Smoothie bike session at Blackbird Leys Adventure Playground[/caption]
Good food was well-represented across the city, with Good Food Oxford network members offering everything from a farm visit (thanks to Sandy Lane Farm and Oxford Bus Company) to an edible hanging basket workshop (Oxford Learning Network with GreenSquare and Catalyst). Wherever you looked, people were out doing their thing and enjoying the hot weather.
As the culmination of Good Food Oxford’s network consultation, we have now settled on our focus areas for the next two years. The GFO team will be supporting network members working to improve Oxford’s food system around all nine areas of the Good Food Charter, but we believe focused work on these three areas is the key to our collective success:
- Building Oxfordshire’s good food economy – “Oxfordshire is a thriving regional food hotspot”
- Good food for all – “Everyone in Oxford eats healthily every day”
- Reducing food waste – “No food ever goes to waste in Oxford”
Sandy Lane Farm Visit[/caption]
Low Carbon Oxford Week had us working on all three – the Big Green Day Out in Broad Street saw local food businesses such as North Aston Organics promoting their box scheme to passers-by, whilst the ever-popular Community Action Group smoothie bike got children at Blackbird Leys Children’s Centre and Adventure Playground making their own healthy and seasonal fruit smoothies, and Ready Stead Cookup! at Leys CDI Youth Project was a race (facilitated in turn by Donnington Doorstep and Relish) to make the healthiest, tastiest meals from surplus supermarket food brought by Oxford Food Bank.
You can see the full range of amazing Low Carbon Oxford Week events on the website: https://lcoweek.org/events/
I’m still surprised when “low carbon” is met with a pained expression or even a groan. “That’s going to be difficult, and definitely not fun – count me out.” But recent findings from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine show that moderate alterations to a person’s diet result in a 17% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and an increase in average life expectancy of eight months. Good news all round!
Good food is low carbon food, which by some magic also happens to be food that is healthy, sustainable, cost-cutting and fair. Low carbon makes demands on us – plenty of vegetables, not much meat, local seasonal sourcing and strict on food waste – but the benefits are abundant. Food forever for everyone, that is good for people, planet, local businesses and the community.
And the community was out in force for this one.
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