Let's Talk About...Food
The Living Kitchen Wellness Group
Red Gecko Productions
Laur Fisher
Purpose/Objective:
Let’s Talk About...Food is an exciting and engaging webseries that answers our basic food questions through exploring various conscious food businesses and movements in Toronto.
The purpose of Let’s Talk About...Food is to educate Torontonians on the basic food issues that affect and impact their daily lives. The questions at hand will vary and always be relevant, such as: understanding how choosing strawberries laced with pesticides impacts their health or how their choice to buy a fairtrade cup of coffee allows farmers in a foreign country to earn a fair wage.
For many people who are already in the food industry, the answers to theses questions might be obvious, but to the average Torontonian it might be taboo to ask these questions. For example: What does organic mean? How can I eat local during Toronto winters? How can I eat organically if I can’t afford it? What’s a CSA?
- Through social media outlets and the Let’s Talk About…Food webseries, we aim to empower young Torontonians to make educated choices about their food, their health and their environment.
- We aim to strengthen the food community within Toronto by introducing Torontonians to conscious food businesses and movements that they may have otherwise never found. This will increase support of these local businesses.
- By bringing the attention to our own local food industry, this will increase the number of people eating organics and locally produced foods, reducing carbon emissions, as well transforming people’s lifestyle choice.
Who Will it Serve:
Let’s Talk About...Food aims to serve two major communities: young Torontonians and food conscious businesses and movements in Toronto.
Our target audience is young Torontonians in their 20’s and 30’s who are well versed in social technologies yet unaware of many of the food issues within their city. We will access this community using Twitter and Facebook, by asking them to post questions they have about the food system on their Facebook or Twitter feeds. We will base each webisode around these questions, talking to local food businesses and movements who can help provide the answers to these questions in an engaging way.
The webseries also works to serve the conscious food businesses and movements in Toronto, highlighting them in our episodes and allowing them to explain the importance of what they do, why they have an impact on Torontonians, and how Torontonians can get involved in these ventures. Although we plan on tackling many ‘heavy’ subjects around food issues, the webseries will be fun, light and engaging to capture viewer’s attentions. Let’s Talk About...Food aims to increase social awareness of these businesses and movements to impact the consumer market.
What is Unique and Innovative:
As mentioned above, Let’s Talk About...Food is a fun and engaging webseries that highlights and answers on-going food related questions by asking the conscious food businesses and movements in Toronto for answers. What’s really unique is that the webisodes are based on questions the viewers ask via Twitter and Facebook. Allowing the viewers to have a large part in creating the content for the webisodes works to serve the needs of the community and build advocacy around food simultaneously.
This project is revolutionary in that it utilizes social media and internet based education. The film aspect allows people to learn quickly and have immediate access to information from anywhere. With our lifestyle being face paced- people are reading less and watching more.
How It will Help Toronto:
Let’s Talk About...Food is a webseries that aims to bridge the gap between Toronto’s knowledgeable consumers and Toronto’s conscious businesses, therefore creating conscious consumers in Toronto. We plan on increasing social awareness of these conscious ventures and movements in Toronto, increasing support of the local economy.
The webseries also aims to transform people’s diets and lifestyles to support the health of Torontonians while simultaneously preventing illness and disease. Since this webseries has no borders or boundaries - it also allows other provinces and countries to know what Toronto is up to in terms of their food scene, impacting society on a macro scale. This will allow Toronto to be a leading force in healthy, sustainable, local food advocacy.
Direct Impact on Reducing Carbon Emissions:
1. Local transportation: This project brings the focus to eating locally and reducing the distance that food travels as well as the costs and wastes involved in transport.
2. Organics: We focus on promoting clean sources of energy in regards to: water supply, seeds, pesticides, GMOs and chemicals.
3. Eating less meat: This project advocates and explores the importance of a vegetable- based diet and locally produced animal products. Not only does a vegetable based diet support optimal health, but it also supports reduced waste and reduced energy consumption.
We will also be looking at the local meat and dairy industry, and how that impacts consumers- in terms of more efficient use of transportation, increased nutrients and quality of food, as well as the reduced expenditure on antibiotics and hormones.
Indirect Impact on Reducing Carbon Emissions:
1. Preventative Health Care: By taking on nutritious food and eating habits, people are taking on their health, which supports disease prevention. This means reduced dependency on health care- which can decrease waste and the over use of medications. This impacts people’s health directly. People are more likely to live an active lifestyle if they are feeling better as a result of eating higher quality food.
2. Active Lifestyles: Moving the focus to local businesses and venues, makes it possible for people to walk more, cycle more, and use public transit- instead of driving far distances to get food.
3. Local Economy and Businesses: Educating people about local restaurants and food businesses will bring more money to the local economy.
The Living Kitchen Wellness Group- Tamara Green and Sarah Grossman
Role:
Interviewers/hosts in the film-series
Educators- educate about nutrition and health, advocate for healthy, local, sustainable and accessibly food
Connectors- connect the Toronto community to people in the food field
The Living Kitchen Wellness Group began over a shared passion for health, nutrition, cooking, gardening and our undying love for good food. As Certified Nutritional Practitioners we understand the connection between what people eat and the state of their health. We educate and empower people to be healthy, happy and excited about eating good, nutritious food.
We believe that nutrition is not just about cooking but is connected to everything from how our food is grown to our emotional and spiritual wellbeing. The Living Kitchen Wellness Group explores how nutrition, movement, gardening, and cooking support the body and mind by preventing illness, restoring health and maintaining overall vitality.
Our Values:
1. We bring joy to eating food.
2. We believe that every body needs different nutrients and foods. There is not one diet that is best for everyone and we all require something unique.
3. We always prepare and eat whole foods.
Push Food Forwad- Darcy Higgins
Role:
Interviewer in the film-series
Advocator- educate and advocate for healthy, local, sustainable food accessibility
Connector- connect the Toronto community to people in the food field
We are a collaborator, networker and supporter of Toronto's sustainable food movement and are thus connected and work with dozens of organizations and growing social ventures in Toronto and beyond. Our staff, board, advisors and volunteers come with a wealth of experience in community food security, policy and social change.
Darcy Higgins is the Executive Director of Food Forward. He has a background in food and environmental policy, advising politicians at all level. His writing, research and program management has contributed to climate, local food and community economic development strategies and programs in Toronto and beyond.
Food Forward Advocacy Alliance is a registered non-profit organization in Toronto that provides a people's voice for a better food system. We work with the public, politicians and those involved in the food sector to educate and advocate for food that is healthy, local, sustainable, ethically produced and accessible for all.
There are several organizations in Toronto committed to improving people's health, the environment and animal welfare by growing and distributing good food. We want to help the positive projects in the City multiply and become mainstream, by pointing out the problems in the modern food system and providing a recipe for change at City Hall.
The organization has 3 main areas of focus:
1. Educating - through public forums, workshops, web and social media;
2. Advocate - making the case for policy change, educating local politicians, mobilizing public interest;
3. Connect - identifying networking and collaboration opportunities in the food movement and doing capacity building, linking and social events.
Red Gecko Productions- Jan Keck
Role:
Filmmaker, Cinematographer and Storyteller
Red Gecko is Jan Keck. A Documentary Filmmaker, Cinematographer & Photographer.
Whether documentary filmmakers looking to round out their crew or professionals in need of a video,
Jan’s clients use the same three words to describe him.
“He’s a storyteller.”
Everyone knows that stories are what our audiences want, and that a well-told tale changes the way people think and act.
As a documentary filmmaker, Jan knows how to tell authentic stories with lasting visual impact.
“He understands the entire process.”
Jan can do it all, from planning through delivery of a finished product. His end-to-end knowledge means you’re in good hands.
And if he’s only doing part of the project, he’s always thinking about what the next guy needs, too.
“He’s part of my team.”
Jan works closely with his clients. He understands the importance of relationships and research — before work begins,
he takes time to understand you and the assignment. And ensures that the end product works within — and enhances — your existing framework.
- Audiovisual Media (B.Eng // University of Media, Stuttgart)
- Documentary Organization of Canada
- Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto
Laur Fisher
Role:
Carbon Emissions Consultant
Laur has over six years experience building sustainability projects and programs in the United States, New Zealand, Sweden, and Canada. She has worked with both the public and private sectors in the development, reporting and communications of sustainability projects, focusing on carbon management, green building, energy efficiency, and waste reduction.
She also has leadership training in group facilitation, and has co-led and supported workshops with The Natural Step and other organizations. She holds a self-designed Bachelor’s degree in Sustainability from Tufts University in Boston, MA.
Currently Laur works at the Canada Green Building Council – Greater Toronto Chapter, is a volunteer for CivicAction’s Project Neutral, award recipient of the Centre for Social Innovation, and member of the Emerging Leader’s Network. A creative as well as technical thinker, we bring Laur onboard to measure and effectively communicate the carbon impact of our project.
We will ensure that this project is self-supporting in 3 ways:
1. Sponsored Episodes and Advertisements - We ask businesses and movements in Toronto to sponsor episodes (especially ones that are directly related to them) and post quick advertisement within the webseries and on the Let’s Talk About...Food website.
2. Donations - We will have a donations section on the Let’s Talk About...Food website for viewers and businesses to make donations to the webseries.
3. Paid Content - We will create additional content that will benefit viewers of the webseries that will be paid content. The viewer can choose to pay for the content and access the additional, valuable resources.
The ClimateSpark Social Venture Challenge is a project of:
Our sponsors:
