What’s the Story of Your Food? Short Films by Nourish

dana velden | the kitchn | september 13, 2011

What America’s schoolchildren are eating is receiving a lot of attention these days. In schools across the country, there are edible schoolyards, visits with the First Lady, and interventions from Jamie Oliver. Nourish, a non-profit educational initiative, has taken up the question “What’s the Story of Your Food?” and built it into a multimedia curriculum resource for K-12 educators, parents and health professionals. Nourish Short Films is their latest release.

Nourish Short Films: 54 Bite-Sized Videos about the Story of Your Food is filled with ideas and inspirations, offering topics for thought-provoking discussions, linking learning with action. Many of the well-known sustainable food advocates are here: Michael Pollan, Alice Waters, Jamie Oliver, Anna Lappé and Bryant Terry. Their messages may be familiar to those of us interested in food, but these films seek to preach outside the choir. Each one is a succinct little nugget of information and inspiration.

Nourish produces educational materials that encourage children to discover where their food comes from, how it is grown, who picks it, how it’s distributed, and what are the advantages and disadvantages associated with it. Knowing the story of their food helps children, and by extent their families, make informed decisions about what they eat and empowers them to demand that food be safe, accessible and affordable for everyone.

Parents, educators, librarians, and community leaders will all benefit from Nourish’s collection of videos and curriculum materials. As a parent, it might be interesting to take a label from a can of food and trace its story with your child. Or see if you can trace a cut of beef to the animal it came from. (Good luck!)

For more information, visit the jam-packed Nourish website where you can find many free materials. Several, but not all, of Nourish Short Films are available on YouTube.