What’s for lunch?

On Thursday, May 31, the Sustainability Leadership Center and the Food Action Collective will present a forum on food at Portland State titled “Setting the Table: A Food Forum on Equity, Sustainability, and the State of Food at PSU.” The forum will be held in Smith Memorial Student Union, room 296, from 4–7:30 p.m.

The topics of discussion will be the school’s food system, and the event is divided into two halves. The first half will cover food justice, food systems, food sustainability and farming and food insecurity and hunger, among others, while the second half will cover PSU’s current food system and what actions can be taken to improve it, as well as how students can get involved.

One project undertaken to help improve food choices at PSU is the healthy vending project, which aims to provide healthier foods in campus vending machines. Oregon Public Health Institute member and registered dietitian Nancy Becker will lead this part of the discussion.

“I think students deserve to have access to healthy food like everyone else. Sure, you can be stuck in between classes and not have enough time to get a meal and have something to carry you through your time at PSU, but you don’t want to feed yourself the junkiest of the junk food,” Becker said.

“Food justice refers to a food system that is fair to all people. That means that ‘real’ food—food that is unprocessed, fresh, whole, nutritious and natural—is accessible and affordable for people of every race, age and socio-economic background,” said PSU alumna Carolyn White, Food Action Collective president and co-founder, and one of the key coordinators of this event. “We are pleased to have Shawn DeCarlo from the Oregon Food Bank to speak in-depth about the meanings of food justice with a specific focus on Oregon. Shockingly, Oregon is the second hungriest state in the country, and we will learn how this affects all of us and what we can do to move toward a just system at the state, local and campus level,” White added.

Sustainable and resilient food systems will also be discussed. A sustainable food system is “one that takes into consideration the environmental, social and economic factors of the system, from production to plate to composting,” White said.

Michele Knaus, executive director of Friends of Family Farmers, will explain what a sustainable food system should look like from a farmer’s perspective and the benefits of local communities supporting Oregon food farmers. “Attendees of Setting the Table will leave with an in-depth understanding of what shapes a sustainable food system,” White said.

Aramark currently provides food for the university’s food courts, dining halls and catering services. Aramark and representatives of PSU’s student-run cafe, Food for Thought, will discuss their plan to work toward a more beneficial food system. Chef Craig Shaw of Aramark will be one of the many guest speakers.

Other topics of discussion will be fresh food donations, partnering with Oregon’s local farm worker union, and how food can be sourced more locally.

The issue of healthy food on campus is one that philosophy junior Berkeley Larsen can get behind. “There should be less bagged chips and candy bars, which is easy to get, but it doesn’t help but fill them up for a minute,” Larsen said. “You got to eat and you got to eat well because what you take in and what you consume transfers over to how you perform in a certain degree as to how your mind and body goes.”

“Students should attend this meeting because we all have a stake in PSU’s food system. Many students are on meal plans or shop in the food court, and it’s important that we understand how our university food system functions and how we can get involved in making it a system that benefits our health, our communities and our planet,” White said.

For more information, visit ecowiki.pdx.edu/news/view/setting-table-food-forum-equity-sustainability-and-state-food-psu.

“An earlier version of the photo caption for this article misspelled the names of the economic sustainability taskforce. The taskforce members seen in the photo are Hanna Davis, John Jones, Caleb Scoville, Peter Daeges and Nicole McGee.