A plan to ensure everyone in Hamilton has access to safe and nutritious food at all times has been endorsed by the city's health board.
The 10-year strategy includes exploring a wide range of potential initiatives including a food terminal for local farmers, community kitchens and healthier food in recreation centres.
Mayor Fred Eisenberger, who chairs the city's board of health, said the ongoing strategy is one way to improve the lives of those living in poverty.
"We want a good supply and to deliver it to who needs it most," he said during a recent board of health meeting.
Eisenberger said the strategy will help in the city's Code Red areas. The Spectator's Code Red project showed people living in Hamilton's poorest areas have a lifespan 21 years shorter than those in the highest-income parts of the city.
But Sandy Skrzypczyk, the city's health promotion specialist, said the strategy and its implementation extends to everyone.
"Even people who have income, we know from surveys ... are still not meeting the food guide recommendations."
Reasons include a lack of time to shop or prepare nutritious food, or not living close to a store that sells healthy food, Skrzypczyk said.
The 10-year implementation plan, she added, is meant to ensure safe and nutritious food for everyone in the city, to make sure local agriculture is thriving, and to ensure people have enough money to put food on the table.
The wide-ranging implementation plan — formulated through consultations with the community — includes ways to eliminate poverty, which will lead to better food in impoverished households.
The food plan complements the city's vision to be the best place to raise a child and age successfully.
Among the proposals in the food plan is to try to facilitate — in a way yet to be determined — the ability of people to be able to buy and make healthy food by focusing on job creation and fair wages as well as teaching "food skills."
The food strategy goals are to:
• improve everyone's access to healthy foods;
•educate people about nutrition to promote healthy eating;
•increase the number of local farms and food gardens;
•advocate for a healthy and sustainable food system.
Other plan details including more school trips to farms to improve eating habits and knowledge of food.
The plan also aims to cut the amount of unhealthy foods in city facilities, which means fewer sugary drinks in arenas and healthier options in vending machines and at food counters.
The plan aims to explore ways to grow food in built-up areas of the city, such as expanding community gardens and promoting the "food-bearing plants and trees as part of landscaping" on private land.
Food gardens are also being encouraged for schools and city facilities.
The plan is to also support businesses and social enterprises that make and distribute healthy food. A terminal, for example, would allow local farmers to distribute their products.
The strategy promises to look for ways to make healthy food available in neighbourhoods with few or no grocery stores by perhaps creating farmers' markets, getting produce trucks in, or promoting healthy food in corner stores.
Finding ways to divert food from being wasted is another part of the strategy.
To view the entire food strategy, search "Hamilton Food Strategy" on hamilton.ca
cfragomeni@thespec.com
905-526-3392 | @CarmatTheSpec
905-526-3392 | @CarmatTheSpec
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