What’s your food story?
TIME: 15 - 20 minutes
MATERIALS: My Food Story handout (following page)
NOTES: This is a great icebreaker to get participants to reflect and open up to the group. If
doing this activity as a potluck, ask participants beforehand to bring a dish, snack, or beverage
(or just a recipe) to share with the group that is meaningful to them, their family, community,
or culture.
Adapted from Phat Beets Produce,
“My Food Story! You Are What You Eat!” Decolonize Your Diet! Workshop Series
16
FACILITATOR:
• Hand out the worksheet on the next page.
• Give participants five minutes to complete their food story.
• Once stories are completed, have participants pair up (groups of two with one person
speaking and one person actively listening at a time), and read their food stories to each
other. Allow approximately three minutes per person.
• After three minutes, ask pairs to switch listener and speaker.
• When pair work is completed, ask for a few volunteers to read their story out loud to the
larger group.
• After a few people have shared their stories, ask people to consider the following
questions:
• What do these stories say about our health?
• What do these stories say about our families’ food traditions? Have they been
protected, transformed, lost, become a mix of different traditions?
• What do our stories say about the food system? About legacies of colonialism or
corporate influence in our diets?
• Ask the group to share any reflections they have based on this exercise, either as direct
responses to the questions above or otherwise.
GOAL: Participants will share their personal, historical, and cultural relationship to food while
building trust and connection with each other. Ideally, people will begin to understand and
analyze the difference between foods that are imbued with cultural meaning on one hand,
and corporate food products on the other—but they may also see some overlap, i.e. brands
that have taken on cultural significance for them. Participants will think about which foods
reflect their identities and values, and whether those foods promote health and community
or illness and isolation.