Hayley Lapalme I have long wondered if it’s a coincidence that the kitchens in hospitals are often in the basement. Prioritization of food in healthcare is often pit against clinical priorities, rather than seen as complementary. Common refrains I’ve heard from healthcare include, “It’s food or the MRI,” or “If a patient is well enough...Read More

Équiterre is a Quebec-based organization offering concrete solutions to accelerate the transition towards a society in which individuals, organizations, and governments make ecological choices that are both healthy and equitable. Since its inception, Équiterre has aimed among other things to increase the consumption of local organic food. Through the development and coordination of a network...Read More

A Step-by-Step Guide – St. Joseph’s Health System St. Joseph’s Heath System created a guide to help organizations and institutions conduct food origin audits. The guide includes steps involved in food origin audits, details, and examples for each of the steps, as well as useful tools, such as a template for a letter of endorsement....Read More

We are in an era of incredible pressure on the Canadian healthcare system. The silver tsunami and a growing burden of chronic disease are forcing a conversation around the next big innovation since medicare. From systems that are centralized and hierarchical, the MaRS Market Insights’ Transforming Health report finds a shift to new models of...Read More

Visualizing the Future for Health Care For three years, Project SOIL has used case studies, pilot projects and visioning sessions to investigate the viability of on-site food production at public institutions, through collaborative arrangements with local food producers. Over that time, interest in food production on public land has continued to grow, with schools and universities,...Read More

Local Food, Social Procurement and Grow-to-Order Contracts with Publicly Funded Institutions By Sandra Hamilton Project Lead, FEED Comox Valley at North Island College A vision to increase supply of local food in public institutions is behind the Food, Environment and Economic Development (FEED) Comox Valley project, one of eight national initiatives funded by The J.W....Read More

Institutional food doesn’t have the best reputation. Readers weren’t surprised to see that the management at Ottawa Hospital were no fans of the food served to patients – but I was impressed that they were prepared to admit as much, and announce steps to make big changes to their foodservice. David Farnell, CEO at Real...Read More

At institutions throughout New England, dining staff are beginning to look to the sea as another source for local foods. Institutions from across health care, colleges & universities, and K-12 school systems are incorporating locally caught seafood into their meals for a variety of reasons and through a variety of procurement models. FINE set out...Read More

In case you haven’t noticed, the food in Toronto is getting better every year, and that includes hospital food. Toronto has some of the best restaurants of all stripes and for every budget, many of them full at any time of the day, a sure sign of a city falling in love with its food...Read More

There is a growing movement to buy local food – and Interior Health is working to keep the food it serves patients as local as possible. Aside from environmental benefits and support for the local economy, there is something rewarding about biting into a juicy peach at the peak of the season, purchased from a...Read More