Margaret Janiszewski – Vegan Option Canada
Oh Canada Food Guide!
Change is coming to Canada. In fact, by the time you read this, that change may have already taken place. What is it? The new and improved Canada Food Guide. The need to improve the health of Canadians and to help our planet has prompted Health Canada to make big changes to its food guide. In fact, the Guiding Principles for the new Canada Food Guide call for “a shift towards a high proportion of plant-based foods”[1] .
This call for shift is evident throughout the entire document. The document encourages Canadians to “eat more fibre-rich foods”[1] (fibre is found only in plants), to “eat less red meat (beef, pork, lamb and goat)”[1] and to “replace foods that contain mostly saturated fat (e.g., cream, high fat cheeses and butter) with foods that contain mostly unsaturated fat (e.g., nuts, seeds, and avocado)”[1]. Health Canada’s new eating recommendations are intended to improve Canadians’ health, to promote cultural diversity, and to lessen environmental impact.
Making Change a Reality
Busy lifestyles, dual-worker families and easy access to meals outside of the house means that fewer and fewer Canadians are preparing meals at home. Of course we should strive to prepare healthy, plant-based meals at home, from scratch. However, the reality is not always so simple and in many cases, there are no choices but to rely on others to provide us with those healthy, plant-based foods.
Examples:
- A professional who travels for work is forced to eat in restaurants, on planes and at airports.
- College or university students living in residence are often required to purchase a meal plan and must rely on the cafeteria to provide them with healthy meal options.
- A person who gets sick and requires hospitalization must eat what is on the hospital’s patient menu.
- High school students often buy their lunch in the school cafeteria, trusting that the school has healthy and nutritious options for them to choose from.
As a long-term vegan, I must say, that the above mentioned facilities are often not very friendly towards those who follow a plant-based diet. So what are Canadians to do? How can Canadians embrace a shift towards plant-based meals, if the options to choose such meals are not available? We can throw our hands in the air in defeat, or we can do something about it. It’s time that the Canadian government started practicing what they preach.
What if every government-run cafeteria had to provide healthy, balanced, plant-based options for its customers, so when you need to be admitted to a hospital, there would be plant-based options for you to choose from on the patient menu? What if high school students had healthy vegan options in their cafeterias and universities embraced the shift to a plant-based eating by incorporating such options into every cafeteria they run?
Of course, there are places that are already embracing the shift towards a plant-based lifestyle. One such place is the University of British Columbia, where, “David Speight, the executive chef and culinary director at UBC, is emphasizing plant-based foods on the menu” of the cafeterias he runs [2]. Students attending the university and taking advantage of the cafeterias will find vegan soups, sandwiches, Beyond Meat burgers, and plenty of fruits and vegetables to choose from. But not every place is as progressive and willing to embrace the coming changes. This is where the Canadian Government and Vegan Option Canada can help.
Vegan Option Canada – the Game Changer
Vegan Option Canada is an organization comprised of citizens sharing the same dream and working hard to make this dream a reality. The dream is to amend the laws in Canada to make it mandatory to provide nutritious, balanced, vegan options in every public cafeteria across the country. Every school, college, university, hospital, clinic, and many other government-supported facilities would be required to follow this law.
Vegan Option Canada is currently collecting signatures for its formal, federal paper petition. The petition will close at the end of January, 2019. Any Canadian wanting to contribute to the change can find this petition at one of the places listed on the Vegan Option Canada website. Once this petition is closed, Vegan Option Canada will launch a provincial petition soon thereafter. If passed, the new law would allow Canadians to practice what Health Canada is asking them to do – to shift towards a mainly plant-based diet.
If the Canadian Government is urging for such shift, then it must provide its citizens with the right tools to do so. By passing a law mandating healthy, balanced, vegan options in publicly run cafeterias, the government would do the responsible thing and exercise its power to make the shift a success. And so we, as citizens of Canada, must demand that this law be passed because our health and the health of our planet depend on it.
In fact, for ethical vegans, having a vegan option is as much about health and environment as it is about a basic human right to be able to follow their deep and sincere beliefs, which are integrally linked to their identity. In addition, the Guiding Principles of the new Canada Food Guide discuss Cultural Diversity as one of the considerations for establishing the guide. The guide states that “foods are intrinsically linked to identity and culture” and eating vegan food is the core of a vegan’s identity [1]. A vegan cannot choose to eat ‘something else’ if a vegan option is not available. For vegans in schools, hospitals and universities, a vegan option is simply a must if we are to be inclusive and respectful as Canadians.
We need the Canadian Government to pass this law because, not passing it, would be in conflict with what the government is asking its citizens to do – shift towards a more plant-based diet for our health, our cultural diversity and the environment.
