The NWT is full of nutritious food, and much of it can be found far beyond the doors of the territory’s grocery stores.
“Traditional foods are the foods that have been eaten for millennia by the original peoples of the Northwest Territories, and that would be food from the land, the sky and the waters,” said Mabel Wong, a registered dietician who works as a territorial nutritionist with the NWT’s chief public health officer. “There are no foods from the land, sky and waters that should be avoided. All animals are healthy to eat, but traditional hunters, trappers, and harvesters know how to look for a healthy animal compared to an animal that is not healthy, and their wisdom is really, really valued when a person goes hunting.”
Wong has been doing her job in the North for just shy of 50 years.
In that time, she has become well acquainted with many traditional foods, such as the meat of moose and caribou, as well as the NWT’s many species of birds.
Ungulates like moose and caribou, he says, have a comparable level of protein to domesticated animals like cows and pigs, but often include far more iron. Iron, an important mineral that can be difficult to obtain, is even more prevalent in birds.
“These foods are high in protein and mostly lower in fat [than farmed animals],” she said. “The iron in moose and in caribou is a bit higher than in beef and pork. What is very surprising is the amount of iron that’s found in birds, like geese and ducks, is almost one and a half times higher than beef and pork.”
The NWT’s numerous species of fish are rich in protein too, but also include a more unique component that is very beneficial.
“Fish have something that animals with four legs and two legs don’t have, and that is something called Omega-3 fatty acids,” said Wong. “Fish is available all across the territories, and our fish in Northern waters are really great sources of those healthy Omega-3 fats.
“More and more is being researched about this,” he added. “The heart was one of the target areas where Omega-3 fatty acids keep us healthy. [It also has a role in] fighting the inflammatory processes in our body. So, for example, if we get an infection, there’s an inflammation process going on.”
While animals make up a large part of the traditional diet, it is important not to ignore the NWT’s wealth of nutritious wild plants, such as lamb’s quarters, which is also known as wild spinach. That plant, Wong commented, is “just a chock-a-block full of vitamin C.” The same goes for spruce tips and young dandelions, and many other plants that sprout in the spring.
“Most people know to collect berries, but there’s something else to think about in terms of traditional plants,” she said. “People forget that we have a huge land mass in the Northwest Territories and there are lots and lots of plants that people traditionally ate.
“There are people who can teach others how to forge.”
Shopping at grocery stores and restaurants
People thrived for millennia in what is now the NWT, long before grocery stores and restaurants arrived. Nowadays, those retailers can be found in every community in the territory, and provide many healthy options for residents, whether they’re buying all their food off a shelf or supplementing a traditional diet.
“We have a huge number of things to choose from,” said Wong. “Following Canada’s Food Guide, and using that to make our purchases in the grocery store, is a good thing to do.
People need to think about three things when buying food from the grocery store, he advised. First is the benefits each product will provide for our physical body. The second is how each product will impact our “spirit” or mental health. The third thing to consider is “does it benefit the wallet or does it hurt the wallet?”
It’s no secret that food is expensive in the North. However, Wong contends that the widespread perception that healthy food is more expensive than junk food like pop and chips is somewhat inaccurate.
“Unhealthy foods are very, very expensive,” she said. “I think that’s one of the things that might surprise people.
“My colleagues and I recently looked at the cost of pop in the NWT, for example,” she added. “We worked out the cost of what it would cost to drink one can of pop a day, and it works out into the thousands of dollars if you drank one can of pop a day for 365 days.”
People often fail to pay enough attention to the nutritional properties of their drinks, according to Wong — and not just when it comes to pop. Flavored coffees are a particularly unhealthy product.
“You can get it [flavoured coffee] at Starbucks, and at any Northern store co-op in the North,” she explained. “You say, well, it’s not pop, but it’s full of sugar.
“It could be higher [in sugar] than a can of pop,” she continued. “Let’s first of all rethink our drinking and think about drinking water.”
Sugary drinks aren’t the only product Northerners should consider keeping out of their shopping carts. Grocery stores and restaurants are full of many other unhealthy foods, some of which may come as a surprise.
When it comes to muffins, for example, “you might as well have a piece of cake because it’s full of fat and sugar,” Wong says. Boxed cereal, meanwhile, is ultimately little more than “sugar floating in milk.” Then there are French fries, which can easily be replaced by much healthier potato preparations, and whole wheat bread, which Wong notes shouldn’t be confused with healthier whole grain bread.
“Whole wheat bread is white bread in disguise,” she said.
Tom Taylor, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, NWT News/North