2021’s Great Big Crunch was a Great Big Hit
Posted: April 7, 2021
Categories: Edible Education Network / Good Food Ideas for Kids / GoodFoodBites / School Food News / Schools
While the Great Big Crunch sure looked different this year, the first-ever virtual Canada-wide Great Big Crunch made some big noise for healthy school food with the highest participation ever — 56,414 registered crunchers!
The Great Big Crunch, an initiative of FoodShare Toronto, has heard a whopping 1,246,668 crunches since it first began in 2008.
This year’s virtual Great Big Crunch, led by the Coalition for Healthy School Food, encouraged participation throughout the whole month of March, with an online Canada-wide event on March 11th.
Healthy school food supporters across the country—including teachers, classes, school administrators, parents and politicians—joined in to take a bite out of an apple and make noise for healthy school food and a National School Food Program for Canada.
Chef and author Joshna Maharaj led the virtual crunch on March 11th (with a maxed out number of crunchers on the call!), alongside schools, a B.C. apple farmer, and a few city officials who declared March 11th “Great Big Crunch Healthy School Food Day”! If you missed the Canada-wide event, you can watch a recording here.
The 2021 Crunch received some news coverage too, like this article from CTV London, featuring the Middlesex-London Food Policy Council (MLFPC) and Growing Chefs! Ontario.
In the article, the Chair of the MLFPC, Benjamin D. Hill, shares:
“Canada is the only G7 country that doesn’t have a national school food program. This is really what we are hoping to see, the government of 2019 committed itself to the importance of a school food program, so we are hoping to get them to follow through with that commitment.”
To read more and see how some schools celebrated, visit the Coalition for Healthy School Food blog here, and check out the #GreatBigCrunch hashtag on Twitter!