What's on Your Plate?

About the Project

What's on Your Plate? is a witty and provocative documentary produced and directed by award-winning Catherine Gund about kids and food politics. Filmed over the course of one year, the film follows two eleven-year-old African-American city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah take a close look at food systems in New York City and its surrounding areas. With the camera as their companion, the girl guides talk to each other, food activists, farmers, new friends, storekeepers, their families, and the viewer, in their quest to understand what's on all of our plates.

The girls address questions regarding the origin of the food they eat, how it's cultivated, how many miles it travels from the harvest to their plate, how it's prepared, who prepares it, and what is done afterwards with the packaging and leftovers. They visit the usual supermarkets, fast food chains, and school lunchrooms. But they also check into innovative sustainable food system practices by going to farms, greenmarkets, and community supported agriculture programs. They discover that these programs both help struggling farmers to survive on the one hand and provide affordable, locally-grown food to communities on the consumer end, especially to lower-income urban families. In What's On Your Plate?, the two friends formulate sophisticated and compassionate opinions on the state of their society, and by doing so inspire hope and active engagement in others.

When it comes to food production, children and families need much more knowledge to combat the industry's financial interest in keeping their practices secret, with no concern for consumers or the planet. The filmmakers are committed to helping children and families of all backgrounds, classes and locations learn about where their food comes from so that they can make healthy, informed choices about what they feed their bodies. The purpose of this film is to educate, enlighten, and inspire our community, and addressed health concerns, issues of class and race as they relate to food availability, questionable food production and consumption practices, and general food consciousness in terms of cultivating a taste for local food within a community.

Aubin Pictures developed an extensive audience engagement campaign to work with families, children and schools to achieve the project’s goals. A network of partner organizations established during the production phase of the project is central to the success of the campaign. Audience engagement included festival and partner organized screenings as well as hundreds of DIY screenings around the country. The filmmakers and partner organizations attended key events to answer questions and guide audiences to next steps. Audiences left events inspired to improve the food on their plates and in their stores and have ideas about next steps they can take to make changes. A great priority of the What’s On Your Plate? audience engagement Campaign is to work in communities that are experiencing high rates of food-related health issues, such as obesity and diabetes, and in those communities with limited access to healthy foods.

The Fledgling Fund Impact

The Fledgling Fund is pleased to support the outreach and audience engagement for What's on Your Plate? because we think the time is ripe, and long over-due, for a cultural shift in how we view, purchase and consume food. For the health of our children, we have no choice but to pay attention to what we eat. What's on Your Plate? is engaging new audiences in this discussion.