Why should I care about food?

Last week, I found myself being a guest teacher in a grade 12 foods class in a small community in Northern Vancouver Island.  I taught the students to make stuffed French toast and then we had a discussion on food security (not because there is a direct relationship between the two, but it is one of my favourite brunch meals).  After we had eaten and talked about some of the different elements of food security, such as who is responsible to ensure our food is safe to eat and why access to “culturally appropriate” food would be include in the definition, I had the students move themselves along an imaginary continuum we had drawn to represent how secure they felt about their food source – standing at one end of the classroom indicated they felt very secure about the food they access, and standing at the other end indicated they felt a fair bit of risk or uncertainty about their next meal.  I had been feeling pretty good at that point about my ability to engage the students in dialogue, and about their knowledge of food systems.  As I explained the exercise, one student looked at me and said, “Why should I care about this?”  There isn’t much she could have said to make me feel more deflated, but I might have said the same thing when I was in high school.  I would like to think that what she was really saying was, “I’d just rather not get up and physically move myself.”  I hope she was saying “I’ve never thought about this before, and I don’t yet realize how much I take for granted that others will ensure that I won’t go hungry today, or in the coming years.”  I can’t remember how I replied to her question, but I hope that as this food network grows and we dialogue about what we eat and where that food comes from, we will come up with a good answer to the student’s question.  Or better yet, that the question will change to “how can I care about this?” 

International Students ask about Food Justice

Saturday night, I joined a group of UBC international students for their weekly dinner and discussion.  I was invited by Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship to talk about food, justice and hunger in Vancouver, and to share about our Christian Community Food Network.  Since we were talking about food and culture, I invited the students to cook the meal with me.  Together, about 25 of us, many whom were inexperienced in a kitchen, made roasted butternut squash soup, baked potatoes with as many toppings as I could think of, and baked apples stuffed with raisins, walnuts and cinnamon.  Dinner was delicious, despite a little chaos as we were preparing it, and the momentary fluster I felt when I handed one student a stalk of broccoli, and he looked at me somewhat apologetically and asked, “What do I do?  I’ve never washed broccoli before.” 

Between dinner and dessert, we talked about food security, and why the definition includes a reference to the importance of culturally appropriate foods.  We read the story of Jesus feeding the 5000 (John 6), and talked about different practices of saying grace.  We also talked about why after the crowd had eaten their fill, Jesus asked his disciples to "Gather the leftovers so nothing is wasted" (v. 12).  I learned the word “mottainai,” which is a Japanese term used to convey feelings of regret when anything, even a spoonful of rice, is wasted.  We don’t have such a term in English, but I think it captures what Jesus meant when he spoke to his disciples that day.  He must have known that we would still be reading that story 2000 years later, and known how much food we would come to waste, and how unnecessarily hungry so many people would be. 

The students asked good questions about hunger and malnutrition.  I continue to be encouraged by people’s interest in the community meals and food programs in Vancouver.  I couldn’t answer the students’ questions about why so many go hungry here, nor could I answer their questions about what Canadian food is, though I did say that the dinner we had cooked was as typically Canadian as I could imagine!