Healthy Food Guidelines
         For  First Nations Communities
      Acknowledgements
      First Nations Health Authority would like to thank the creators of the Healthy Food Guidelines For First Nations 
      Communities. We truly hope that First Nations Healthy Food Guidelines will be useful in supporting a healthy eating 
      environment within First Nations communities in British Columbia.
      ©2009 Guidelines Edited by Suzanne Johnson, RD, 2nd Edition - 2014
      The First Nations Health Authority gratefully acknowledges the contributing authorship of Karen Fediuk and Angela Grigg 
      as well as the contributions of the many community members and health workers who inspired and assisted in guiding 
      the development of the guidelines. We also wish to thank the authors of the “Guidelines for Food and Beverage Sales in 
      BC” and many other nutrition education tools that have been adapted for use in these guidelines for communities.
     Contents                   
                        
     Section 1 – Introduction 
     Section 2 – Healthy Food Guidelines 
     Section 3 – Make Your Recipe Healthier 
     Section 4 – Promoting Healthy Eating In Children’s, Youth and Family Programs 
     Section 5 – Serving Healthy At Meetings and Conferences 
     Section 6 – Serving Traditional Foods 
     Section 7 – Improving Local Food Security – Increasing the Use of Local and Regional Foods 
     Section 8 – Recipes For Groups 
     Section 9 – Appendices 
               1)    Nutrition Criteria for Healthy Food Guidelines for First Nations Communities
               2)    Preparing Food Safely 
               3)    Colour It Up (Seasonally available vegetables and fruits) 
               4)    Guide to Storage of Vegetables and Fruits 
               5)    Label Reading 
               6)    Focus on Fat – What to Cut 
               7)    What’s in your glass? 
               8)    Safer User of Plastics
               9)    Handouts to send home
             10)    21 Way to help your body
             11)    Tips for preparing a community feast
        Foreword
        “Food Sovereignty” is the Right of peoples, communities, and countries to define their own agricultural, labour, fishing, 
        food and land policies, which are ecologically, socially, spiritually, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique 
        circumstances.
        “Indigenous Food Sovereignty” also includes the elements of sacredness and self-determination. As Indigenous 
        People we understand that food is a gift and that we have a sacred responsibility to nurture healthy, interdependent 
        relationships with the land, water, plants, and animals that provide us with our food. This also means, having the ability 
        to respond to our own needs for safe, healthy, culturally relevant indigenous foods with the ability to make decisions 
        over the amount and quality of food we hunt, fish, gather, grow and eat. These rights are asserted on a daily basis for the 
        benefit of present and future generations.
        Our traditional foods have nourished us well since the time of our creation and have been of fundamental importance to 
        our culture. We developed sophisticated techniques to preserve a variety of foods year round to keep our bodies strong 
        and this knowledge has carried us well into our current place. Many challenges now exist for First Nations who wish to 
        access traditional foods. The land and water have experienced changes that now limit the ability to access adequate 
        amounts of our traditional foods. At the same time, our lives have been widely influenced by an abundance of processed, 
        commercially influenced food sources and lack of access to nutritious whole foods. It is our hope that that the Healthy 
        Food Guidelines For First Nations Communities will provide our communities with the information and tools to assist in 
        serving healthy foods at conferences, community gatherings, meetings, programs, special events, school/ daycare meal 
        programs and even fundraising.
          
        How to use these guidelines
        These guidelines are intended to support community members in educating each other about better food and drink 
        choices to offer in schools, meetings, homes, cultural and recreational events, and in restaurants.
        There is information presented for various types of community members, from general background information on the 
        issues facing communities to specific handouts that can assist individuals in choosing better snacks for lunches.