On today’s episode I want to talk about reconnecting the food cycle. When it comes to food, we spend so much time talking about what food we eat, and how that food is grown, that we miss the bigger picture connections. But, the fact is that if you want to eat food that is nutritious and tasty, then the whole food cycle matters. If you want to solve problems like food waste, energy and resource use in our food systems, then the whole food cycle matters.
What I am illustrating is that where and how we interact with our food or food systems, through buying, collecting, trading, foraging for example ultimately affects things like the nutrition profile of your food, the relationship you have with growers, the packaging, the taste, flavour and waste generated. Each part is connected to the others in different ways.
A few years ago, I embodied this idea into a framework that I call Dr. Tara’s Food for Flourishing Framework or Dr Tara’s Regenerative Food Framework. It is a visual framework for creating healthy food systems within planetary boundaries. The framework is two rings around an inner circle, but it all started with the food cycle. I will put a diagram in the transcript of the show.