Changing the Way We Eat at RNC
On March 7th, residents of Rye and surrounding communities gathered at the Rye Nature Center for an official viewing party of TEDxManhattan. Founded in 2011, TEDxManhattan, "Changing the Way we Eat" is an annual event that brings together key experts in the field of sustainable food and farming in order to spark discussion, educate the audience, and help spread ideas that can help fix our broken food system. Additional goals of the event are to create new synergies, connections and collaborations across disciplines, to help break the food movement out of its "bubble."
Restaurant industry icons Danny Meyer and Tom Colicchio kicked off the day's event, followed by talks by experts in hunger, food waste, education, economics, wellness and sustainable farming. Click here for a great on-line summary of the day and an 18 minute video recap of the nearly 7 hours of inspiring talks.
In addition to the "live feed" from the Times Center in Manhattan, we were lucky to have local healthy eating experts speak about resources closer to home. Eileen Iorio, founder of Clean Green Pantry shared a list of local resources for eating sustainable food as well as ideas for supporting holistic initiatives in our community. Angela Vita, a healthy eating cultural demonstration specialist for Whole Foods Market in Port Chester, shared insights into the store's systems for supporting locally sourced food, and ensuring the sustainability of the products they sell through various rating systems.
There was lively discussion during lunch and breaks about areas of interest and ways to keep the dialogue going. Ideas included "walk the aisles night" to learn more about shopping sustainably at Whole Foods, visiting/supporting the TEDxManhattan 2015 award winning program, Green Bronx Machine, organizing a screening of Real Food Media finalists, developing resources for green birthday parties, and education on ways to support legislation in favor of sustainable agriculture.
