Creating a supportive food environment is more than offering nutritious food choices. Supportive food environments reinforce positive messages and practices around food to improve physical, mental, and social wellbeing.
Supportive food environments resist Diet Culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness with health and higher status. Diet Culture has created something called Weight Bias. Weight bias is pervasive across all settings. Settings can mitigate the harmful effect of weight bias by creating weight inclusive environments.
Supportive food environments may also help people respond to large-scale issues like Climate Change. Reducing food loss or waste and eating more plant foods are two climate-supporting strategies that we can all work on. The Health of Canadians in a Changing Climate is at risk, especially for equity-deserving communities. Learn more about evidence-informed responses to climate change with:
ODPH Child Care Resources like the Menu Planning Practical Guide and Menu Revision Tool is available to help centres assess their menus to meet the food and drink requirements in the Child Care and Early Years Act, 2014 (section 42 of Ontario Regulation 137/15).
Nourish Leadership aims to change the way food is served in health care settings — for the well-being of the patients, for the people caring for them; for growers and food producers; for communities; and for the planet we all share. Their programs include:
Teachers can create a classroom that supports a child’s healthy growth and development, including their mental health, by ensuring the classroom is an emotionally safe and healthy place to be. This includes the language and resources used to talk and teach about food. These resources provide evidence-based information to reduce diet culture harms and curriculum-based lesson plans to promote a healthy relationship with food.
Reducing Weight Bias and Building Food Literacy(Kathryn Forsyth and Laura Needham 2022)
Educator Videos: Teach Food First: An Educator's Toolkit - HealthySchools BC offers a series of videos for educators that aligns with Health Canada's Educators Toolkit on Teaching Canada's food guide - Canada's Food Guide. You can find information on Supportive Food Environments (Educators) Create a supportive environment - Canada's Food Guide.
Ontario Dietitians in Public Health (ODPH) has handouts and fact sheets on student nutrition and School Nutrition Resources and related issues around the food environment, weigh bias, supportive environments, mental health, elementary and secondary programs and talking to teens about food. Health Canada's Canda's Food Guide Educator Toolkit: Teaching Canada's food guide - Canada's Food Guide provides background information on Canada's food guide, equity considerations, information on creating a supportive environment and food safety. Each activity includes options to help you adapt it to your group.
Educator Handout:
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