people in society · Encouraging knowledge and understanding of food and food culture