Listed below are 10 significant messages Sister Maureen Freeman, director of White Violet Center for Eco-Justice, shared in her presentation, “The True Cost of Food,” at this year’s Human Rights Day at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana.
1. We make a choice to help or harm the environment with every meal.
2. Be more active about what we buy. Find out where your food comes from. Read labels. (Is your fruit cup from the Philippines?)
3. Know your local farmers/farms. (Resource: www.localharvest.org)
4. Eat according to the season. (It’s strawberry season in Indiana. Woot!)
5. Learn to cook.
6. Buying local food saves 17 times the fuel costs as opposed to buying food in the supermarkets that have traveled an average of 2,000 miles from farm to table.
7. If you keep buying the food in the supermarkets (that have traveled 2,000 miles) they will keep supplying it. We vote three times a day.
8. We shouldn’t be against high fructose corn syrup, but we should be against the quantity of it currently in our food. It’s in “everything” today.
9. What it really costs to grow, ship and sell food is staggering. Buying locally keeps more of that money in your community.
10. 80-90 percent of our food depends on our pollinators, the bees. They are at risk because of Colony collapse disorder.
To watch “The True Cost of Food” video (15 minutes), presented by The Sierra Club Sustainable Consumption Committee, go to http://www.sierraclub.org/truecostoffood/.
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| Sister Maureen Freeman talks about The True Cost of Food. |
1. We make a choice to help or harm the environment with every meal.
2. Be more active about what we buy. Find out where your food comes from. Read labels. (Is your fruit cup from the Philippines?)
3. Know your local farmers/farms. (Resource: www.localharvest.org)
4. Eat according to the season. (It’s strawberry season in Indiana. Woot!)
5. Learn to cook.
6. Buying local food saves 17 times the fuel costs as opposed to buying food in the supermarkets that have traveled an average of 2,000 miles from farm to table.
7. If you keep buying the food in the supermarkets (that have traveled 2,000 miles) they will keep supplying it. We vote three times a day.
 |
| Showing The True Cost of Food video on Human Rights Day. |
8. We shouldn’t be against high fructose corn syrup, but we should be against the quantity of it currently in our food. It’s in “everything” today.
9. What it really costs to grow, ship and sell food is staggering. Buying locally keeps more of that money in your community.
10. 80-90 percent of our food depends on our pollinators, the bees. They are at risk because of Colony collapse disorder.
To watch “The True Cost of Food” video (15 minutes), presented by The Sierra Club Sustainable Consumption Committee, go to http://www.sierraclub.org/truecostoffood/.
