Local Food Policy Could Help Cure Social Ills [General]

2012 May 27
www.ottawacitizen.com

EDMONTON - Cities can do a lot to fight obesity in the same way they managed to beat back smoking in public places to improve public health, says Toronto food expert Wayne Robertson, former manager of the Toronto Food Policy Council.

It’s partly a matter of outsmarting fast food outlets with better choices and Edmonton’s trendy new food trucks could be just the ticket, said Roberts, keynote speaker at Edmonton’s first Food in the City conference that opened Friday.

A handful of food trucks from local restaurants converged on Old Strathcona last week, but Roberts suggested they could just as well have parked outside a high school and taught a unit on ethnic food while providing nutritious meals.

The key to expanding local and healthy food options is for cities and institutions to use levers like purchasing policies, he said.

The University of Toronto, for instance, decided to support sustainable agriculture with a commitment to buy 10 per cent of its supplies from local producers. That’s now up to 25 per cent. Though they pay local farmers about 10 per cent more, the policy did not add to food costs because at the same time the university took steps to eliminate food waste.

About 250 people attended the opening of the The Food in the City conference which is looking at a wide range of issues, from local food supply to rooftop garments and preservation of farmland. Some of the suggestions and findings could be incorporated into the city’s first food and agriculture policy to be released this fall in draft form.

Local food producer Jim Hole agreed that cities have good tools to encourage local production. Toronto has a policy that requires a builder to create a green roof covering about 40 per cent of the footprint of the land used.

Hole also noted that Edmontonians are consuming a lot of California water in imported vegetables, though its not an efficient use of water. While crops in California need irrigation, Edmonton gets enough rain to produce a crop without such assistance and that’s a big advantage for local growing.

So if lots of city people grew a bunch of carrots in a corner of their lawn, “that would mean a lot fewer trucks going down the road” and a lot more efficient use of water, said Hole, who grows tomatoes on the roof of his house.

Also, there’s a good reason California carrots don’t taste as good local produce — producers there have to grow a much dryer kind of carrot that won’t break when its travels. Consumers might want to think about that when tastier local produce is available all year, he added.

Roberts also said it makes economic sense to use a local food policy to solve some stubborn social problems, including mental-health issues.

“We have a health system that pays for the consequences of mistakes (bad food, poor eating habits) rather than putting money into prevention,” Roberts, adding that diabetes is a million-dollar disease for one person over a lifetime.

“The solution to both issues is to increase family meals at home,” he said.

But that’s difficult, he said, noting a study showed kids eat about one quarter of meals in the car as they are shuffled around to activities.

The conference continues Saturday at the Shaw Conference Centre


2012 May 27
Interesting how this ties into a city allowing more variety of food trucks