food security

EnvironmentFood & DrunkNews

Oh, supermarkets, what are we going to do with you?

It seems you’re embroiled in a certain love-hate relationship with many of us.

Think of those farmers: they stock many of your vast shelves, yet often remain resentful for being squeezed. Or the upwardly-mobile, who slag you off in public, all while filling your coffers. Even food waste activists, perhaps your most virulent critics, have also been known to sing your praises.

However you slice it, dear supermarkets, it seems we just can’t take our eyes off of you.

Here in Canada, for example, you recently roused our spirits by bringing ugly fruit to your shelves, all while appropriating it as a new, cost-saving “brand” promising to quell food waste.

Meanwhile, in Denmark, you waded into the edible insect trade, only to pull them from the shelves two days later without telling us why.

In Alberta, you convinced the Blood Tribe of your merits, who hope to leverage your model on their land.

Yet this nagging question remains: do you really help us gain access to food? Or do you just stand in the way—-you big, boxy bully?

Over in the Bronx, a recent high-profile study seems to suggest the latter.

faced_products_on_a_supermarket_shelf1-e1427602450548

The NYU report investigated the effects of a 17 000 square foot Associated Foods supermarket in a known food desert, Morrisania, a neighbourhood with high rates of: “heart disease, obesity, diabetes…depression, infant mortality, mental illness and HIV…”

Its $1.1M 2010 opening costs were incentivized to the tune of $449 000 (about 40%).

However, the team reported no “significant changes in household food availability” to neighbourhood children, with an equal dearth of improved “dietary intake.” Don’t dismiss this as a one-off, supermarkets: the study’s vast sample size (about 2000 children) and lengthy duration (before, during and after the opening) suggest that even your government-fuelled spinoffs might fail to offer tangible benefit to those most in need.

Another recent article goes even further, claiming that you might be causing some of these problems to begin with.

In “Supermarkets are the problem,” Deborah A. Cohen at Slow Food USA surveys research on impulse purchases at the cash register alongside nefarious-sounding “slotting contracts” in your end-of-aisle displays. In a decisive verdict, she holds you structurally accountable for obesity and chronic disease.

Now listen up, supermarkets, because what I’m going to say might surprise you. I think we should cut you some slack.

First, determinist conclusions like the latter should be taken with a grain of your finest No Name salt.

It’s not only deceptive to pluck out and blame you from within a living, breathing, increasingly-complex wider food picture, it’s dangerous. By over-emphasizing government regulation as an ultimate cure, it effectively disempowers us everyday eaters of the education, choice, and agency we already possess—the type of things we really should be encouraged to strengthen.

If for no other reason than you’re not going anywhere soon, we’ve no doubt got a lot to negotiate.

Practically speaking, we all find ourselves in your aisles from time to time. Sometimes we’ve driven a long distance to greet you. Other times, we’ve just met you halfway.

Other times, for many of use, we just get squeezed for options and feel almost forced to wander your aisles. Yet rather than praying to be saved or averting our gaze, it would be better to simply open our eyes.

CultureEnvironmentFood & Drunk

Back in January, I speculated that Canada’s world-leading habit of food waste might soon become too embarrassing to ignore. Following the (real) experts, I pointed towards supermarket waste reform in particular as a key to stemming this horrid tide.

It seems that last week, one food giant stepped up to the plate.

Well, sorta.

Though it didn’t touch on the waste problem directly, Loblaws announced that it will roll out the sale of blemished produce.

So, in what is perhaps a first for Canadian corporations, a supermarket giant acknowledged that un-cosmetic produce was actually fit for human consumption.

Sure, it’s a damn small victory. And despite the welcome news, Canada is a latecomer to the ugly fruit game as far as supermarkets go. UK chains began the practice in 2012, while France’s Intermarché giant scored a hit with their Inglorious vegetables campaign last year.

What’s more, if you’re reading Forget the Box, you probably get your fruit from farmer’s markets, “Good Food” boxes, overpriced épiceries, dépanneurs, or hell, any other store than a supermarket. So, you’ll probably be quick to chastise Loblaws that this particular brand of “responsibility” is about ten years too late.

Still, could it help our society, in some tiny way?

Let’s look at what we do know.

The Loblaws produce will come packaged under the label “Naturally Imperfect,” and will stand alongside its picture-perfect cousins, boasting near-equivalent taste. The brand will apply only to apples and potatoes at first, though others are said to be on the way.

Those deeply-discounted apples in the saran wrap (think pink 50% off sticker), will not be affected due to this change.

Rather, couched in packaging that hearkens back to their popular, 90s-era “Green” and “No Name” brands, the cut-rate, yellow-bagged produce will stand as its own brand, buffered by similar rhetoric that brought the latter to fame.

“If you were to grow produce in your backyard,” says Loblaws senior Director Dan Branson in the Financial Post, “there’s a lot that would grow that wouldn’t look as pretty as what you would see in a grocery store.”

He goes on, reminding us that even “Mother Nature doesn’t grow everything perfectly.”

You can almost feel the spirit of Arlene Zimmerman rising from this golden marketing-speak.

I imagine her leaping from her Dragon’s Den armchair, blemished McIntosh in hand, telling a would-be entrepeneur, “I’m in. Knotted, ugly vegetables are 100% on-trend.”

So while “Naturally Imperfect” promise a return to the mass market for tonnes of neglected apples and potatoes, it is also a new “product” in its own right.

The homely castaways seem expertly engineered to cash in on a portion of the market that—for some insane reason—other chains have been afraid to tap.

The product is already selling PR-wise. Loblaws’ official announcement last week was a runaway media success, with nearly every single mainstream news organizations picking up the press release—most funnelling it through largely untouched. Even hip restos got behind the announcement, sharing it in droves.

You have to wonder why an influential brand like Loblaws waited so long to cash in.

All hype aside, I truly do hope this will have some meaning.

Perhaps the trend will ripple through other chains.

Or, at the very least, perhaps a sheltered Canadian child might get to see what normal vegetables look like—possibly for the first time in their lives.

 

EnvironmentalismNews

As we’ve mentioned, one of the largest issues facing food in Canada this year is the critical state of food insecurity in Nunavut.

In the past months, awareness has spread across the nation as Canadians slowly wake up to the severity of obstacles faced by Nunavummiut in reliably accessing healthy food.

The cost of food in stores recently rose so high that many people could not afford even the most basic goods in their fridges.Hopefully, the rest of us started to catch on, with headlines eliciting statements such as: “we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist anymore.”

The awareness and response from groups like Feeding My Family and Helping our Northern Neighbours have continued to point out the gravity of the situation, and generate donations.

Policy has been a focus, with the Nutrition North program – and MP Leona Aglukkak – coming under fire for critical flaws.

In addition to policy reform, corporate greed and economic growth are, of course, drivers of more reliable access. Some point to the economic plan for hope.

To be sure, there are many angles to this. If headlines tend to simplify problem, communities such as Helping our Northern Neighbours and Feeding My Family are very illustrative of the wide range of solutions being sought.

In far-reaching discussions from people dealing with these issues every day, it’s shown, for example, that traditional food (known as country food), can be similarly expensive compared to store food, not to mention complicated by geographical and generational gaps. While some initiatives are helping ease these problems, most agree that country food cannot be the only sustainable source of local food.

Yet amidst the range of issues being tested, debated, and discussed the most lively may be about local food production.

It’s also probably the least mediatized, which can lead to the illusion that it’s something completely untested. Many in Nunavut are thinking about different solutions. Some say that they’re tired of being asked, “What about greenhouses?” by distant folk, as some naive kind of panacea, as if no one had thought about it before.

A debate has arisen, yet there seems to be a consensus growing amongst community members that as a complementary approach, local food production has angles worth exploring.

9
$9 for three tomatoes. Photo by Karl Reid from Feeding My Family Facebook page.

Everyone is a bit skeptical. Growing vegetables in the Nunavut is hard. It’s been tried before, and has proven to be very expensive.

However growing vegetables in the Arctic is on the rise and the Nunavut Food Security Coalition highlights its relative importance, as one of the six themes to secure food in the region. An oft-neglected voice, the Coalition is the product of extensive public consultation on poverty in Nunavut, the partnership of Inuit organizations, government, non-profits and more.

“Local food production can help increase food security and self-reliance,” they conclude. Planned activities include empowering people (against many barriers), helping them start their own local growing initiatives adapting other creative projects in northern communities, and supporting research on local food production and finding new ways to make it financially viable. They even propose a 5-year plan.

Some point to existing initiatives that could be developed further, partnered with, or adapted as models. Examples include the greenhouse at Kuujjuaq, Nunavik, the Iqaluit Greenhouse (a reused hockey arena) and the Arviat Greenhouse Project.

If nothing else, the conversation on groups such as Feeding My Family shows what we can all learn about self-sufficient methods. The extreme growing conditions in the Arctic have put the spotlight on the most creative methods, such as:

  • Biodome greenhouses that can withstand extreme weather
  • Grow boxes, as seen in the Arviat project
  • Underground greenhouses – or walipinis. Given the permafrost, this is one of the most ambitious methods. Some insist they are feasible. Others have suggested enhancing their heat retention with chickens.
  • Grow barrels and growing in old fridges, which involve much less
  • Sprouting at home
  • Expanding arctic animal husbandry, example: muskox.

Even if this only touches on one-sixth (or less) of a complex picture, there is some lively discussions going on that warrant our attention. As a country, our sources of food are becoming less secure. Sharing the newest and most effective ways to be self-sufficient behooves us all.

CultureEnvironmentFood & Drunk

Another year, another round of increasing challenges–and opportunities–when it comes to feeding the world. Closer to home, we can see many of our most salient national issues (healthcare, climate change, aboriginal rights) refracted through the eye of a handful of food questions.

Food is just that: a flashpoint around which all else swirls. Here are a few simple food questions to keep tabs on this year. As you’ll see, they speak volumes on wider issues we face from sea to sea.

Can school lunches stem an obesity epidemic?

Though five provinces already offer lunch (or breakfast) programs, Canada’s one of the last holdouts among industrialized nations when it comes to a fully fleshed-out national program. It’s not just a question of quelling hunger. Could a properly-designed school lunch program help stamp out childhood obesity, thus reducing affiliated diseases and quashing healthcare costs?

A coalition of food organizations seems to think so. The proposal for a national program will be a bumpy ride, however: getting all provinces–and politicians–to agree on details, not to mention the parliamentary maneuvering needed to pass something of such magnitude.

Finnish_school_lunch

However, the longer a potential fight, the more hastily one should get in the ring so as to not avoid eventual burnout… as we learned from our neighbours to the South.

It’s up to us. What do we want our elected officials to focus on? Prevention? Exercise? Mental health? Could something like this help the next generation of Canadians enjoy a healthier childhood and a longer life?

Read an interview about it in the Tyee.

Canada: world’s biggest tossers?

That’s not a character judgement. I’m talking about household waste. We allegedly threw out the most garbage in the world per capita in 2013. We continue to be one of the planet’s most egregious food wasters, squandering enough to feed a small country. Or maybe a large one.

Discarded_bagels

There’s also that pesky issue of the emissions caused by moving around so much wasted food. Oh, and the $31B we’re flushing down the drain. How stupid. And sad. And avoidable.

If we don’t begin to turn this around quickly, the economic and environmental impacts may well see us drowning in our own waste. On a more hopeful note, campaigns like UK’S “Love Food, Hate Waste” are coming to our soil this year, and programs like Second Harvest are helping to make a difference. More is needed however.

Beyond handy checklists, we need to lobby lagging local governments (such as Montréal) to adopt compost pickup or to punish supermarkets or large restaurant chains for the added strains they are putting on the system.

Yet, if the real problem is with chains, how can we really stop them wasting so much food? We can’t. However, they can only waste food if they have customers to produce it for. Avoiding the big chains in favour of farm boxes, other delivery schemes, growing food in community garden plots, etc. are tiny ways to stem the flow.

Can we solve food insecurity in the North?

li-nunavut-food-protest-pangnirtung

A chronic problem, it’s one about to grow in 2015. With the population of places such as Iqaluit growing quickly, an already-difficult situation is being compounded by one of the youngest populations in the country. Less and less people are hunting. Food prices continue to spike and food banks can barely keep up.

Parliament exploded with this issue late in 2014 (after the UN got involved in 2012), yet very little action can be deciphered. Let’s hope 2015 sees that happen.

Follow this column for writing on food issues (and hopeful initiatives!) both in Montréal and worldwide.