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Solutions won't be easy to find
Achieving food security requires holistic approach: nutritionist

Casey Lessard
Northern News Services
Published Monday, July 23, 2012

NUNAVUT
There is no quick fix for food insecurity in Nunavut, but those involved in the discussion suggest there are shortand long-term solutions to ease the problem.


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This is the third instalment of a three-part feature on the challenge of staying fed in the territory.

"Food security is a large, complex problem," said Ed McKenna, director of Nunavut's anti-poverty secretariat.

"The answer does not present itself to you in some flash of inspiration. It's going to take the involvement of a lot of different organizations and agencies, including government, Inuit organizations, the retailers, public interest groups and NGOs."

The anti-poverty secretariat moderated the first meeting of the Nunavut Food Security Coalition June 26, a chance for concerned parties to brainstorm solutions to one of Nunavut's biggest concerns.

The Feeding My Family group, which has a strong following on Facebook, took part in the session. For spokesperson Eric Joamie, the transition from Food Mail to the Nutrition North Canada food subsidy program is one of the problems.

"It's only working for the big companies that are providing service in the North," Joamie said. "People that were using (Food Mail) were happy with it. They were able to work with Canada Post in bringing fresh produce and whatnot, and with the new program (Nutrition North), it's not working for the people."

Former Food Mail manager Fred Hill agrees. He said the government he used to represent should have stuck with s u b s i d i z i n g Canada Post, which he argues allowed everyone in Nunavut to pay the same price for food regardless of community. The shift has reduced the transparency of retailer's shipping costs, and how subsidy rates are set.

"We don't know how retailers costs compare now with what they were under the Food Mail program, frankly," Hill said, adding that larger retailers get an unfair advantage because of their buying power compared to smaller stores.

He also noted that Food Mail's flat rate shipping subsidy system ­ at one point the cost was $0.80 per kilogram ­ was transparent.

"Our subsidy represented the difference between Canada Post's costs and its revenues. Now the department has to come up with these subsidy rates for different categories of food in each community on its own. Not by going out to the market, but by some other means that hasn't been fully disclosed."

North West Company executive vice-president Michael McMullen argues that his company can get a better deal for shipping under Nutrition North than it could under Food Mail, and that food is cheaper now than it was before the program started in April 2011. For McMullen, there are other problems that are on his agenda to address.

"How do we get a solution for country food that makes it affordable across the North and more accessible at a lower price?" McMullen asked. "We can only transport and sell (country food) that's from a federally inspected plant. Any changes to that we'd support in a second."

Another priority should be "getting more people gainfully employed," he said, noting North West Company is Nunavut's largest private employer of Inuit.

An education in eating Meanwhile, how to budget and prepare healthy foods is the type of education the Government of Nunavut's territorial nutritionist Jennifer Wakegijig is aiming to deliver.

"It's the human condition to like sweet things, fatty things, and salty things. We were hardwired that way for human survival," Wakegijig said. "But now we have stores full of foods like that. If we think of food as nourishing ourselves and our families, and helping us stay healthy, by doing things like cooking from scratch or buying in bulk, we can save money and help our money go further."

Her office is working on several projects to teach Nunavummiut how to cook from scratch, a tradition in Western society, but not among Inuit. "Inuit know what to do with country food. They don't need me to tell them what to do with that," she said, adding that's not always the case for storebought food. "We're promoting cooking classes, in-store taste tests, and meal bags where you can reach people who are not motivated to come to a cooking class."

She says it doesn't take much to make the change, but people need to know where to start.

"If we can encourage people to make other choices, make water your main drink, choose less-processed foods, if we can help increase people's knowledge about preparing food, it may help people get better value for the food that's available at the store," she said.

Ilisaqsivik Family Resource Centre works every day ­ through breakfast, prenatal nutrition, and cooking programs ­ to deliver the skills needed to improve nutrition for Clyde River residents. Executive director Jakob Gearheard says the government's focus on education is a good step.

"There's been so quick a transition from country food to store-bought food in just a couple generations that people haven't caught up with what all these foods are and how you cook them," Gearheard said, arguing the government also needs to pressure retailers to replace unhealthy food with healthy food on store shelves in small communities.

Finding the balance

But Hill said education must follow affordability as a priority.

"The biggest cause of the food insecurity problem is the cost of healthy food compared to people's ability to purchase it, rather than a lack of knowledge about the food," Hill said.

"Certainly it would be good to have people better educated in matters of nutrition, and I'm pleased to see that happening. But I've heard people say, I don't need five more recipes for delicious and nutritious chicken. I need the chicken."

The inability to access food is a real problem, McKenna says.

"The high cost of living in Nunavut is a real burden for a high proportion of our population. That's why it's a major social issue," he said, noting more than half of the population relies on social assistance at some point each year.

The level of poverty means Nunavummiut are very sensitive to price, and he'd like to see more transparency in the system.

"That information about why things cost what they do here has got to be made available publicly. Right now, I don't think any of us has that information in a complete form.

Having that information and coming together, I think we can make some progress."

On the territorial level, the Government of Nunavut is taking action. In the 2011-12 fiscal year, it invested in the feeding programs at places like the Ilisaqsivik Family Resource Centre.

It has also identified eight goals: increase access to and use of country food locally; explore commercialization of country food; promote informal country food networks; support young hunters; target childhood feeding practices; promote community nutrition interventions; improve food affordability; and protect country food species.

There's a lot of work to help food security spread across the territory, and a lot of obstacles. But for the government, it's a start.

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