The Educated Eaters Project works to transform how the HCZ community engages with food—through improving our nutrition environment and thinking more sustainably about what we eat through hands-on nutrition education in the garden and the kitchen, in the classroom and the boardroom.
Find out more about our ongoing projects here.
We all must eat. Our work is to educate our community around how to eat better. We are not all called to work as gardeners, chefs or farmers, but eating is one of our most basic instincts and needs. We need to eat throughout our lives. We participate in the food system, to some degree or another, every day. But as the world has become busier and more complex we’ve grown increasingly disconnected from our food sources and our eating habits. Our neighborhood and our nation is currently struggling with a food identity crisis and the resulting health problems are costing us not just in terms of years of our lives, but in terms of quality of our health.
The Educated Eaters Project is committed to teaching the next generation how to feed themselves better. To achieve this goal, we’ve got to have comprehensive community support on all levels—from parents and students, to staff and policy makers. Eating may be one of our most basic instincts, but we believe it needs more focus and attention that we’ve been giving it.
The Educated Eaters Project strives to empower our community to eat more responsibly, more carefully and more sustainably. This work takes many forms and venues—as it should—since food is culture and culture change is slow work. We must first understand what better food is, then make better food more accessible through education, collaboration and outreach, and all the while remind ourselves of the truth that eating healthfully is a key component of living well. The changes will come through baby steps that over time will have a huge impact.
The conversation about food is connected to every area of scholarship and society. Together let’s rediscover how to grow, cook, eat and engage with food in a healthy, sustainable and responsible way. Transforming what we eat is crucial to HCZ’s larger missions—in the classroom, the future and beyond. The better we eat, the better we learn and the better we live. So, join us as we create a community of Educated Eaters.