INDEPTH: FOOD
Food diaries
CBC News Online | January 22, 2004
Are they making good choices?
Food, it nourishes the body and comforts the soul. It's never been more plentiful, fresh, frozen or fast. Canadians may be eating well, but that doesn't mean we're eating right. Tonight on part two of what we eat: food diaries. We'll follow four Canadian families as they munch and crunch their way through the day. Helping us to assess their eating habits, author and cook Bonnie Stern. She's written 11 best-selling books on the subject of food, her most recent, Bonnie Stern's Essentials of Home Cooking.
Breakfast
So let's begin with our first family and the first meal of the day, breakfast.
Claire Choi and her husband and two children recently moved from Hong Kong to Vancouver, which in survey after survey ranks as Canada's healthiest city. They spend about $350 on food every month.
Since their arrival, they've been learning a new language, a new culture, and a new way to cook, but it may not be a change for the better. Their challenge: adapting an eastern way of cooking to a western way of life.
Claire Choi:
To have a healthy diet, I usually do the steamed food, and we buy the fresh vegetable, the broccoli, the bok choi, and we usually eat the fresh meats.
We eat less fish because we cannot find many of the variety of fresh fish here. So for substitution, we like to buy some frozen filets from the supermarket where we fry them instead of steam them. But I try to buy more fresh food so that we can eat healthier.
My kids prefer eating noodles with sausage rather than bread. So I usually cook the noodles for them for breakfast in winter… before they go out, they eat their hot breakfast and keep them warm when they go outside.
Since the food price is much higher than in Hong Kong, we usually buy things in Chinatown, not in the supermarket always. Usually my husband would go there two times per week. I have a little bit worry about their diet in school because I'm not follow them all the day, but we give advice to them not to eat so much fried food. After we come here, they have much chance to go to the McDonald's or eat the fries frequently because when you go to the shopping, every shop, they have the french fries and burger and some sort of fried things. So they have a lot of chance to eat it, and sometimes I need to stop them.
I would prefer them to eat rice, noodles, and Chinese food. So when they grow up, I may be worried about that because when they grow up, they may not listen to me so much. I think a diet in Hong Kong to some extent is much healthier than in North America. Since we need to do some fried food rather than steamed food, and I think that steamed food is much healthier than fried food.
Peter Mansbridge:
Is there a difference between fresh and frozen?
Bonnie Stern:
Frozen food is actually quite healthful, and nutritionally, I think that it's pretty sound. Certainly when foods are out of season, frozen vegetables and frozen fruits are certainly perfectly acceptable, but I think that there's a big difference in texture in the frozen food, especially to someone who's been always eating fresh foods. I think they would find the texture especially of frozen fish and frozen vegetables, you know, very different.
Peter Mansbridge:
But on the key issue of which one is healthier, there's no difference on that?
Bonnie Stern:
I don't think she has to really worry about the nutritional aspects of it, but I think from her comfort point of view, it's the texture that's making a big difference for her.
Peter Mansbridge:
Let's deal with the immigrant experience, which is obviously a concern for the Chois. Is there a way they can prepare healthy food in a way that she's used to?
Bonnie Stern:
I think that it's the shopping. It's so hard to move to another country and find the things you feel comfortable using in every respect, and food, of course, is the comfort level of most families and most people.
So food is a very hard aspect of that whole moving experience, and it doesn't seem to me that she's really found people to help her enough to find the places to buy the fresh vegetables and the fresh fish because Vancouver certainly has those things available to her.
I think if she asked at their church or their doctor's or even at the school where her kids go to school and tried to find people maybe in similar situations that could help her find those things. If they have a restaurant that they really like, a Chinese restaurant that they like, there's no problem talking to the chef and asking where they buy their ingredients. And I think that while the food is never going to be the same when you move, you might not find the exact variety of fish that you're used to using, but going back to frozen fish, I think it is true that if you steam frozen fish, it might not have quite as nice a texture as if you fry it, and so I think that she should be on the lookout for fresh products, just so that she can relate better to the food that she was used to cooking back home.
Lunch
The Olafson-Wagner family in Calgary put a lot of time and energy into thinking about what they eat. They spend about $650 on food every month so they can make most of their meals from scratch. Three times a day, their three girls eat balanced meals of organic, locally produced ingredients. The family rarely eats junk food. Their challenge, knowing exactly what they're eating and exactly where it came from.
Shannon Olafson:
Throughout the day, whatever choice we make, we try and make a healthier choice. It doesn't always work, but that's our goal for the day.
Bob Wagner:
Then from there, it becomes more of an issue of knowing exactly what you're getting and how the food was raised and what's going into the food. I find that when you source your food locally with the person you know, you can ask those questions directly. When you're dealing with the supermarkets, it's hard to know where it came from and what's in it.
Shannon Olafson:
The big thing that we try to do with their lunches is soup.
Bob Wagner:
This is a turkey soup. It's just boiled out of the bones and get all the meat off and then just a bunch of fresh herbs and spices.
Shannon Olafson:
By going out to see the farmer where the cows were raised, where the chickens are raised, where the turkeys are raised, the kids understand the whole process of the food chain and how it works.
Bob Wagner:
One of the things we did to help the kids is we built our own vegetable garden in the back last spring. They participated in the building and they participated in the planting of it, and so they know how things grow, what they look like when they grow, and the harvest part of it.
Shannon Olafson:
The things we try and avoid, like we're trying to avoid... gradually get rid of all white flour out of our diet. So highly-refined flour. And, you know, that comes in a lot of processed foods, and I don't think people realize how much white flour is in them. Salt, sodium, is in a lot of them and that. So by going to a lower processed food, then you can get rid of some of those products. The other thing would be increasing our fruits and vegetables. You know, if you have a lot more of the vegetables around, then the kids will eat that.
Bob Wagner:
They really go for the junk food and the high-fat food. They really go for that, and there comes a point where you can't worry about every single thing or you won't survive as a family very well, and so I think what you do, the best strategy I can think of is just not having it in the house because once it's not here, they won't look for it and they won't find it.
Shannon Olafson:
The two older ones can read labels, so they'll read labels. When it comes to things like chocolate bars, we try and teach them the different amount of fat in a chocolate bar and, do you want a chocolate bar that has 35 grams of fat versus the one that has 10 grams of fat? By reading labels, they understand each thing has a different product and then they make the choice which one they want to eat.
Peter Mansbridge:
Bonnie, again, some issues here, let's deal with the labels one first. How important is it to read labels on food?
Bonnie Stern:
Well, when you're trying to really find out how much fat is in the food and looking for specific things, it is important to read labels because that's the only way you're going to know. The frustrating problem is that the labelling laws are not exact enough, and so even with these three chocolate bars that I bought here, every one of them has different kinds of nutritional information on the chocolate bars. I think what's going to happen now though is there's going to be new labelling laws coming into effect soon and there's going to be much more information on labels. Everyone will have to have the same information on the labels, so you're going to be able to compare products much more easily.
Peter Mansbridge:
Is it always better to buy from local producers?
Bonnie Stern:
It's always wonderful to buy locally because the food hasn't travelled very far to get to you. You're also supporting local growers and producers, and I guess it's a little debatable whether it has more nutritional value or not, but a lot of people like to think so. So I think buying locally is wonderful. You get a chance to talk to the farmers, you get a chance to know where your food is coming from, and it's wonderful what those people have done with their children,to take them out to farms and have a vegetable garden and show people where their food comes from. When you live in a city, a lot of kids don't know where it comes from. If you can go to the farmers markets, it's great, and there are farmers markets even in very small communities, if you search them out. But sometimes people do have to buy at the supermarket.
Peter Mansbridge:
What if that is your only choice?
Bonnie Stern:
You get to know the people in the supermarket, you read labels, you find out where the food comes from, you can talk to the manager of the supermarket, find out when the delivery days are, when things are the freshest, and again, the more you go to the same stores, the more you can talk to people, they look forward to talking to you, and if you're interested, I always find people are so excited to share information about food.
Balancing meals while balancing the books
Vonda Knipfel and her three teenaged daughters are trying to make healthy choices, but as a single mom on income assistance in Regina, it's not always easy. With only $250 a month left to spend on food, sometimes it's not even possible. Their challenge:balancing meals while balancing the books.
Vonda Knipfel:
Because our choice of ingredients is very limited because of the budget that that we are on, suppertime is usually the most difficult to make it different and not repetitive, like macaroni or, you know, tuna casserole all of the time. So I try and switch it up a bit and make it interesting for them to want to eat it. A typical supper for my family would probably consist of some kind of meat, a portion of vegetables, bread, buns, maybe fruit or some kind of dessert.
I try to follow the Canada Food Guide as closely as possible, but there are certain areas that we don't eat all the time, like the vegetables and fruit... just not possible, not feasible to eat that much and be able to afford it.
My daughter just [said], "Mom, I went over to my friend's and had meatloaf. How come we never have meatloaf?" Because I ate too much meatloaf as a kid and I personally won't eat meatloaf, but the kids want me to make meatloaf. I have my kids on vitamin supplements, calcium supplements in case they don't, you know, get what they need in a day.
If they had their choice, they would probably just eat a bag of chips if they had it. That would be supper. My kids are really picky when it comes to even frying meat. When I fry hamburger or anything, it has to be drained or my girls will not eat it. So I guess that's a good thing. It would be nice to be able to go out and just buy steak, maybe test lobster, you know, but it's just not possible. You know, if I had the money and was able to afford it, yeah, we would eat a lot healthier.
Peter Mansbridge:
Well, a lot of people facing this one, how to eat well when you're on a budget. Any specific tips, Bonnie, for this family?
Bonnie Stern:
This is a problem, but I think getting variety, you know, she was talking about having variety in menus and in recipes, and I know that I went on the web and there were about 50,000 recipes for low-cost recipes, but you can also go to the library. There are a lot of different resources for people, you know. In Toronto, there's an organization called LIFT, Lower Income Families Together, and that's an organization that helps people get together and share ideas and things like that. There's also a lot of good ideas about using a variety of different things for protein, not just meat, not just chicken, but, you know, you can use a lot of legumes and also grains that you can add to some of those products.
You know, she was talking about meatloaf and she didn't really love it because she had it so much when she was a kid, but a great idea I learned a while ago was to put garbanzos or chick peas into meatloaf and it really has a wonderful flavour and changes it completely and you're using half the beans and half the meat and it's very interesting and very delicious. You can do meatballs that way in tomato sauce, and also using tofu because tofu is a very dense kind of protein, it's not too expensive. Even if you don't like tofu plain, you can do half tofu, half chicken, mix it in with stir-fries and things like that that are very good, too.
Also using canned vegetables and fruits, nutritionally, they're perfectly fine and you can mix those into things as well, and that will keep the price down as well. Also shopping, where you go shopping, at places like no-frills stores, also at local markets, if you shop at the end of the day, at farmers markets, a lot of people will sell things less expensively to you. So, you know, there are a lot of tricks like that to learn.
Time and snacking
On many dinner tables across Canada tonight, the main course had the same ingredient: Convenience. A busy family leaves little time for cooking. Eating in means taking out. Jane Siklos has a busy family. Both she and her husband work. Their three kids are busy with school, hockey and music lessons. They don't have much time to prepare or plan balanced meals. To compensate, some of their $500 a month is spent on bringing takeout in. Their challenge: eating well on the go.
Jane Siklos:
Takeout is probably not the greatest choice, but in a busy family, typically somebody has a lesson or an activity, a hockey game in the evening, so it makes that walking through the front door between 6 and 7:30 a real crunch time.
Dinner varies. The odd evening, I actually manage to cook a decent meal, but that is the odd evening. More often than not, it's unfortunately something out of a box that I can put in the oven and get ready in half an hour because there just isn't time to mess around with a lot of preparation, and we do takeout… It's really difficult to find good food that you can prepare quickly and have on the table in sometimes, you know, 20 minutes. Half an hour is all we've got before we've got to get out the door again. Fruit is really my saving, saving food. They're not huge vegetable eaters. They'll eat lots of raw carrots and broccoli and celery, but they're not big on a lot of cooked vegetables. So I fall to fruit. It's sort of our default food at all times.
Time is the biggest factor really. We just don't have time, and sometimes I don't have the energy, frankly, to do lengthy meals. It takes a lot of planning, and I don't get around to doing that every single day.
I'll call [home] and they'll be starving, like ravenous, and when do we eat? And if I don't get home and get dinner on the table within half an hour, for instance, I know that they're probably snacking on, god forbid, trans fats or something because they're really, really hungry after a long day at school.
Peter Mansbridge:
We've all been caught in this situation. Eating well with limited time, what are some tips?
Bonnie Stern:
There are lots of different things... when you want to make home-cooked meals, there are a couple of different routes to go.
First of all, you can just plan things very well, and you do have to be very organized. And when you're making something like a soup, you can make twice to four times the amount of soup and freeze it. The trick about freezing things, and casseroles, anything like that, a lot of people cook them on the weekend, but the trick about freezing them is to freeze them in small quantities. Even if you freeze things in individual portions, they're going to defrost much faster, so that if you forget to take it out of the freezer, you can defrost it in the microwave or the oven much faster than if it's in a great big lump.
Another thing, people are using slow cookers a lot more and crock-pots and pressure cookers are becoming more popular, and that's the way to get a dinner on the table in half an hour.
Then there are people like me, and what I like to do is just cook really quick things. It's a little bit more expensive, but things like chicken breasts and chops and steaks and fish that cook very quickly just naturally. If you have a barbecue, grill pan or skillet, you can do them very fast. But I would advise people to maybe practise them once or twice on the weekend when they have more time and there's not a lot of stress and pressure, and after you've made a recipe once, it's so much easier to make it the second time. That way, there won't be quite as much stress when it's such a busy time period.
Another thing, is when the kids come home from school, they can start preparing things for the meal, so they don't have to necessarily have to do all the cooking, but they can prep things and get things ready.
Another thing, too, is if you give kids a snack when they come home from school, they won't be as hungry and putting as much pressure on you, things like a bowl of soup, things that you might not think of normally, part of the meal, a salad, so that it can stretch your time to prepare dinner a little bit off.
Supermarkets, when you buy things, buy things pre-prepared. Again, it's a little more expensive, but when you use the supermarket as your sous chef, it really helps, you know, grated cheese, vegetables cut up, things like that.
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Guidelines for Healthy Eating
1. Enjoy a variety of foods.
2. Emphasize cereals, breads, other grain products, vegetables and fruit.
3. Choose lower-fat dairy products, leaner meats and food prepared with little or no fat.
4. Achieve and maintain a healthy body weight by enjoying regular physical activity and healthy eating.
5. Limit salt, alcohol and caffeine.
Source: Health Canada
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