Food Power!
On Saturday, March 2nd I traveled to Brooklyn, NY to attend the Food Power! Blogger Conference hosted by MomsRising. It was a cold day outside, but inside the air was abuzz with energy from over 100 bloggers and attendees gathered for the event. The morning started off with a BIG surprise – a video welcome from none other than First Lady Michelle Obama! Mrs. Obama welcomed the crowd and spoke about the important role that parents have in helping kids eat healthier and get the physical activity they need to thrive.
Following the video message we heard from Marty Kearns about preventobesity.net, an online community that seeks to build networks to move social change forward. The website has lots of free resources for bloggers including widgets, a “map of the movement” and the opportunity to connect with healthy eating and active living advocates nationwide. I encourage our readers to check out the site too, since as Marty put it, “when leaders connect, good things happen.”
Good things continued to happen at Food Power, too. Next we heard inspiring stories of struggle and success from two “Moms on the Front Lines”: Tanya Fields, founder of The BLK ProjeK, and Migdalia Rivera, founder of Latina on a Mission. Both women spoke about the struggle to feed their families healthy food on a tight budget and lessons learned from their experiences. Tanya spoke about how she believes that “children need palate re-education” to enjoy fresh wholesome food if they grew up on a diet of processed food. According to Tanya, it takes time, but with patience and persistence, healthy eating habits do stick. Migdalia spoke of similar struggles with getting her overweight son to eat better, and the need for parents to “teach kids how to eat well so they themselves can become ambassadors for healthy food.” While each spoke from their own experience, Tanya and Migdalia preached a common message: parents and other adults are a powerful force in the lives of children, so it’s important to teach and model healthy habits every day.
Next we were treated to lunch and a screening of Soul Food Junkies, a film by Byron Hurt that “explores the history and social significance of soul food to black cultural identity and its effect on African American health, good and bad.” After the screening we had a brief Q&A with the filmmaker and two healthy food advocates: Dr. Aletha Maybank from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and Jessica Donze Black from the Kid’s Safe & Healthful Foods Project. The group spoke about strategies to get involved as advocates for health: whether it is through modeling healthy habits to your family, participating in your school’s wellness committee, exercising your right to comment on proposed federal nutrition standards, or utilizing health resources provided by your city or town.
Full from lunch and inspired by the film and panel discussion, we then split up into breakout sessions on school foods, food marketing to kids, and breastfeeding. The school foods session was led by me, Jessica Donze Black (Kids Safe & Healthful Foods Project), Yoli Ouiya (NY Coalition for Healthy School Food) and Elisa Batista (MomsRising.org). Jessica and Yoli provided an overview of the history behind snack foods and drinks in schools and research supporting why it’s important to have healthier options available. Elisa and I focused specifically on ways advocates and bloggers can get more involved on the issue including visiting BagtheJunk.org to learn more about school foods, access free resources and share personal stories. For those of you who couldn’t be there for the conference I encourage you to do the same. And for a play-by-play of the conference, check out the @BagtheJunk twitter feed, which has all my live tweets from the event.