Real Food Hopkins held its second annual 100-Mile Meal, a real and sustainable meal followed by a panel discussion, in celebration of the first national Food Day. The event was held on Saturday, Oct. 29 in Charles Commons and attracted approximately 100 diners and proponents of the real food movement.
Although Food Day was on Oct. 24, Real Food Hopkins decided to hold its function on the following Saturday. The event was open to undergraduates, graduates, faculty, staff and interested community members. Students from the University of Maryland with programs similar to Real Food Hopkins were in attendance, as well as professors from the sociology department and various environmental departments.
Real Food Hopkins aimed to foster an environment in which people who are interested in real food could unite to learn and converse with each other, forging connections among different sectors of the real food movement.
The Real Food movement centers on six basic principles: reducing diet-related diseases by promoting healthy foods, supporting sustainable farms and restricting subsidies to big agribusiness, increasing the availability of food and alleviating hunger, protecting the environment and animals by reforming factory farms, promoting health by limiting junk-food marketing to kids and supporting fair conditions for food and farm workers. As a national event, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa and Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut are the Honorary Co-Chairs for Food Day 2011, which is sponsored by the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
"Our main goal is to bring together like-minded people from all divisions of Hopkins and the surrounding Baltimore community to start coming together on issues that relate to food sustainability," sophomore Raychel Santo, President of Real Food Hopkins, said.
The meal costed only $5 and featured food from the Johns Hopkins Sustainability Garden and other local producers, as well as an engaging dialogue amongst diners and representatives, whose dedication for the Real Food movement extended into conversations that lasted past the discussion panel on "Real Food: From Cafeterias to Communities" until later than 8 PM.
The panel included Brent Kim, MHS, Farming for the Future project officer at the Center for a Livable Future from the Bloomberg School of Public Health; Gladys Burrell, Johns Hopkins food service worker and member of UNITE HERE Local 7; Cheryl Carmona and Aliza Sollins, who are urban gardeners; and community organizers at Boone Street Urban Farm.
The discussion covered the various aspects of the food system, such as soil science and the health and environmental benefits of fresh food.
"There were lots of people, the food was good and the speakers were very interesting and had very different backgrounds and perspectives on what was going on," freshman Charles Wagers said.
The panel also centered on the greater theme of the initiative to incorporate fresh food into the diets of Americans. Carmona and Sollins discussed their efforts to get the people of Baltimore to integrate the fresh food from their Boone Street Garden into their diet.
Particularly relevant to Hopkins and its undergraduates, Gladys Burrell spoke about Hopkins's transition towards adopting fresh food. With her experience of more than 40 years with Johns Hopkins dining, she explained the Hopkins food system. Having been head chef in the 1970's, when boxed foods dominated the menu, she attested to the vast improvements in Hopkins dining.
Real Food Hopkins announced its new project, as a part of the Real Food Challenge, to track Hopkins's purchasing through the Real Food Calculator and calculate the percentage of real food on campus. Real food is defined as being local, ecologically sound, humane and fair, as in fair trade and working conditions. Real Food Hopkins has collected the receipts from the FFC from September for the calculations.
"Through the real food calculator, we want to do [the FFC's] legwork for them, so that way they'll be that much more willing to accept our proposals because we can show them that we put forth the work and we want to see change," Santo said.
The ultimate goal of the national Real Food Challenge movement is to raise the level of fresh food on campus to 20 percent by 2020, and the individual efforts on the part of Hopkins will contribute towards this objective.
Santo believes that Real Food Hopkins's efforts will be successful because of the connections that they made with the farmers and because of the cultural shift that students can initiate.
"It's a huge change in the food system, and that's what the point of the Real Food Challenge is: if college campuses can do it, it can be a model for the world. If we can shift our purchasing, and we can reshape the food systems from the campus level, gradually that will work up into every other aspect of the food system," Santo said.
