Cost of healthy eating in Alberta discussed at Red Deer meeting

The Central Alberta Poverty Reduction Alliance (CAPRA) saw a presentation Wednesday about the cost of healthy eating in our province.

The presentation was given by Harrison Blizzard, dietitian, population & public health nutrition services with Alberta Health Services. It focused on Household Food Insecurity (HFI) in Alberta and looked at the findings of a research document released just this summer.

Household Food Insecurity in Alberta: A Backgrounder is a document pertaining to the details of the direct correlation between income, health and household food insecurity. Two other documents were published for the public entitled The Cost of Healthy Eating in Alberta and The Affordability of Healthy Eating in Alberta.

Identifying social priorities and opportunities for action to improve the livelihoods of households with higher risk for poor health outcomes was just one of the goals of the reports.

Many Albertans’ face the challenges of “making ends meet” while paying for what would be deemed necessities like shelter, utilities, transportation and clothing.

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Dianna Souveny, Community Facilitator with the City of Red Deer, said the information is very valuable to the community as an awareness piece.

“The next steps are critical but we need to have a conversation about what that looks like.”

Souveny added that the public can help by sharing the awareness and the reports and taking that information back to their own agencies and hopefully guiding the implementation of change.

Part of the problem with food insecurity is that many people still feel the stigma about accessing help such as the food bank.

“People feel that they would rather be able to look after themselves than depend on a hand out,” said Souveny, noting also that the food bank often doesn’t cater to or have access to culturally adequate foods or even foods appropriate for dietary restrictions as they rely on community donations.

Other problems people face, include the transportation to and from the food bank and the simple task of paying for or even finding available transportation.

“I think it’s really easy to become food insecure quickly. A lot of people in our community are one month away from having financial problems. As Harrison said food is a non-negotiable amount, we can’t say it’s a percentage amount. It’s an absolute dollar amount.”

Blizzard said that while shelter and transportation costs can be accounted for as say 50 per cent or 10 per cent of one’s income, food cannot be budgeted in the same manner without cutting nutritional value or over all quantity of food intake.

“There’s often more month left at the end of the money and food is often the first thing to go,” said Souveny.

Sheila Tyminski, Director of Population & Public Health Strategy for Nutrition Services Alberta Health Services, said the goal of the research and data has been to provide some reflection on what the cost of a basic healthy diet was.

“One of the things that we know from the evidence is that for households who are at risk of Household Food Insecurity is that they will most often use their money to pay for other basic expenses first. We know that of all the household basic expenses some are much more vulnerable than others, and food is one of them,” said Tyminski.

One of the things that Tyminski said they are looking to do is raise the awareness of HFI as being a public health issue. “We are in this as dietitians in AHS because Household Food Insecurity has strong links with poor health.”

Tyminski added that one of the pieces of the report focused on how HFI is “basically an income issue.”

“It wouldn’t matter how creative or imaginative [people] are, there’s just not enough money for basic needs.”

While the next steps have yet to be determined, Tyminski added that communities who are placing emphasis on living wage at this time have really “honed in” on the issue of HFI as being a result of insufficient income.

For more information or to read the report visit the documents here.