The Dairy Show

If you Teach it, They will Eat it

Another of my favorite talks from the TEDx Manhattan conference was by Dr. Melony Samuels.  Dr. Samuels is the founder and director of the Bed-Study Campaign Against Hunger.  This organization runs a food pantry and community garden.  In her talk Dr. Samuels tells the story of how this innovative food pantry, which allows people to pick from their stock whatever items they choose, found itself stocking fresh produce that people weren't taking.  So, they started teaching people how to cook with the vegetables they were unfamiliar with.  Lo and behold, after the clients learned how to use these vegetables they started to "buy" them.  Next the pantry took their backyard and turned it into a garden that the local community cared for and used the vegetables they grew to stock the pantry.  Here Dr. Samuels tell this story and more in her own words below.

How Not To Build A Food System

This past weekend was the food focused TEDx conference in Manhattan.  The title of the conference was "Changing the way we eat" and brought together over 20 speakers to give their takes on the US Food System.  The speakers ranged from farmers to chefs to academics to film makers and were all great.  Over the next few days I will highlight a few of my favorites.

First up is Dr. Scott Kahan.  Scott is a preventive medicine physician who graduated from the program I am currently in, he is on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, George Washington School of Public Health, and the Co-director of the George Washington University Weight Management Center.  In his talk, Scott describes why the defaults in society make it easy for people to eat unhealthy

food and gain weight.