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As the defeat of Prop 37 is mourned in California and throughout the food movement, students are actually enacting it, continuing the hard work for food chain transparency that they started well before the Prop 37 battle entered the mainstream.
For four years, from coast to coast, students have created, piloted, and refined the Real Food Calculator, the most meticulous assessment tool for food procurement available. The qualifications of “real food” are stringent and precise, utilizing strong third-party certifications and going the extra step in verifying source agricultural and labor practices. GMOs are outright prohibited from counting under any of the calculator’s four categories: community-based, fair, humane, and ecologically sound. The calculator’s criteria actually enact Prop 37 on an institutional basis — with it, students are literally taking Prop 37 into their own hands.
The Real Food Calculator evaluates each food item purchased along with its source, producing a percentage indicating the proportion of the school’s food budget dedicated to real food. Most ... Read more
