It’s called a McWhoopsie.
You know the deal—you’ve got 10 minutes between class or during your lunch break and you have to shove something down that hungry gullet before getting back to the grind. Whether you don’t know the area or you simply don’t have time to hunt down that all-natural, vegan café, for some reason you resort to fast food. And you hate yourself almost immediately after that greasy conglomeration of mystery meat hits your lips. You slump back in your plastic chair and crumple up the paper wrapper thinking the same thing you thought the same time last week: I’m never doing this again …
Real Time Farms is a crowd-sourced, nationwide, online food guide that is working to end the McWhoopsie forever.
Since 2010, Real Time Farms has been documenting farms, food artisans, and restaurants in hopes of providing consumers with the information they need to make the right food decisions. Not only does Real Time Farms provide information about locally grown food in your region, it allows website users to actually trace the food they are about to eat back to the farm it came from. This information is vital to understanding what’s going into your body and how it could affect your health.
Currently in the United States, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) do not have to be labeled as such. This makes avoiding these sorts of foods much more of a guessing game, and makes it impossible to make informed, educated decisions about the food we purchase. According to massgeneral.org, “Critics [of GMO use] fear GMO crops will decrease the natural biodiversity of plants and animals (necessary for sustainable agriculture). Other potential concerns include: herbicide resistance (leading to greater reliance on chemicals when farming); antibiotic resistance; increase in plant toxins (produced by the plant as a form of protection); and increase in food allergies. Currently, long-term effects of GMOs are unknown.”
While the U.S. is still behind on coming up with legislation to push for mandatory labeling of products, Real Time Farms is working around this lack of legislation by tracking food for you.
If your grocery store won’t tell you where they got their tomatoes, maybe Real Time Farms can. New to the Boston area, Real Time Farms released a crew of Food Warrior interns on Boston this summer to document the city’s food system. In three months, 16 Food Warriors from all over the country documented over 111 farms, 68 food artisans, and 89 farmers markets for the website. This means that you can log on and track your food from any of these 268 places, whether you’re dining out at a restaurant or eating out of your own refrigerator.
Real Time Farms is constantly working to add more information to their site, but they need your help.
Whether you’re a food lover, a health freak, a restaurant owner, or a veggie grower, Real Time invites anyone and everyone to add info to the page. You can log on and upload information about a farm or market you know, or even post pictures of the food you bought there. As Food Warrior Diana Mai puts it:
“The goal is to educate people. We don’t want to tell people what they should or shouldn’t eat. We just want them to be able to make the right decisions on their own.”
Real Time Farms is bringing the power back to the people when it comes to truly understanding health and incorporating whole foods back into our daily lives.
HELP BUILD THE MOVEMENT OR FIND OUT ABOUT YOUR FOOD BY VISITING REALTIMEFARMS.COM.
