Eating a healthier diet is often not as simple as choosing to eat healthier foods. The pressures and demands of modern life require suitable and convenient access to healthy, affordable food to enable healthy food choices. When grocery stores and other vendors that sell healthy foods are not easily accessible by car, active transportation, or public transit, the ability to eat healthy is hindered. Furthermore, current transportation systems and policy may preclude certain groups of people to eat healthy. In this session, you will explore the intersection of transportation, time use, the food environment, and healthy eating. You will learn about the importance of considering transportation and shopping habits in your efforts to help clients and the public to eat healthy and transform the food environment.
This session will present a new user-friendly manual for assessing local food environments developed by Health Canada, in collaboration with the Federal, Provincial and Territorial Group on Nutrition. The manual is intended to be a comprehensive and consistent tool that can be used and adapted in any community across Canada to assess the quality of the community food environment with respect to enabling healthy choices. The manual is currently being tested in four Canadian communities and the findings will inform refinement of the tool. The session will provide a practical overview of the manual and how it can be used.