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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2019-01-31, Page 5Although much of the discussion around the updated Canada Food Guide when it was released last week was about the emphasis on more vegetables, fruits and beans and less meat, eggs and milk, there was another recommendation that may be more difficult to implement than persuading meat eaters they really like lentils. The new guide doesn’t simply suggest what we should eat, it also recommends how we should eat – particularly that we should cook more often and that we should share our table with family and friends. Such a suggestion wouldn’t have been necessary back in 1942 when the first Canada Food Guide was introduced, or even in many of the revisions released since. Until relatively recently it was simply natural for most food to be cooked from scratch and eaten at home. Much has changed since then. At one time mothers generally stayed home and one of their tasks was to plan and cook nutritious meals for their families. Often even a stay-at-home mom’s social life might include meetings where a home economist might suggest new foods and recipes that would increase variety in her family’s diet while meeting nutritional requirements. Our world has changed since then. Generally, today, both parents work. Their children are often involved in more sports, clubs or part-time jobs that keep them on the run. The common complaint is that people don’t have time to cook and that the whole family is seldom home at the same time to share a meal together. Yet not all modern western countries have the same attitude, even if they face the same time constraints. Writing in last Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Laura Calder, cookbook author and former host of a Food Network program on French cooking, tells of the culture shock she experienced when she took her North American attitudes toward food along when she moved to France. It is a foundational belief of French culture that eating good food at your leisure with friends is vital, not just to individual health and well- being but to society. Because of the importance French society places on eating well, people make it a priority and find the time to do so. Here in Canada, too often we see eating as refueling ourselves for more important things like work. Sometimes I think our ideal eating pattern would be the human equivalent of those giant tanker aircraft that can transfer jet fuel in mid-air to other jets so they don’t have to waste time in landing to refuel. We see taking time to eat as unproductive. This attitude is reinforced through advertising by companies that produce meals for people who see themselves as too busy to cook. Meanwhile line-ups lengthen at drive- through windows of fast food chains as people convince themselves that they don’t even have time to go inside to order. More and more meals are eaten outside the home because we convince ourselves we’ve no time to cook. Whenever the subject of eating more healthy food is raised, there are sure to be complaints that nutritious food like fresh fruits and vegetables is just too expensive so people have no choice but to eat convenience food. Seldom do people take the time to explore healthy options like using less-expensive frozen vegetables instead of out-of-season fresh vegetables. There are other options, depending on the size of your family. In our house, where there have been just the two of us now for nearly 20 years, Jill continues to cook meals large enough to have once fed our family of six. After the initial meal, she packages and freezes the leftovers in meal-sized portions that she can pull out of the freezer and have a home-cooked meal in minutes. (This won’t work with some of our relatives because they refuse to eat leftovers.) If we examine our priorities, shouldn’t eating well while we share conversation with our family top any other use of the same amount of time? Aside from bringing the family together, studies show that sharing a meal with others has such side benefits as higher grades and literacy rates, reduced depression and addiction, improved relationships and greater open-mindedness. I suspect, though, that persuading people to change their lifestyle will be harder than getting them to change their diet. For one thing, in a society currently obsessed with everything new, getting people to cook and eat as a family at home seems old-fashioned. It’s much easier to get people to adopt the new idea of a plant-based diet. And yet I can’t help thinking that cooking meals at home with simple ingredients and then eating them together as a family would be far better for our health than banishing meat, eggs and milk. Other Views A lens through which to look back Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk The food guide’s hardest change Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense In this week’s edition of The Citizen, we’ve taken highlights from our previous Throwback Thursday Facebook posts and some previous images that haven’t been seen anywhere else since their publication date to show our loyal readers the way things were between one and five decades ago. In case you’re not familiar with the idea behind Throwback Thursday (or #TBT), it offers an opportunity for social media users to post nostalgic photos or posts from years past as a way of keeping the memory of said post or photo alive. Before you read any further, go check out those pictures later in this issue. See what things looked like in the past and see if you recognize any familiar faces. Really, go. I’ll wait. Welcome back. Throwback Thursday has primarily been my initiative. It goes hand in hand with the “Looking Back Through The Years” column that is on page four of each issue of The Citizen, but focuses on the images of the past instead of the news. As I’ve gone through the past, I’ve seen a lot of important events that happened in the Blyth and Brussels communities, but I’ve noticed that the majority of the pictures we post that generate a lot of traction (a term meaning people interacting with the image, be it through commenting or “liking” it) aren’t necessarily the photos associated with big news stories. Routinely, our Throwback Thursday posts are our biggest attraction on our Facebook profile. We have between 2,000 and 13,000 people seeing the images I upload. Those numbers are only rivalled by some of our biggest stories. That realization led me to start looking at the images and trying to see what people are interested in and the results may surprise you. While there are the obvious popular photos, like pictures of teams from years past in which everyone tags friends and family members, some of the other images are much more personal ones that result in entire families discussing the photo in the comments. Normally, I’d advise anyone to stay away from any comment sections on the internet. Truly, there is no greater hive of scum and villainy than the comments below YouTube videos or contentious news stories. Our Throwback Thursday posts, however, seem to bring out the best in humanity, including smiles, fond memories and recollections. While Shawn and I joke that we know when a Throwback Thursday post goes up because our phones start vibrating every 10 seconds, it’s good to see that The Citizen’s community is so interested in what the newspaper, as well as its predecessors, has done for the past century (though there aren’t many images in those truly ancient editions of the local newspapers). It’s a refreshing realization because, going in, I was very worried that these posts and pictures may end up going unnoticed, or worse yet, I may end up opening old wounds for people. As I’ve come to find, however, even with images that contain a lost loved one, people are happy to see them and happy to be reminded of the people they have had in their lives. Aside from that realization, it has really made me evaluate what I consider to be “the big pictures” of the newspaper. Sure, I take a lot of pictures of smiling kids playing on the playground (or, in last week’s issue of The Citizen,playing indoors due to the cold), but I never thought how much of an impact those photos may have five, 10 or 20 years down the line. There was a disconnect between what I know as a journalist (that photos attached to news story should be a priority) and what I know as a person (people like seeing people they know). Some months back, just after my grandfather, Retired Major Frank Golding, passed, I was sitting in my grandmother’s living room scanning old pictures of him for a slide show for his visitation and funerals. The images were of a man I had only really known in his 70s and through to his mid-90s. I was either too young to remember or not around before that. It was an uplifting experience, digitizing those images and getting to see his life through those pictures. I’m sure at some point I had viewed him as a young man, but, to be honest, until I was going through photo after photo, following him through his life, had it dawned on me just how much of a story he had to tell. It also dawned on me, in a bittersweet way, that it was too late to ask for that tale. It seems silly that I wouldn’t have connected that experience of my own with our Throwback Thursday posts until recently, when I started thinking, which ones should we share on Facebook and which ones should we put in print. It seems silly, but here we are. So take another look at the Throwback Thursday page in this week’s issue of The Citizen, then go on Facebook (and if you need to ask your children or grandchildren for help, do that, because as annoyed as they may seem now, I guarantee they won’t feel that way looking back) and check out what once was. You never know what you might remember. Denny Scott Denny’s Den THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JANUARY 31, 2019. PAGE 5. What’s in a mandate? What is a government’s mandate? What should politicians be funding with taxpayers’ dollars? This age- old debate is at the heart of a democracy, but there will always be as many answers as there are citizens, which is why defining council’s mandate can be a dangerous exercise. At last week’s North Huron budget meeting, for example, Councillor Chris Palmer said that council’s mandate was to pave the roads of East Wawanosh and to fix snowplows. With the diversity and complexity of a community, it’s hard to point to one, single mandate and say it’s more important than another. Remember the Howson Dam conversations? A handful of Wingham residents wanted council to spend as much as $7 million to fix a dam so they could enjoy some time on the water. To them, a 126.6 per cent increase to the budget (Treasurer Donna White said one per cent of North Huron’s 2019 budget is $55,287) was worth it for a little “R&R” on the waves. You might surmise then that those folks, for example, may not care about East Wawanosh roads or snowplow repairs. Right now, Brussels residents are facing a community centre renovation and expansion expected to cost $4.5 million. While not on the tax bill, that’s a large cost that could divide residents. A parent of four hockey-playing children may see the project as a priority, while an older couple who hates sports may feel there are better ways to spend their money. It all comes down to a resident’s priorities, activities and lifestyle. Paving smooth, immaculate roads can really add value to a community. However, if there’s no reason to visit a community (or move there because it offers nothing of interest), those roads could prove to be a waste of money. Blyth Festival Artistic Director Gil Garratt and I have had numerous conversations about this mindset when it comes to governments providing funding to arts organizations like galleries, theatres or public art installations. Some will argue that a government has no business pumping money into the arts, while others, like Garratt, will point out that not only do the arts help keep a community healthy, but they also have a very real economic impact on their communities as well. Nowhere is this more obvious than in a community like Blyth. For the tens of thousands who come to Blyth every year, the Blyth Festival is important to them, but for Blythites who have lived their whole life in the village and never attended a show (I have spoken to such people, they exist), perhaps funding for the Festival isn’t atop their priority list for their government. The creation of a “non-essential” tourist attraction can have a profound impact on a small community. Ask Blyth residents about Cowbell Brewing Company or Brussels residents about the Four Winds Barn. People visit and move to places for a myriad of reasons – to ignore the majority of them is a mistake. To forget you govern a community of nearly 5,000 individuals is a mistake. No doubt budgeting for municipalities is getting harder every year and tough decisions have to be made, but the floor should always be left open for debate. To dictate the municipality’s priorities to ratepayers, without seeking any input from them could be a slippery slope. At what point are you imposing your priorities on ratepayers who may not share those exact same views? North Huron Council has a full plate, so dictating priorities to a community in the first few months of a term might lose some crucial stock in the court of public opinion.