What is Real Food?

We're talking about food that is ethically produced, with fair treatment of workers, equitable relationships with farmers (locally and abroad), and humanely treated animals. It's food that is environmentally sustainable, grown without chemical pesticides, large-scale mono-cropping, or huge carbon footprints. Real Food is food that is healthy, tastes good, builds community, and has the potential to inspire broad-scale social change.

You can call it "green" or fresh, "local" or "organic." But we're talking about more than supermarket labels. That's why we think about Real Food in the context of our entire food system, from farm to plate as food that truly nourishes people, communities, and the earth.

In practice, we have broken down real food into 4 categories: local/community-based, fair, ecologically sound, and humane. Stay tuned for our Real Food Calculator, which provides an in-depth description of these categories and a way to track institutional purchasing.