Alberta scores a ‘D’ for children’s access to healthy food: report
Alberta is slipping when it comes to providing healthy and nutritional environments for children and youth, according to a new report.
The province scored aD — downgraded from the previous year’s grades — on a “report card” that examined a variety of factors including physical, social and economic environments to provide a comprehensive study on the accessibility of healthy food.
“We’re not doing very well,” said University of Alberta professor Kim Raine, whose team has tracked the issue for the past two years.
“What surprised us is our grades went down,” she said Monday.
The province’s overall grade in the Nutrition Report Card on Food Environments for Children and Youth was influenced by the prevalence of unhealthy food options in recreation centres, as well as the ease of access to convenience stores and fast-food restaurants.
The report found that 75 per cent of schools in Calgary and Edmonton have at least one convenience store or fast-food outlet within 100 metres.
In 2015, Alberta received slightly higher grades, including Cs, for healthy food availability in school settings and for restrictions on marketing unhealthy foods to children.
She said the lower grades this year could be due to less funding for programs.
“There was an infusion of funds about 10 years ago when … childhood obesity was coming to the fore,” she said. But many programs have run their course and haven’t been renewed, she added.
“This year (the focus) is really the availability of food,” she said.
There has been a consistent government effort to implement healthy food policies in schools, she said, but food policies don’t extend to other environments like recreation centres. “When families leave a hockey game ... the majority of the choices are poutine and pop.”
The study shows that it is not unusual for most neighbourhoods to have a 10-to-one ratio of convenience stores and fast-food outlets to supermarkets, Raine said.
“We do know from research ... that when people live close to fast food or convenience stores, or where there’s more of that density, that … people are more likely to have lower-quality diets and have overweight and obesity.”
Raine said healthy food policies have implications for public health services.
“We’re now seeing (Type 2 diabetes) in children related to increased weight and obesity,” she said. “We’re seeing things like high blood pressure and fatty livers in children.”
She said access to healthy food can help curb these issues.
“We would support programs such as healthy corner store initiatives to provide things like fresh fruits instead of chocolate bars and chips . ... Zoning laws could be put in place to help prevent new fast food and convenience stores coming into neighbourhoods because we have a proliferation of them already.”
Raine said the research and annual report cards will continue until 2021.
“We’re hoping to see improvement over that time.”