Food Program

List of 7 frequently asked questions.

• Q: How much food do we receive from the MCS Farm?

  The MCS Farm is scaled to raise food for the staff and students who work and learn there each year. The only food they are currently able to raise for the city specifically is beef and pork. However, gardening isn’t an exact science, so whenever they have a “bumper crop” of things like onions or squash they are happy to share it with the kitchen in the city.

• Q: Why is it important to eat locally raised foods as often as possible?

  Locally raised foods are better for us and for the world:
  

  • Foods are at their most nutritious when they are first harvested, and the old-fashioned farming
  • methods that most small farms still practice produce foods with more nutritional value than
  • foods that are raised to endure the long journey from the field to the supermarket shelf.
  • Purchasing locally raised foods helps your local economy.
  • Locally raised foods have a much smaller “carbon footprint” because they don’t have to travel as far to get to market.

• Q: Why prioritize locally raised foods that are not certified organic over organically raised foods from farther away?

  Most local foods are raised the same way as foods that are certified organic; small farms simply can’t afford to become certified or to maintain the extensive records required to maintain certification. And organic food raised on large factory farms are often not as nutritious as food raised at smaller local farms where the nutrients in the soil are maintained by a diversity of crops.

• Q: Isn’t “eating local” and shopping at Farmer’s Market something only wealthy people can afford?

  Many locally raised foods are actually less expensive than foods in the supermarket, but shopping at Farmer’s Markets can often require extra resources and time. However, it is important for everyone to demand locally raised fresh foods in order to bring prices down and make nutritious food more readily available to all because the “hidden” costs of mass-produced, processed foods, like the ever-rising cost of healthcare and prescription medications, are far greater than the difference in price between beef raised with hormones, antibiotics and a corn-based diet and pasture-fed beef raised without hormones and antibiotics.

• Q: Why does MCS pay particular attention to where our animal proteins come from?

  Meat, eggs and dairy raised with hormones and antibiotics pass those medicines directly on to us, promoting antibiotic resistance and affecting our hormones, which is especially dangerous for children. Factory farms in the Midwest feed cows a corn-based diet that strips the soil of nutrients. And too often animals raised on these farms live in conditions that are not only inhumane, but that detract from the healthfulness of the meat and milk they produce.

• Q: Why is it better to prepare food “from scratch?”

  Preparing food from whole ingredients helps to minimize the amount of processed, packaged foods-- which contain things like high fructose corn syrup--we consume. It also helps to educate people about what certain foods are actually made of.

• Q: Why is it important for children to learn how food is raised and how to prepare it themselves?

  When children make their own food, they are more willing to eat it! Cooking also helps them to think about where their food comes from, how it is raised and what ingredients are in certain foods.