Foodies, locavores and angry moms -- give thanks for public media 2.0

Katie Donnelly

With Thanksgiving rapidly approaching, food is on many of our minds this week. Social media platforms have been a boon to foodies, with the proliferation of collective online restaurant reviews, food blogs, and online recipe sharing. Food activists—including food justice and food security advocates, proponents of organic and sustainable agriculture, world hunger activists, public health workers and school lunch reformists—are also all producing and consuming public media 2.0.

For example, health activists can search for nutrition information using powerful databases such as Food Essentials, which helps users make smarter choices. Hunger activists can check out the United Nation’s World Hunger Program’s hunger map, among other innovative tools. Those looking to change food policy in the United States can head to Civil Eats, which examines U.S. food policy and encourages individual and collective action.

The local food movement has been especially adept at embracing public media 2.0 tools. For example, there is a locavore iPhone app, a "Hyperlocavore" yard sharing community, and various neighborhood-specific local food maps (like this map of public fruit trees in the Philadelphia area, a useful tool for food foragers). The University of North Carolina’s “From Pasture to Plate” (part of the News21 project, previously featured in this Showcase) offers an interactive data visualization of where our food comes from. Additionally, The Eat Well Guide provides an extensive directory of locally-produced foods in the United States and Canada. The Eat Well Guide also includes a comprehensive blog, The Green Fork.

The focus on eating local has sparked increased interest in learning more about the conditions under which our food is produced. Indiana Public Media’s Earth Eats, a weekly podcast that focuses on local and sustainable food and related recipes, also includes interviews with local farmers. Launched six months ago, Earth Eats started out as an online-only project and quickly developed a following. It is now aired on air and online, and the format has been extended to include time for a round-up of food-related news and recipes. The program’s website, which will be revamped within a month, will include aggregated food news—according to Indiana Public Media’s New Media Director, Adam Schweigert, it will be the “Huffington Post of local food”—as well as niche blogs that focus on content such as industrial food service and nutritional foods for kids. The website will also incorporate food-related stories from NPR’s API and make use of Miro Community to curate food-related video. Earth Eats is also looking to expand recipe databases in order to connect users around the country with recipes that feature local, seasonal ingredients. The underlying mission, says Schweigert, is to “make people more connected with their food supply.”

Another group of advocates that have embraced public media 2.0 is the school lunch reform movement. Healthy school-lunch crusaders Susan Rubin, a nutritionist, and Amy Kalafa, a nutritionist and producer, started Two Angry Moms, whose goal is to: “collect two million moms (and dads and others) to send a clear message to school administrators, state and national legislators, and government officials acknowledging the connection between whole, nutritious food and better children's health and scholastic performance.”

To accomplish this goal, the angry moms made a documentary of their adventures in school lunch activism across the country during the course of a year. (See clips here, and look for upcoming screenings in your area here.) Rubin and Kalafa want people to see the film in groups in order to generate conversation and encourage viewers to formulate their own action plans. They provide a series of resources for hosting screenings, including planning guides and handouts. The project also includes a site with forums for discussion and an online learning center. According to the website, “Angrymoms.org seeks to establish an imperative for taking better care of our kids by offering better food in schools and cleaning up the school food environment. We advocate for making the school food environment a district-wide and nationwide priority.”

For a brief overview of the Two Angry Moms, see Amy Kalafa’s appearance on The Rachael Ray Show:

Still hungry for more examples of interesting foodie projects? See: Mashable’s Top 15 Social Media Resources for Foodies Parts 1 and 2 and Take Part’s Top 10 Food Politics Resources.

Want to learn more about Public Media 2.0? Read our white paper: Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics.