The Staples: What's in Your Snacks?

It sounds mundane, but in order to be cost effective and receive the most nutrients from easily transportable and conveniently stored school snacks (i.e. granola bars), I have been purchasing the same products since September. These food products include, Quaker Chewy Chocolate Bars, Fruit-to-go strips, Nutrigrain Bars and President’s Choice/Compliments Applesauce—the former being less packed with nutrition, and all the products containing significant amounts of sugar. However, they have been my snack staples this year, and kept me going at even the most crucial times. When our SJS group decided to focus on food security, and food sovereignty, I thought it would be appropriate to look a little more critically at these sources of energy. I decided I would do this by making phone calls to the companies that produce my favourite snacks.

All the companies provide explicitly either on the product, or the product packaging a number or website that they can be reached at. This started off as a good sign.

What's 4 Dinner, UVIC Sustainable Food, UVIC Anniversary of Guerilla Gardening, Campus Community Garden, CUAC

March 24, 2011

I discovered I live only a couple of blocks away from an innovative food-related business in Victoria: What's 4 Dinner (http://www.whats4dinner.ca/ ).What's 4 Dinner is a new concept in food services which helps people to prepare affordable family-sizing meals by providing a menu of meals each month that customers can select from, and schedule a time to come to the What's 4 Dinner and use the ready-to-use fresh ingredients to make the two meals (12 serving), leaving the dishes for the staff to deal with. It's just an interesting new split between public-private, profit-low-cost kind of cooking, which the website says results in meals that cost $4-6 per servicing.

I walked through the UVIC cafeteria today and noticed a big sign up that spoke about the amount of locally grown food UVIC uses, the food waste it composts,etc. I thought it was interesting to see how much work has been done on campus around food security issues while I wasn't looking (http://web.uvic.ca/sustainability/Food.htm ).

The Need for a Food Policy

As someone who is passionate about food security and lives in the CRD I was interested to find out about their policy. I came across the Regional Sustainability Strategy Policy Options Series on Food Security. The CRD is currently examining the links currently investigating the links between: Food, health and well being, local agriculture protection and reducing the impacts of food production on climate change. Below is the food charter that guides their approach to food policy.


The paper provides suggestions for moderate and significant policy change approaches

Moderate changes:
• Strengthen land protection policy
• Set targets to increase local food purchasing
• Encourage consumers to buy local
• Promote urban agriculture with increase use of community gardens for food production
• Promote partnerships to support local food access and education