Welcome to Eat Right Here

A newsletter for people who want to change the food system but don't know where to start.

This blend of food, diet, health, and sustainability takes a deep dive into local food systems and adds a healthy portion of policy to the menu.

Motivation

Throughout my career in food and nutrition education, civic dietetics, regional dietary guidance, and university teaching, what has always interested me about food, as much as - even more than - the nutrients it contains, is the system it inhabits.

Everything we eat represents a food system—the often complex web of activities involving the production, processing, transport, consumption, waste, politics and policy.

Sometimes the food system is quite visible and knowable.

For example, because farmers market shoppers often come face to face with producers, they can ask questions directly about specific fruit and vegetable varieties, or breeds and living conditions of animals, in real time. One can learn precisely where food comes from. One can learn about growing methods and get some great cooking tips!

It’s quite a different story for the vast majority of products lining most supermarket shelves. More often than not, few clues are available to inform shoppers about how and where ingredients were produced, and myriad other aspects of the food system embedded in food products.

This food system opaqueness presents a challenge for consumers who strive to become informed food citizens and make food choices that matter to their own health, and the health of their communities and the planet.

Eat Right Here strives to make the invisible visible and will draw comparisons between food systems reflected in different food and diet choices. To be sure, this newsletter won’t shy away from some thorny food system issues—including governance, economics and control, sustainability, food security and food waste, public health and food quality. I will always endeavor, though, to provide opportunities to celebrate, become empowered with strategies for change, and to delight in nutritious, delicious, and truly nourishing food choices every day. 

Together, through the food choices we make and through active engagement in the politics of food, I believe we can simultaneously improve our health, make wise use of our food dollars, and transform the food system. Eat Right Here aims to create a community of food system makers, instead of mere food system takers.

Eat Right Here will be posted at least every other week. These bi-weekly blogs are available free to all subscribers. They are offered with deep respect and gratitude toward the farmers who graciously open their barn doors, hoop houses, and field gates to share their wisdom with me and to the restaurateurs and retailers who let me in on some behind-the-scenes realities so that I might better know the food system that nourishes me the most.

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