DEPUTATION by ANDREEA IONESCU

BOARD OF HEALTH

Nov 12, 2007

I am here today because I would like to point out one the main reasons why there is a correlation between poverty and poor health.

Very cheap, processed, poor quality food is the answer.

 I would like the Board of Health to:

1)    Endorse the more natural and progressive YMCA menu as the template for the 3000 children fed in Toronto Municipal Daycares.
2)    Urge the provincial/federal government to include in the Day Nurseries Act/CanadaFoodGuide  a minimum quality standard for food products served in daycare. [legislation deals with quantities not quality]

So, before I will describe what bad foods should never be fed to children in daycare, I would like to give you an example of what a healthy menu is for a young child.

Below is the statement written on the YMCA menu.
“All of our food is made with 100% natural ingredients and we place a strong emphasis on using as much local & organic content as possible.  Our food is free of added trans – fats, artificial coloring & preservatives, and excess salt & sugar.  We strive to purchase meats which do not receive artificial growth hormones & routine antibiotics and which are locally raised & ethically treated.  Fresh Fruits & vegetables vary according to season & availability. We triple –filter our cooking water to remove chlorine, fluoride and to reduce the risk of water born bacteria.”

This menu, containing only fresh fruit not canned; meat from animals guaranteed not to be pumped full of antibiotics and hormones; and free of processed foods full of additives, sugar, fillers, and so on, is a natural diet, and it is every parent’s dream and probably, every doctor’s dream as well.

I would like to point out that Toronto Municipal Daycares are nowhere close to resembling and being as progressive as the YMCA when it comes to feeding children.

Other daycares are even worse.

I would also like to point out that Toronto Municipal Daycares cares for about 3000 children in the city, and many are from poor families. These are 3000 children that could be raised and educated and accustomed to eating healthy natural food, just like the YMCA does for its children.

So, since these kids spend the majority of their day in the city’s care, they should also be fed a YMCA menu. If the YMCA can do it, so can Toronto Municipal Daycares.

Children’s Services is currently drafting the minimum food standard for the upcoming food contract bid for city daycares, and this new RFP (request for proposal), I believe, should be as progressive as the YMCA’s.

And now, in the remaining time, I would like to list 3 examples of poor quality food fed to kids in municipal daycares.

• Meat products are not guaranteed to come from animals not fed hormones and antibiotics or were fed a natural diet (no trans fats, no leftover grease from fast food restaurants, no cannibalism, etc), and also not guaranteed to come from areas of low pollution (fish fillets from China, perhaps fished out of the nearby polluted Russian Artic,  are still on the menu). Canada has an ocean on 3 sides!
• Canned fruits, vegetables, sauce, fish expose children to other risks. Ex. Canned potatoes or canned pineapple with added sugar is nutritionally depleted + bad for teeth+ + added bisphenol from the inner plastic lining).
• Many processed foods, as the cooks do not cook anymore, but open cans or heat up tv dinner like entrees. Ex. Attached cake recipe.

If additives like trans fats, have been discovered to be brain blockers, and disrupt communication among neurons, I can only imagine what the cocktail of chemicals found in today’s very cheap processed foods can do to a child.

I am scared of the a) cocktail effect and also the b) cumulative effect of many of the chemicals that end up in food and are fed to young children.

So, in conclusion, I would like the Board of Health to:

1. Endorse the YMCA menu as the template menu for the 3000 children fed in Toronto Municipal Daycares.
2. Urge the provincial/federal government to update Day Nurseries Act/CanadaFoodGuide  and include a minimum quality standard for food products served in daycare. For example, it should specify that fresh fruit, not canned fruit should be fed to children. Warm meals should not be warmed up TV dinners full of additives and fillers or food dumped from a can.  Juice (especially juice made from powder) should not be considered a “fruit serving”. Hot dogs should not be considered a meat serving, and so on.

History: Once upon a time, meals in Toronto Municipal Daycares, were made from scratch, but in a cost saving measure, some of the cooking staff was eliminated and as a result, the majority of prepared meals served now are processed.
Consequently, the city lost control over the origin and quality of the ingredients that make up the food served in daycares.

Example: A cook making food from scratch would not have boxes of tetrasodium pyrophosphate, modified corn starch, or propylene glycol mono fatty acid esters to add to the food while stirring the pot!

Example: In a premade frozen meal, it is not possible to know from which part of the world the ingredients originate and how polluted those lands are.

DEPUTATION BY DERYK JACKSON

TORONTO BOARD OF HEALTH

APRIL 16, 2007

TOPIC: ARTIFICIAL TRANS FATS IN DAYCARES IN THE CITY OF TORONTO

POSITION: TO RECOMMEND THAT ALL ARTIFICIAL TRANS FATS (HYDROGENATED, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED, MODIFIED AND SHORTENING OILS) BE ELIMINATED COMPLETELY FROM DAYCARES IN TORONTO

Point 1—Variability in Serving Sizes

A key complication in assessing and managing the amount of artificial trans fats ingested is due to the manipulation of serving sizes listed in nutritional information. Current legislation allows most foodstuffs to be labelled as “trans fat free” if it contains less than 0.2 g of trans fats per serving. Some manufacturers, while only reducing the amount of trans fats in their products slightly, have more greatly reduced what they consider to be a serving size for their products so as to take advantage of the inadequate regulation for “trans fat free” status. The result is that these products are now listed as having 0 g of trans fat per serving for what are, in fact, unreasonably small suggested serving sizes.

Misleading serving sizes will greatly complicate the efforts of the Joint Working Group(Municipal Daycares) and officials in other daycares as it/they will need to

a) determine what constitutes an average serving size for children from infants to school age children and,
b) be hampered by the fact that manufacturers hide the true amount of trans fats in their products by simply changing the serving size and thus trans fat data will not be available for these products.

Even if the recommendations of the Federal Trans Fat Task Force were adopted, manufacturers would still be in a position to add artificial trans fats to their products and to have their products labelled as “trans fat free” by manipulating suggested serving sizes. Given the difficulties then of determining reasonable serving sizes and calculating total trans fat load for any particular serving, the best option to defend and promote the health of children in is to choose products which truly contain no trans fats.

Over…

Point 2—Health and Financial Implications

On the website for Toronto Public Health it is written that: “There is no safe level of intake,” when answering the question, “How much trans fat is OK?”1 Given the overwhelming amount of research into the health and financial implications of trans fats, the statement seems on point. Why then are we recommending a limitation on artificial trans fats and not a ban on them?

Following up on the comment of no safe level, Toronto Public Health writes: “Any increase in trans fat intake is accompanied by an increase in heart disease risk.” Although the Task Force’s recommendations, if implemented, would place strict limits on trans fats in our food supply, their continued use would still be linked to heart disease and its associated human impact and financial burden—“These is no safe level of intake.”1

More than heart disease, trans fats are increasingly being associated with disorders in other human body systems. In an article entitled Trans Fats: The Health Burden prepared by the Parliamentary Information and Research Service (Science and Technology Division), links are made between ingestion of trans fats and diabetes(insulin resistance), neurological disorders(impedance of proper electrical activity of neurons), cancer(breast and colon) and developmental problems in foetuses and infants(many and profound problems)2. What is the human impact of these health problems? What is the financial impact? Furthermore trans fats are only one of a cocktail of chemicals to which our children are exposed, including bisphenol A and phthalates(from plastics and cans), pesticides(from produce), & antibiotics and hormones(from meat derived products); only with a total ban on these “toxic” fats can we eliminate their health and financial burdens and reduce overall negative chemical exposure in our children’s food.

Adults, given nutritional information and a choice, can choose what they eat—we all do so everyday. We also choose for our children what we believe to be healthy and nutritious for them. When our children are in the care of a daycare provider, it is the duty of the provider to do what is best for them and to feed them the healthiest and most nutritious food available. We should not be speaking about limiting or almost eliminating “toxic” trans fats, we should be removing them. We should be able to say to the current generation of children in daycares that we made a decision in their youth that may save their health if not their lives. Please recommend to Children’s Services, to the Joint Working Group and to other daycare providers in the City that all artificial trans fats be completely eliminated from the food fed to our children.

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1 Toronto Public Health, viewed Sunday, April 15, 2007, http://www.toronto.ca/health/transfat.htm
2 S. Norris, Library of Parliament, Ottawa, Ontario, site revised January 26, 2007, viewed Friday, April 13, 2007, http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/library/PRBpubs/prb0521-e.htm

DEPUTATION BY ANDREEA IONESCU

PARKS AND ENVIRONMENT COMMITTEE

June 18, 2007

TOPIC: Increase energy efficiency in city daycares and other city buildings and use the savings to increase the food budget allocation for city of Toronto daycares so they can afford to buy local (and healthier) food and consequently cause a further reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Point 1
Energy Conservation Methods for City Daycares and other City Buildings

1. put lights on motion sensors for after program hours and weekends/vacations
2. decrease the hot water temperature to luke warm water
3. put the hot water on a timer (or manually turned off) for after program hours and weekends

These energy conservation methods, common in most parts of the world, would decrease our need for gas and also coal and nuclear derived electricity. It would also decrease our contribution to smog causing particles, greenhouse gas emissions, and radioactive waste. Additionally, these conservation methods would result in financial savings.

Point 2
These savings can be used to allow Children’s Services to afford to buy local Canadian produce, when in season (and as local as possible when not in season, such as produce from BC or southern US), and meat products from naturally and ethically raised animals, like the YMCA daycares have done. The action of buying local would further decrease our contribution to global warming as there would be less emissions from shorter transportations. The children would benefit from less traveled, less fungicide sprayed or canned food, less unknown contaminants, less vitamin depleted and more nutritious food.
Ex: No canned peaches from Greece or fish fillets from China should be served in city daycares (or tuna from the Philippines, pineapple from Thailand, bottled lemon juice from Greece, etc).

So, I am asking to have energy conservation methods put in place and use the savings to bridge the difference in cost between the current quality food fed to kids in city daycares and what the YMCA has started to feed children.

The YMCA daycares, charge less money and they have started to feed kids local produce when in season, organic snacks, hormone and antibiotic free meat products, etc. Since I have started my campaign, many changes have been made to improve the quality of food, but city daycares still have a long way to catch up to the YMCA food standard. With their current budget allocation, city daycares cannot raise their standard to the YMCA level.

It is quite painful for me to hear that there is no money to improve the quality of food products ordered by city daycares, when the lights and the hot water are on all the time.
It is painful for me to know that I’ve been paying $64 dollars a day for the last 9 months and the food budget allocation is about two and a half dollars per child per day and have to witness the energy splurge.

I have written to the Budget Chair Councillor Shelly Carroll and Mayor David Miller about this topic but I have not received a response. More recently, I have emailed the Department of Facilities and Real Estate, and I am waiting for a reply from them.
Here today, I would like to ask for your support in implementing this energy conservation methods and also to ask you if you let me know how can I ensure that these savings will be poured into the city daycare food budget?

_____________________________________________________________________

Other suggestions for recommendations the Parks and Environment Committee could make to Toronto Public Health and Children’s Services on behalf of global warming prevention strategies: make city wide campaigns for children in all public or private daycares to eat healthier and more environmentally friendly by:

• switching to fruit and water instead of juice in a plastic bottle (city daycares have just made this switch)
• no canned fruit and other canned food kept to a minimum (city daycares have started moving in this direction, but there is still some canned fruit on the menu)

Just to give you an example of how many cans per child a daycare could use, I will give you a list of all the canned food I found in my daughter’s daycare when we enrolled her: potatoes, mandarins, pineapple, mango slices, fruit cocktail, nectarine, peach, the fruit used in muffins, puree fruit, soup, tuna, salmon (for tortilla rolls), tomato paste, crushed tomatoes, beans, sliced beets, and perhaps some others of which I am not aware.

The juice, the daycares used to serve up to a week ago, was Farlee Apple juice (“made in Canada”, but actually from China). The current switch city daycares have made, to fruit and water, is definitely healthier and less global warming causing. I think it should be promoted in all daycares, private or public, across the city.

In order for cans to be made, metal ore has to be dug up from some part of the world, refined (in a very polluting and high energy requirement process), turned into cans coated with plastic, fruit must be boiled, sugar added, and then the cans get transported half way around the world, and for what – vitamin depleted fruit spiked with bisphenol A at the expanse of children’s health, local farmers, and the environment?
And with respect to plastic juice containers, the process is also polluting and environmentally damaging when the oil is drilled on land or out of the ocean and chemically processed to produce plastic. Recycling plastic is also polluting and energy demanding.

The energy requirement for cans is huge and the nutritional benefit is severely diminished. Canned food is also more expensive than the fresh version.