what's on your plate? is a witty and provocative documentary produced and directed by award-winning Catherine Gund about kids and food politics.
Filmed over the course of one year, the film follows two eleven-year-old multi-racial city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah take a close look at food systems in New York City and its surrounding areas. With the camera as their companion, the girl guides talk to each other, food activists, farmers, new friends, storekeepers, their families, and the viewer, in their quest to understand what’s on all of our plates.
The girls address questions regarding the origin of the food they eat, how it’s cultivated, how many miles it travels from the harvest to their plate, how it’s prepared, who prepares it, and what is done afterwards with the packaging and leftovers. They visit the usual supermarkets, fast food chains, and school lunchrooms. But they also check into innovative sustainable food system practices by going to farms, greenmarkets, and community supported agriculture programs. They discover that these programs both help struggling farmers to survive on the one hand and provide affordable, locally-grown food to communities on the consumer end, especially to lower-income urban families. In WHAT’S ON YOUR PLATE?, the two friends formulate sophisticated and compassionate opinions on the state of their society, and by doing so inspire hope and active engagement in others.
Relationships between children and the food they eat have become more complicated and more important than ever. In a free-market system in the richest and most culturally diverse country in the world, the stakes could not be higher when it comes to who controls food production, distribution, cost, and quality. So, how do kids feel about food — accessing it, choosing what to have, preparing it and eating it — as an element of their daily lives? How do kids feel about contending with the life-threatening epidemics of childhood obesity, heart disease and diabetes that are so prevalent in their families, schools, and communities?
WHAT’S ON YOUR PLATE? shows city kids opening their lunch boxes and digging in, families unpacking groceries bought at the supermarket and at the co-op, adults who are learning with children how to take care of their food, their bodies and the environment all at the same time. Sadie and Safiyah visit restaurants supplied with locally grown food, an upstate New York carrot farmer hoping to sell his local harvest to the New York City Department of Education school lunch program, and a local CSA. The film will culminate with a delicious local meal that the girls will cook with their classmates.
When it comes to food production, children and families need much more knowledge to combat the industry’s financial interest in keeping their practices secret, with no concern for consumers or the planet. The filmmakers are committed to helping children and families of all backgrounds, classes and locations learn about where their food comes from so that they can make healthy, informed choices about what they feed their bodies. The purpose of our documentary film project is to educate, enlighten, and inspire our community, and will address health concerns, issues of class and race as they relate to food availability, questionable food production and consumption practices, and general food consciousness in terms of cultivating a taste for local food within a community.
