Department of Health

 

Food Day 2012

The City of St. Louis Department of Health, Health Promotion Division partnered with Saint Louis University's (SLU's) Department of Nutrition and Dietetics and Les Dames d'Escoffier to put on a Food Day event for 2012.Food Day is a day to celebrate and advocate for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food.This year marks the second annual Food Day celebration.The day of October 24 is set aside each year to address a variety of food-related issues including health and nutrition, hunger, agricultural policy, animal welfare, and farm worker justice.

This year's celebration took place on October 24^th from 11:00 am to 1:00 pm on SLU's campus and included a short presentation by Nicola MacPherson.MacPherson is the owner of Ozark Forest Mushrooms, a local business that produces a variety of mushroom and mushroom-based products for sale in the region.She provided an interesting talk about the sustainable practices used to produce mushrooms on a year-round basis.In honor of her work in sustainable agriculture, MacPherson was presented with a beautiful crystal award and an honorarium funded through Saint Louis University's Great issues Committee to help her continue her work.

After MacPherson's talk, attendees were treated to a gourmet 5-course lunch in SLU's urban farm that featured MacPherson's mushrooms and a variety of other locally-grown foods.Lunch included a goat cheese and mushroom crostini, a local green salad with smoked beets and herbal vinaigrette, braised greens with sweet potato biscuit, and porchetta with "fried oyster mushroom" stuffing or acorn squash with "fried oyster mushroom" stuffing.For dessert, attendees had a choice of peanut butter and raspberry Hefeweizen jelly truffles, nut brittle, and pumpkin spice truffles.Attendees also got an opportunity to sample kale chips and an apple pie smoothie created with a bike blender.

While attendees enjoyed their delicious food, they had a chance to visit with some of the vendors who participated in Food Day.Participating vendors included the City of St. Louis Department of Health, Gateway Greening, the International Institute, Earth Dance, Les Dames d'Escoffier, SPP Production, and the Humane Society. In addition to Ozark Forest Mushrooms, featured local farmers included the Ozark Mountain Creamery, Baetje Farms, 3 Girls and a Tractor, Shuetz Farms, Thies Farms and Greenhouses, Dan Kelley and Andy Ayers.Some attendees also got a chance to talk more with MacPherson one-on-one.

About 225 people attended this Food Day event.Overall the attendees were very pleased; they actively engaged in discussion with the vendors and sponsors present.They asked questions about SLU's urban farm and sustainable practices.Attendees discussed gardening with SLU's master gardener and provided suggestions for food items and activities for next year. Afterwards, many participants shared that they learned a lot from this event.

Thank you to everyone who helped plan and conduct such a successful Food Day 2012 event!However, Food Day is not just a day of celebration; according to the Center for Science in the Public's Interest (CSPI) (the creators of Food Day), "the ultimate goal of Food Day is to strengthen and unify the food movement in order to improve our nation's food policies."This requires a year-round effort between the food day celebrations.All the agencies involved in this effort have made a commitment to improve food systems by improving quality, availability, sustainability and the policies surrounding food production.We anticipate addressing some of the issues mentioned above in the upcoming year.If you have an interest in shaping food policy and would like to help with this effort, please contact us at 314/657-1480.