Let them eat kale

The new provincial push to increase BCer's nutritional food intake is all well and good, provided such food is available to all.

by Andrea Reimer

That gagging sound you heard during the throne speech was me, halfway through a plate of asparagus. Don't get me wrong: I like asparagus . . . along with brussel sprouts, broccoli, bok choy and a whole host of other vegetables. But they've all left a bad taste in my mouth after hearing the Premier's February 8 th announcement that the province is endeavouring to take a great leap forward by increasing our provincial daily intake of fruit and vegetables by 20% in advance on the 2010 Olympics.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Campbell's sentiment. Ever since the United Nation's World Health Organization announced that there are a staggering one billion overweight people in developed countries worldwide, the research has been piling up that fruit and vegetable intake is a key determinant to lifelong quality of life. Increased fruit and vegetable intake raises energy levels, leading to a greater capacity for physical activity and better health.

But both the United Nation's and the province's interest in our waistlines are not entirely altruistic. With weights rising, health costs are too. In 2003 alone the province of BC estimates it spent $647 million treating weight-related illnesses including type II diabetes, cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and hypertension. That same year in the United States, obesity related deaths tied smoking as the number one cause of preventable death. With a five-fold increase in childhood obesity over the past twenty years here at home, it seems unlikely we'll escape the same fate. Bold action now to prevent obesity and the host of health disorders that accompany our increasingly plump population, stands to save billions of dollars in health costs over the years and save many lives.

Which brings me to why I'm gagging. Exactly how the Premier plans to get these vegetables and fruits into us is unclear because in the developed world obesity is not the curse of the rich making bad lifestyle “choices.” Being overweight has a whole lot more to do with the lack of choice that comes from living below the low-income cut off, or LICO. When families are faced with financial pressures, food budgets suffer first and on a calories-per-dollar calculator, highly processed foods with their attendant saturated fats and added sugars come out on top. As a result, low-income children are almost twice as likely to be obese as their upper and middle income counterparts according to Statistics Canada.

The calories-per-dollar calculator is something our family knows all too well. Up until recently, we were one of the 20% of Canadian families who live below the LICO. When you're finding 7,000 calories per day on a low income, foods like pasta and bread, with a cost of about $1 per 1,000 calories, are a whole lot more realistic than five servings of fresh fruit and vegetables that cost between $5 and $10 per 1000 calories. That's not to say we didn't try hard: our garden yields a phenomenal amount of produce for a Kingsway alley and we've traded more canning time at “free” picking spots for blackberries and blueberries than my blue-stained hands like to remember.

But what really saved us is an increase in income. My family eats the recommended fruit and vegetable intake so regularly now that I'm expecting a knock on my door any minute from those “Best Place on Earth” people. Unfortunately for the rest of the province's families living in poverty, we're bucking the trend. Poor public policy over the past two decades has meant that real income continues to fall, the gap between rich and poor has widened, and the rate of child poverty in BC is the highest it's been in ten years.

The good news is that Campbell's apparently ill-considered but much-needed promise from the throne is a golden opportunity for the Premier to make good on his golden decade. Instead of giving airtime to expensive and ineffective proposals like former Education Minister Christy Clark's “will jog for tax credit” scheme, the Premier could take the truly ballsy approach and pledge to make poverty history. (Clark floated a proposal earlier this month to give tax credits to families who enroll their children in sports and arts programs. Data shows these programs are primarily used by families making $50,000 a year or more and there is no link between these programs and lifelong health). Investing money now in alleviating poverty will not only ensure billions in health care savings for future taxpayers, it's the right thing to do for the one in five BC families who currently live in poverty. Given the chance to make a choice on what they're eating, they would likely make our Premier proud.

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