Here in Belleville, there is a campaign underway: “We All Deserve To Eat”. It offers a simple message, while aiming to address a very complex set of issues.
Food. A simple pleasure for some… a life-threatening struggle for others. It’s one of the most basic necessities of our lives, yet all too often, issues surrounding food go unnoticed, undiscussed. We all need to eat. We all deserve to eat.
There is nearly nothing else that touches so many aspects of our world. Food keeps us alive and healthy. It can heal us of many ailments and connect us to one another. We all eat, and we can all share in the process of growing, preparing, and enjoying food together. It can bring down barriers and offer a common ground.
Food also connects us to our natural environment. It is grown from the earth, becomes fuel for our bodies, rebuilds our cells, becomes us… how much closer can we get to mother nature than that?
Food is powerful. It is the backbone of our economies and many of our livelihoods. We can become farmers or chefs, food producers or food scientists, servers or caregivers. Marketers, packagers, promoters…
Through the power of food, one can live a simple life and a good one. Gardening for exercise and time outside in nature. Cooking for productivity, art, skill-building, and caretaking. Eating for pleasure, nurture, and bonding with others.
Food is essential. Yet it is often treated as the opposite. Another task. A necessity to mindlessly shovel down our throats as we rush to maintain the rat race of today’s life. Our current food economy does not help this. There are serious problems along every step of the food chain.
Food is life, food is nurture. It should be thought of as sacred and treated as a basic right. It is not the commodity it has become. And being treated as such, our food system is failing us.
The We All Deserve To Eat campaign aims to open a community conversation around food: to unveil the issues within our food system; to bring compassion and care to those who struggle to get food; and to offer real solutions for rebuilding the system and creating a community around food that benefits us all and allows us to thrive. www.WeAllDeserveToEat.ca
