Towards Healthier Food Environments in Ontario: Policy & Infrastructure Supports
Date: February 27th, 2018
Location: Online
Webinar Slides
Internationally, nutrition experts have recognized the critical role of governments in shaping food environments, which can influence food choices through a broad range of policy levers. A global network of public interest organizations, researchers and food environment experts called INFORMAS – the International Network of Food and Obesity / NCDs Research, Monitoring and Action Support – are actively working together to create healthy food environments and reduce obesity and nutrition-related, non-communicable diseases by benchmarking, monitoring and supporting public and private sector policy actions and infrastructure supports using a healthy food environment policy index (Food-EPI).
What do experts think are the top five policy actions for improving the food environment in Ontario and beyond?
In this webinar, Dr. Mary L’Abbe and Dr. Lana Vanderlee, who led the Food-EPI Canada 2017 research study, will share an overview of INFORMAS and the Food-EPI framework and process. You’ll learn about the results of the Food-EPI Canada 2017, through which Canada’s nutrition and food environment experts have identified and prioritized policy actions and infrastructure supports for food environment policy. This webinar will discuss identified policy gaps at federal, provincial and territorial levels, and will share resources developed during the process that can support efforts to improve food environment policy across Canada.
Access the Food-EPI reports here:
- Federal Full Report
- Federal Executive Summary
- Provincial (Ontario) Report
- Provincial (Ontario) Evidence Summary
For a summary/background on the Food-EPI Canada 2017 project, see this NRC news release.
Speakers: Dr. Mary L’Abbé & Dr. Lana Vanderlee
Dr. L’Abbé is the Earle W. McHenry Professor and Chair of the Department of Nutritional Sciences, Faculty of Medicine, at the University of Toronto, where she leads a research group on Food and Nutrition Policy for Population Health.She is an expert in public health nutrition, nutrition policy, and food and nutrition regulations, with a long career in mineral nutrition research. Dr. L’Abbé a member of several committees of the WHO including the Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group on Diet and Health and the Global Coordinating Mechanism for NCDs; the former which recently released the WHO Guidelines on Sugars.
Dr. Vanderlee joined the L’Abbe Lab at the University of Toronto in May 2016 as a CIHR Banting Postdoctoral Fellow. She has a PhD in Public Health from the University of Waterloo School of Public Health and Health Systems. Her PhD research examined the impact of menu labelling on food choices in the Canadian context, in addition to experimental research on the food labelling of packaged food. Overall, Lana is interested in the impact of food environment policy on health behaviours. Her current postdoctoral research seeks to identify and evaluate government and industry food environment policies compared to some of the best practices internationally, in collaboration with INFORMAS.
