Fit to Eat: The NL Farm and Food Show is an enlightening buffet of food for thought on the food system in our province.
Publications
PROJECT REPORTS
2018 Our food NL Summary Report
ANNUAL REPORTS
2019
2018
COMMUNITY REPORTS
EVERYBODY EATS
FOOD SECURITY ASSEMBLY
Healthy Eating in NL Resource Centre
Your one-stop-shop for healthy eating resources in NL
The Healthy Eating in NL Resource Centre is your one-stop-shop for resources to help promote and support healthy eating in Newfoundland & Labrador! On the site, you’ll find a whole host of resources covering everything from grocery shopping on a budget, maintaining health while eating with a condition, and packing healthy school lunches, to harvesting wild food, organizing a bulk buying club, and preserving food.
We set out to build this site in September 2015, with the goal of making Newfoundlanders and Labradorians more aware of the healthy eating resources and programs that are available in the province. The site aims to offer a comprehensive, engaging and user-friendly inventory ofrelevant, up-to-date, and reliable information.
The accuracy and reliability of information on our site is important to us. That’s why we worked closely with a team of dietitians in the province, to carefully review all of the resources selected to appear on the site. It’s also why we’ll be working diligently to monitor and update the site on an ongoing basis.
Information on our site is divided into two sections, and each section contains five categories:
ONLINE RESOURCES
1. Eating for Health: Resources to support and promote healthy eating—from general guidelines to specific information, whether you’re pregnant, vegetarian, managing diabetes, or more.
2. Healthy Eating in your Community: Resources to support and promote healthy eating in your community—whether at school, the office, in recreation, or a shared community space.
3. Food Skills: Resources to help build healthy food skills—from growing, harvesting, and hunting, to purchasing, preparing, preserving, and composting.
4. Food Programs: Resources to support food programs in your community—everything from community gardens and bulk buying clubs, to farmers’ markets.
5. What’s in your Food: Resources and information about the parts that make up your food—from vitamins, to elements & minerals, and nutrients.
LOCAL INITIATIVES - COMING SOON!
We're still in the process of gathering information on the many food initiatives operating across the province. This part of the site will be coming out over the next few months. When it’s ready, it will provide you with a comprehensive, easy to navigate database that will help you find the following types of food programs in your area:
1. Food Skills, Education and Resources: Initiatives to help build your food literacy—in both theory and practice—from cooking classes and workshops, to rental kitchens.
2. Hunger Relief Programs: Initiatives to help you and your family put healthy food on the table, even when money is tight—from food banks and meal programs, to hampers for new mothers.
3. Local Food: Initiatives to help you take advantage of Newfoundland and Labrador’s diverse and rich local foods—from community supported agriculture programs to farmers’ markets.
help 4. Community Programs: Initiatives that bring you and your community together around food—from community kitchens and freezers, to gardens and bulk buying clubs.
5. School Programs: Initiatives that bring healthy food and food skills into the classroom—from school gardens and Farm to School Programs, to local food fundraising.
There is a lot of information on the site, but there are also a lot of tools at your disposal to help you find what you’re looking for, like our user tutorial, which you can access from the home page. It'll help you make the most of your time on our Resource Centre, and should make searching for a particular resource a breeze.
We hope the Healthy Eating in NL Resource Centre serves you well—if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement, don’t hesitate to get in touch with Food First NL’s Communications Coordinator:
Tyler Blacquiere | tyler@foodfirstnl.ca
The development and maintenance of the Healthy Eating in NL Resource Centre is funded bythe Department of Seniors, Wellness and Social Development, Healthy Living Division. The Department of Seniors, Wellness, and Social Development focuses on seniors and aging, health promotion, wellness, and sport. Learn more at: http://www.swsd.gov.nl.ca/
Newsletter
Our monthly newsletter is filled with Food First NL’s project updates, new opportunities, and publications. We also highlight interesting food-related events, provide podcast and video recommendations, and summarize and connect interesting articles that have come across our desks.
Sign up for our mailing list and browse our newsletter archive below!
If you have an event, opportunity, or suggestion for our next newsletter, email us at hello@foodfirstnl.ca
Newsletter Archive
Food Film Library
Food First NL occasionally purchases screening rights to documentaries, in order to share across the province. In 2013 we even released our own film series called All Around the Table. We’ve got a solid collection of films now that community groups across the province can borrow to use for events. There’s no charge for borrowing a film from the Food First NL library, all that’s required is a promise to mail the film back when your group is done with it. Send an email to info@foodfirstnl.ca if any of the titles below interest you.
Film screenings are a great addition to educational events, classroom activities, festivals, community group gatherings or for fundraising events. For assistance with planning and hosting a film screening, feel free to get in touch.
All Around the Table
A vegetable garden, laying hens, a fishing boat, berry grounds: when our grandparents were young, the grocery store was out the back door. In our search for a sustainable food system today we can look to the traditional ways of growing, preserving, and preparing our food that still make sense. These traditions live on in the knowledge of older generations; wisdom that has been captured in these twelve interviews with seniors from Eastern Newfoundland who share their personal food stories. As a collection these interviews shed light on how the way forward towards a better food system in the province begins by looking for inspiration in our past.
SCOFF: Seniors Celebration of Food & Film
Food First NL’s SCOFF video series celebrates, preserves, and shares a wealth of traditional food knowledge from seniors in Newfoundland & Labrador, through 8 short, enlightening, and often humourous documentaries. These videos provide a bounty of food skill instructions, like how to fillet fish, cellar veggies, build a slug zapper for your garden, maintain a potato patch, and make your own fertilizer from kelp.
Symphony of the Soil
Symphony of the Soil is an artistic exploration of the miraculous substance soil. The film examines our human relationship with soil, the use and misuse of soil in agriculture, deforestation and development, and the latest scientific research on soil’s key role in ameliorating the most challenging environmental issues of our time. Filmed on four continents, featuring esteemed scientists and working farmers and ranchers, Symphony of the Soil is an intriguing presentation that highlights possibilities of healthy soil creating healthy plants creating healthy humans living on a healthy planet. www.symphonyofthesoil.com
What’s on Your Plate?
What’s on Your Plate? is a witty and provocative documentary produced and directed by award-winning Catherine Gund about kids and food politics. Filmed over the course of one year, the film follows two eleven-year-old multi-racial city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah take a close look at food systems in New York City and its surrounding areas. With the camera as their companion, the girl guides talk to each other, food activists, farmers, new friends, storekeepers, their families, and the viewer, in their quest to understand what’s on all of our plates. www.whatsonyourplateproject.org
Nourish
With beautiful visuals and inspiring stories, the Nourish film traces our relationship to food from a global perspective to personal action steps. Nourish illustrates how food connects to such issues as biodiversity, climate change, public health, and social justice. Hosted and narrated by actress Cameron Diaz. Companion to this film are free activity and curriculum guides to share Nourish in school settings. www.nourishlife.org
And This is My Garden
Food insecurity, climate change, and fuel risk are serious threats to communities around the world. In the small town of Wabowden, Northern Manitoba, two school teachers, Eleanor Woitowicz and Bonnie Monias, are empowering their students with the knowledge, discipline and skills to grow their own food sustainably in backyard gardens. andthisismygarden.com
Fresh
FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet. www.freshthemovie.com
Food Fight
A fascinating look at how American agricultural policy and food culture developed in the 20th century, and how the California food movement rebelled against big agribusiness to launch the local organic food movement. www.foodfightthedoc.com
Greenhorns
The Greenhorns documentary film explores the lives of America’s young farming community – its spirit, practices, and needs. It is the filmmaker’s hope that by broadcasting the stories and voices of these young farmers, we can build the case for those considering a career in agriculture – to embolden them, to entice them, and to recruit them into farming. www.thegreenhorns.net
Food Skills Workshops
Community-Led Food Assessment
Best Practices Toolkits
The Best Practices Toolkits were developed by Food First NL to assist community organizations in Newfoundland and Labrador in starting bulk buying clubs, community gardens, community kitchens, and farmers' markets.
They outline key steps and provide a range of tools and supports that will help you organize a program that suits your particular group’s needs and are based on best practices research drawn from a review of existing reports, resources, and guides, with particular attention to resources from Newfoundland and Labrador. Each toolkit includes a bibliography which lists the materials consulted in this review. This research was enhanced by consultations with organizers and participants of these initiatives from across Newfoundland and Labrador and elsewhere in Canada.
DOWNLOAD THE TOOLKITS:
Bulk Buying Club Best Practices Toolkit
Community Garden Best Practices Toolkit
Community Kitchen Best Practices Toolkit
Farmers' Market Best Practices Toolkit
SUPPLEMENTARY RESOURCES
To complement the Best Practices Toolkits, Food First NL has created two additional sets of resources:
Farmers Market Food Safety Handbooks
Since the Best Practices Toolkits were released, the province released the new Public Market Guidelines dealing with food safety. Food First NL created companion handbooks for market organizers and vendors to help support food safe practices in Farmers Markets across NL. Download the handbooks here:
Farmers' Market Organizer Food Safety Handbook
Farmers' Market Vendor Food Safety Handbook
Funding was provided by the Poverty Reduction Division, Department of Human Resources, Labour and Employment, and the Health Promotion & Wellness Division, Department of Health and Community Services of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador for the development of the Best Practices Toolkits and Presentation Series.
Funding was provided by the Canadian Agricultural Adaptation Program through the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada for the development of the Farmers' Market Food Safety Handbooks.
Cooking Posters
How do you measure a kilogram of flour if you don't have a scale? How can you save money and still plan healthy meals? How much cooked rice is an uncooked cup going to make? If you've asked yourself these questions, or others like them, you know the answer isn't always easy to find in the middle of preparing food.
These five posters, developed in conjunction with Food First NL's Food Security Coordinators in Nunatsiavut, are designed to help make food shopping and cooking easier. They tackle five different areas: how to shop with a recipe, how much you will have after cooking, how long your food will last, how to easily substitute ingredients, and how to plan your meals in order to save money.
