A year-long focus on food????

I'm playing with an idea for next year. Yes, I know that school isn't out yet and there is a pile of grading staring at me but ...
Since coming back from Ford's Theater last week, I have been thinking about what I would tweak for next year. The program was a success, but I'm not ready for status quo yet. I know how I want to change some things up--some are minor fixes and some are complete shifts in how I do things. Still wrestling.


However, yesterday and today has given me either a scathingly brilliant idea or a something with alot of work and little payoff.
We had, for the seventh grade, a 'hunger banquet' yesterday. The idea is to separate the group into third world, second world and first world countries and show them what they would eat at a typical meal. Fried chicken or rice and beans or ... less. It was an eye opener for the kids. They talked about feeling guilty (third world), confused (when circumstance moved them from one group to another) and angry (second and third world).

Today we showed the movie, Dive! It brings home the problem of food waste in the United States. 1 in 6 Americans will go to bed hungry tonight while supermarkets through roughly half of all its perishable items in dumpsters. The movie is about dumpster diving and food waste activism and it has me thinking.
What if my eighth graders selected a focus for the entire year, like food waste. They could research the issue, analyze local connections and see what change they can offer. It could involve all classes...and involve oratory at the local level.
Would love to hear thoughts and resource suggestions. I've wanted to do something like this for a couple years, I could just never my brain around how it might look.