Our Mission:
Based in New York City, FoodFight’s mission is to revolutionize the way teenagers think about food and its role in their lives. Using schools as a platform, FoodFight arms students with tools, knowledge and resources necessary to take responsibility for their eating and buying habits and ownership over their health and life chances.
Foodfight achieves its mission by providing cutting edge teacher training programs, curriculum and support to our teachers from a team of doctors, nutritionists and chefs.
The FoodFight Curriculum:
The FoodFight curriculum is designed to engage students in the larger national conversation about food, food politics and critical consumership. We believe that traditional nutrition education curriculum has not been successful in achieving lasting behavioral change because it has not addressed the nested relationship between the social, political, economic and emotional issues that impact the food system and food environment. It has also failed to address the realities of our students’ lives and experiences.
As long-time former teachers, we know that to be meaningful and transformative, it is crucial for curriculum to be dynamic, interactive and student centered. FoodFight lessons are designed to inspire students to challenge and change embedded behaviors and beliefs about food and its role and their lives.
The FoodFight curriculum has two parts. The first part, focused on media literacy and critical consumership, is aimed to deconstruct the students’ existing notions of food and consumer culture. This part exposes the mechanisms of advertising and branding and demonstrates how they shape our eating and buying habits. We examine and challenge the very basic assumptions of American consumer culture, using the fast food industry as our main case study. Our students will learn to identify the effects of mass produced, nutritionally bankrupt foods on their health and life chances. They will also understand the “health-wealth” connection and the role of government subsidies and policies in this equation. This part is designed to create a sense of urgency and encourage a rebellious spirit that will translate in part 2 into constructive personal and social commitments.
In Part 2, students will learn basic nutrition facts and concepts. They will learn to read labels and ingredient lists, understand the difference between portion and serving size, identify and access healthful alternatives to fast food, and prepare healthy, affordable meals. They will create their own “Mindful Eating Plan” in which they commit to making three changes in their personal eating and buying habits. Finally, students will work in small groups to implement a social action plan around an issue concerning food politics and learn the basics of social advocacy and self-empowerment.
Our goal is audacious but, we believe, achievable. We want students to 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.
