The Consultant - Q1 2009 - (Page 63) It Ain’t Easy Being Green The Organic School Project After watching his youngest daughter unsuccessfully fight her chronic allergy-induced asthma with traditional medical treatments, Christian took matters into his own hands employing alternative medicine and an all-organic diet. Ten years later, her asthma is gone, even when eating foods that used to cause violent attacks. Out of this experience and a conviction that all children deserve equal access to healthy foods, Christian founded the Organic School Project (OSP). Its mission is to help school age children make a connection between the food they eat and their health. OSP strives to combat the childhood obesity epidemic and other healthrelated illnesses through programming that promotes three main pillars: Grow: to reconnect children to their food source through school and community organic gardens. Teach: to provide nutrition, mindfulness and environmental stewardship education through an integrated curriculum and wellness workshops. Food: to infuse the school food service system with More Positive Foods™, made from scratch with organic, natural and locally sourced ingredients when available As a demonstration project, OSP has enlisted doctors and medical faculty to collect data so that findings can be presented to the USDA and government agencies with the aim of channeling additional funding to National School Lunch Programs. Helping young people to connect with the food they eat is part of Christian’s Organic School Project. And this is not the only impetus for foodservice professionals to get on board. “Consumers are getting educated fast,” says Christian “and they are asking hard questions.” So it may be only a matter of time before the industry is forced to become more sustainable or risk losing their businesses to those who are. One of the keys to Christian’s success thus far is his acceptance that becoming green and sustainable is an ongoing process. “There are two main pathways in this movement. Option one is to be “less bad” – to slow the car down, but continue in the wrong direction. This requires the least amount of work but really only yields an emotional benefit: feeling better about what I’m doing. Option two is to turn the car around and head in a different direction. I can’t see very far and I don’t First Quarter 2009 always know how I’m going to do it, but I keep driving down that new road because it’s the only way to really make a difference.” The key to success, he insists, is to take it one input at a time, “Try to buy as much locally grown produce as possible, the cleanest meat possible, to reduce waste and keep making our kitchens cleaner.” To find out more about how to get started, you’ll find Christian’s catering newsletter “The Green Scene” at www.GregChristian.com. Sue Wakefield is a freelance writer and photographer based in the Toronto area. She has worked extensively in the marketing and advertising field and is a regular wine and food columnist for Toronto and Vaughan newspapers. She can be reached at swakefield@cogeco.ca. 63 http://www.GregChristian.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.