By Cathy Tuttle
Seattle is in the midst of a local healthy food renaissance. Revelations about food and public health, food and climate change, and food and the local economy are crossing our tables daily. These food system ideas are relatively new to Seattle policy makers and the public, but they are the bread and butter of Toronto Public Health, a 1900-person city department that has been staffing and studying healthy food systems since the early 1990s.
Dr. David McKeown, director of Toronto Public Health, visited Seattle on October 7, 2010 and shared his department’s most recent report (Cultivating Food Connections: Toward a Healthy and Sustainable Food System for Toronto May 2010). You can read the whole report here.
I was blown away by a number of ideas Dr. McKeown touted, so much so that I’ve been reading up on Toronto’s food system policies ever since. I’ve also called and talked to some of the people in Toronto who’ve been critical in ensuring their local food system successes. I’d like to share a number of Toronto’s ideas I’ve learned in bite-sized chunks over the next few weeks on Urban Farm Hub. Let’s play leapfrog with Toronto and develop our own great food systems here in Seattle!
I'd love to hear from you!