A Comprehensive Evidence-Informed Plan for Healthy Food and Food Systems in Ontario

A COMPREHENSIVE EVIDENCE-INFORMED PLAN FOR HEALTHY FOOD AND FOOD SYSTEMS IN ONTARIO About the Ontario Food and Nutrition Strategy The Ontario Food and Nutrition Strategy was developed by a dedicated group of key actors with the goal of strengthening Ontario’s food systems and improving the health and well-being of Ontarians. [...] To address the complex and interconnected In the past few years, Ontario has made a relationships between the food systems number of strides in food systems planning and health and well-being, a whole-system through the implementation of several perspective was applied in the development community, organizational and government of the Ontario Food and Nutrition. [...] Food systems include everything from food production and procurement, to food processing, food distribution, food access, food consumption, farmland preservation and stewardship, food skills and education, and waste management.3 Therefore, the strategy was developed in collaboration with many experts and stakeholders representing agriculture, food, health, First Nations, Inuit and Métis communitie [...] For it to succeed it requires 1) a coordinated each of the 25 priority action provincial office and advisory council to address food and nutrition areas recommended to create policy and programming, 2) a systematic approach to measurement, productive, equitable and monitoring and analysis of key indicators and 3) sufficient capacity and resources to support all elements of the strategy (Appendix C [...] To increase the quantity of healthy food that is OF HEALTHY & SAFE FOOD produced and sold locally, adequate infrastructure Continuing to provide healthy and safe food is key to is needed to process, transport and distribute food 145 the viability of Ontario’s food systems.