Healthy Eating and Food Security

Affordable, healthy, local and culturally acceptable food makes a difference to our individual health, the resilience of our communities.

A healthy diet protects us against numerous chronic conditions including heart disease, type 2 diabetes and several types of cancer. Evidence shows that increasing fruit and vegetable consumption is linked to a 20% reduction in all causes of mortality. [i]

But over the past few years, food inflation has put a healthy diet out of reach for too many people in British Columbia. According to BCAHL’s research, a third of British Columbians say that nutritious food is unaffordable. Half of the people from low-income backgrounds and 64% of Indigenous people in BC say it’s difficult to pay for healthy basics like fruits and vegetables, whole grains and proteins.

Accessing healthy, affordable food is a bigger challenge for those on low or fixed incomes, particularly for remote, rural and Northern residents, many of whom are Indigenous.

This is a serious problem.

Leading experts say that food security is primarily an income issue, but eating healthy also requires access to affordable vegetables and fruit, food literacy, and cooking skills.

BCAHL continues to advance policies which can help people across BC to eat, drink and live healthier.

BCAHL recommends the following policy options:

• Establishing a universal Healthy School Food Program for all public schools.
• Adjusting Income Assistance support rates to account for the actual cost of fresh and healthy food.
• Expanding the delivery of programs that teach food literacy and cooking skills to promote healthy eating.
  • Increasing funding to expand and scale up successful initiative that promote healthy eating such as Food Skills for Families, the Farmers Market Nutrition Coupon program, Generation Health, Appetite to Play and prenatal and family programs that support healthy pregnancies, breastfeeding and early childhood development.
• Supporting the nonprofit sector involved in rescuing and distributing food as an essential interim measure to address food insecurity for equity-seeking populations.
• Implementing recommendations put forward by Indigenous communities on the policies and resources needed to support ‘Indigenous Food Sovereignty and Food Security in a Changing Climate.’
  • Providing resources and capacity-building opportunities that assist Indigenous communities to support local food security and food sovereignty.
  • Recognizing Indigenous interests with respect to stewardship and access to lands and waters from which traditional diets are sustained.
• Reviewing provincial legislation that limits the use of traditional foods in Indigenous daycares, schools and elders’ facilities.
• Providing grants to improve access and fun local innovations to increase the availability and affordability of healthy foods in remote areas of the province.
• Funding studies and initiatives to reduce food waste and increase local food supply with the goal of increasing the amount of food grown, processed and made available within regional areas.
• Ensuring all lands with the highest capability of agricultural production are captured within the Agricultural Land Reserve and are used for what they were intended.
• Providing incentives to encourage local agricultural production and marketing (e.g. family farms, community gardens, farmers’ markets, BuyBC program) and apply disincentives for those using agricultural land for residential use only.
• Reviewing agricultural policies with input from small scale producers to ensure that policies promote local food production and direct purchasing from consumers.
• Discouraging unhealthy choices by applying provincial excise taxes to food and drinks high in sugar, salt and fat that have minimal nutritional value.
• Increasing information on options by requiring nutritional labelling on the menus of large-scale restaurant chains.
• The provincial government can work with the federal government to limit the marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages to children.