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Inglewood initiatives encourage healthy eating

Laura Ledas is passionate about nutrition.

Laura Ledas is passionate about nutrition.

The Inglewood Care Centre registered dietitian is pleased to be part of a movement to ensure both staff and residents of the West Vancouver retirement community where she has been employed since December 2015 are encouraged and enabled to eat well.

Inglewood recently launched a monthly farmers market open to staff and family members of residents that features organic produce donated by a variety of farms across B.C. and the western United States. Each month, Inglewood staff pick up the produce, ripe and ready to be consumed, from Burnaby’s La Fontana Café at Hastings and Boundary, and bring it back to the centre.

“Staff can go down and pick and choose what they want, fill up a plastic bag, pay $7 and then go home with some very good quality organic food,” she says.

In addition to the benefits of improving access to affordable healthy food, the farmers market is intended to help stimulate staff engagement and incite conversations about eating well.

“As a dietitian I’m always interested in hearing what people are going to make with it and inspiring people to eat healthy at work,” says Ledas.

The market was modelled after a similar initiative she had heard about that was running at another North Shore long-term care site. Like that market, the Inglewood version operates as a fundraiser with 75 per cent of sales going to a variety of local, grassroots initiatives and charities with a focus on specific groups and individuals in need. The remaining 25 per cent of what’s raised goes to Inglewood to supplement its food budget.

“Budgets are always an issue and seasonally it’s more expensive to get fresh produce in B.C. in the winter. If we have a bit of extra spending money we can afford to get more fresh produce on the menu, instead of always frozen or canned. Residents eat three times a day and the dining experience is an important part of their social life and their daily routine,” she says.

In time, Ledas hopes to increase the frequency of the farmers markets as well as find a means of involving residents a little more, as many “have spent their whole lives going grocery shopping, cooking food and preparing food,” she says.

Some residents help with the set up and sale, and eventually Ledas hopes to have a couple accompany staff to do the produce pick ups, offering them an opportunity to get out into the community, maybe stopping for a coffee along the way, in an attempt to normalize their day-to-day lives, getting them back to what they used to do prior to coming into care.

Ledas is also pleased with the success of Inglewood’s inaugural vegetable garden that was launched this past summer and yielded a number of crops, including tomatoes, beets and lettuce. “We had some residents involved in watering. Lots of residents go on walks around the property, so it was something that they could check out and see how it was growing and evolving. Once we harvested, I would bring it through the dining rooms and use it as a topic of conversation with residents, asking them: ‘Did you used to garden? What do you think of this lettuce – check out the smell?’ Or, ‘Give this a taste.’ So it was a sensory experience for them as well and it just stimulated a lot of conversation. Then we would use it in our salads just to improve the quality and availability of fresh, local, organic produce in our menu,” she says.

Ledas has also recently started a menu focus group and meets with residents regularly to discuss Inglewood’s menu and gauge whether there are any areas of potential improvement. One request she received was for more fresh foods. This, mixed with her interest in improving food quality and nutrition at the long-term care facility, is what she credits with her motivation to get the market and garden up and running as well as continue to look to the future to consider what else can be done.   

“I want to make sure they’re getting enough good food that keeps them healthy. A lot of them have different chronic diseases or things like that that good nutrition can support them with,” she adds.