Food, glorious food! Everybody has got a guilty pleasure for some kind of tasty treat, in my case it’s the unbelievable amounts of takeaway I get with the excuse that I’m a student to justify it – but let’s not get into that.

On a more serious note – Anim Steel once stated

“Food can be a vehicle for social change. It brings people together in a way that very few activities can.”

The Student Green Office and societies throughout Canterbury Christ Church University regularly put on events involving food, like bake sales for example. Individuals who are familiar with sustainability are usually not aware of the many levels that sustainability lands on, but low and behold – food is one of them. It is a very real possibility that one day in the future, we will run out of food to eat. The ever-growing amount of mouths that need feeding all over the world is causing issues with food stock among other things. With these limitations come solutions and those solutions include promoting public health, optimising the production of high-quality safe food, enhancing food security and a high degree of resilience against external shocks and the list goes on (information courtesy of the Sustainable Food Trust).

The events the SGO puts on involving food always involve food that comes from a good place. Naturally sourced ingredients and so forth. This kind of positivity is the positivity that brings the university and hopefully in other cases, the world together and this is what makes food so great and vital in making change.

At this university – food is something we all have access to, something we all adore, which is yet another reason why food is wonderful in bringing people together. If you’re on your way to a lecture, running-late and had no time to finish your breakfast and you walk past a bake-sale, are you going to donate 50p for a nourishing cupcake that’s for a GOOD cause? I know I would.

The food-related events that the SGO puts on are a platform for change, sustainability and you’ll even meet loads of new people. So, next time you see the SGO out with food to give away, take it as an opportunity to chat to someone new, try something new and change something new.

by student blogger, Amanda Elliott