FoodFight
Mission
FoodFight’s mission is to revolutionize the way we eat and think about food. Using schools as a platform, FoodFight arms teachers, students, parents and school staff with the tools and knowledge they need to make healthier choices and become role models and agents of change for their families and communities.
The Need
As long time public educators we have watched our students come to school everyday with their bags of chips and cans of soda. We have experienced first hand the terrible impact that this nutritionally bankrupt diet has not only on their health, but also on their ability to focus and succeed in school. Almost all of our students spoke of serious cases of obesity, diabetes and other diet related diseases in their families. Through our students’ experience, a story emerged of a society that is overfed yet undernourished, one in which individuals struggle with a food and health crisis but lack the awareness and knowledge necessary to make healthier choices.
Our Solution
We believe that education is a critical element in combating America’s health crisis and that schools should be at the forefront of a campaign to transform our nation’s eating habits and lead us towards a more healthful and sustainable future.
As part of this mission we have designed a unique food literacy curriculum for teachers, students, parents and school staff that moves beyond traditional Nutrition 101 to address questions of food politics, critical consumership, and media literacy.
Knowledge = Power
Traditional nutrition education has proven that waving broccoli in someone’s face and saying “You must eat this!” does not result in successful or sustainable behavior or attitude change.
That’s why we take the approach of giving people information, tools, ownership and agency. This empowers them to act, and inspires them to adopt healthier habits for themselves and their families.
Wellness Programs Improve Employee Performance
Workplace Wellness Programs lead to decreased absenteeism, increased retention, maximized performance and reduced health care costs. All of this means improved stability, productivity and improved morale - essential to a healthy learning environment.
Healthy Teachers Lead to Healthy Students
More than 6.7 million people are employed by the American public school system and teachers have over 1,100 hours of instructional time with their students per year. This creates an opportunity to leverage the unique ability that teachers hold to serve as healthful role models for their students and catalysts for cultural change in schools.
Think about what messages are sent to students when a teacher sets down a candy bar and soda on their desk versus an apple and glass of water.
Academic Success
Improved nutrition can lead to increased focus and attention, improved test scores, reduced absenteeism, better classroom behavior, and a greater understanding of healthy eating behaviors.
Empowering the Next Generation
Students should be inspired to challenge and change embedded behaviors and beliefs about food and its role in their lives. They should see themselves as powerful agents of change and as part of the vanguard of community activists who are engaged in the fight to reclaim our food system.
Did you know?
- More than half of U.S. adults are obese or overweight and 41 million Americans have pre-diabetes
- 1/3 of children in the U.S. are obese or overweight - this is the 1st generation in human history that will have shorter lifespans than the previous one
- Medical costs associated with obesity were estimated at over $147 billion
- In the next 24 hours, 3,000 Americans will die from heart disease and other diet related illnesses
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