Food Day--Time to Eat Real!

Food Day, was on October 24.

Mission: to promote a nationwide celebration of a movement towards more healthy, affordable and sustainable food.  In 2011, Food Day, brought together hundreds of thousands of Americans in all 50 states, at more then 2,300 events.  October 24, 2012, Food Day was even bigger, creating a web that criss-cross the entire United states.

FOOD DAY PRIORITIES

*Promote safer, healthier diets

*Support sustainable and organic farms

*Reduce hunger

*Reform factory farms to protect the environment and animals

*Support fair working conditions for food and farm workers

Food should be tasty, healthy, affordable, and produced with care for the environment, animals and the women and men who grow, harvest, and serve it. Food Day’s goal, to bring us closer to this ideal.  Food Day brings together some of the most prominent voices for change in the food movement.

Charlie Hong Kong, registered, since we are committed and share the mission and priorities of Food Day.  We asked our Mayor, Don Lane, to declare October 24, Food Day in Santa Cruz, to which he whole heartedly agreed.  I assisted by writing the Proclamation, which Mayor Lane read at the downtown Wednesday, Community Farmer’s Market, also registered as an event. The Community Farmer’s Market the very epicenter for the model of the sustainable farm to table movement.

Charlie Hong Kong seeks to inspire community action to improve our food system and American diet.  We use organic locally grown produce.  On Food Day, Charlie Hong Kong customers were asked, if they would sign a Pledge, declaring “I Eat Real”.  There was a generous response, customers signing until all the forms were used.  These pledges will accompany petitions to our US Congress men and woman, demanding change in our current food system.  This is how a movement generates momentum.  Politicians don’t create movements. “We step in front of a movement and call it our own.”

To acknowledge our customers for eating healthy, we handed out our delicious coconut rice pudding.

To learn more about Food Day and become part of building the movement, go to www.foodday.org  Become a part of next year’s Food Day, October 24, 2013,

“It’s Time to Eat Real!”