Online Activity

2. Carolyn Steel: How food shapes our cities

This video on the TED Talks website is about how food has been shaping our cities for ten thousand years. Cities used to be restricted in size because we had to walk in our food and grow it all locally. This is how our markets in our cities developed because they were near the part of the city were that particular food came in, Steel gives some example of London's market history. Eventually, the train developed and it became easy for us to bring in food so our cities grew. After the train came the car and with it suburban sprawl. Because we can get food easily from many grocery stores a lot of people are losing a connection with their food. Instead of valuing their food they see it as a convenience and this makes it easy for them to throw away any unwanted food. Food has shaped the way our cities have been built and we no longer value our food because we don't know where it comes from and we can find it everywhere. We need to try and grow more locally and encourage community involvement to change our habits about food. Steel claims that one million people are obese and more than one million are starving and that the United States throws away half of its food that they have for sale because it becomes expired! This is the biggest waste when we import and grow food that is thrown away and we can fix this by getting people involved in the food that they eat.