Study calls for Indigenous-focused food guides

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This article was published 23/11/2020 (1772 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A recent study by a University of Winnipeg graduate exposes how Canada’s Food Guide fails to consider Indigenous cultures and communities in its recommendations.

In her paper, titled Decolonizing Diets through Indigenous-focused Food Guides, Taylor Wilson says Health Canada uses a one-size-fits-all approach when developing the federal food guide, which is used as an educational tool in schools and society, to teach Canadians about healthy eating.

Several iterations of the guide have been published since it was first developed in 1942. The most recent version was issued in 2019.

“The food guide is something that is used in classrooms, in schools, health classes, to teach young children how and why you should be eating in a certain way,” Wilson told the Times. “So, while it might not seem like something that we use every day or we think about every day, it still has a really heavy impact on future generations.”

Food recommended in Canada’s Food Guide may not be accessible, affordable or culturally relevant to everyone, Wilson explained. She added the guide fails to consider the cultural and social factors associated with food in some Indigenous cultures, such as harvesting, processing, distributing, preparing and moral teachings.

“There are hundreds of incredibly unique and diverse Indigenous communities across Canada, both in urban and rural settings. And so, having this kind of blanket approach to how people should be eating healthy, I don’t think really works because the food that you can access on reserve is so different from the food you can access in a city,” Wilson said.

The discrepancies are true for Winnipeg’s under-resourced communities, too, Wilson said.

Earlier this year, University of Manitoba researchers published a study on the food and nutrition security issues that exist in Winnipeg. The Winnipeg Food Atlas shows neighbourhoods such as North Point Douglas and the North End are home to severe food deserts.

“The food that you access in places like the North End, where they’re experiencing food deserts, is completely different from the food that I can access as somebody living in St. James, or as somebody who has access to a car and can easily transport themselves to places where the food in stores is more diverse and affordable,” Wilson said.

“So, having guides that are unique to the specific area that you’re from, the specific kind of foodscape that you’re living in, is a lot easier to navigate versus thinking about this blanket approach and being overwhelmed that you don’t know how to handle it, or how to adapt that to the foodscape that you’re living in.”

Wilson’s study highlights many benefits — in addition to health — of a decolonizing food guide approach, such as improving food security and sovereignty and supporting the local economy and community-based food enterprises.

“An Indigenous food guide specific to each diverse Indigenous group is a way for these communities to be empowered, work on community development, be self-sustaining, and improve their knowledge of nutrition in relation to their cultural food systems. It is a way for these communities to address accessibility and affordability in ways that are self-determining, creative, and relevant to their contexts,” the study says.

As part of her research, Wilson returned to Fisher River Cree Nation, Man., where she was born and raised. She worked with community members to develop a culturally relevant, English-Cree cookbook. Moving forward, Wilson plans to design an Indigenous food guide.

“We not only wanted to create a food guide specific for Fisher River, but we kind of wanted to think about what it would look like as creating a template for how to adapt a healthy eating model wherever you are. And so, that could be easily applied to an urban setting in areas like Point Douglas and the North End,” she said.

U of W associate professor Shailesh Shukla co-authored the paper, which was published in June in the New York-based Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. The study can be viewed online at foodsystemsjournal.org