A Meaty Dilemma

The average diet on the James Bay coast is still more-or-less based on a means of survival. People enjoy living off the land by hunting and gathering different foods such as geese, moose, caribou and a variety of fish. This is a diet that has fed my people for thousands of years.

Today we have a choice of what to eat but many James Bay Cree still prefer the taste of food that has been harvested from the land. People have the option of visiting the community grocery store to buy ready-made food and this is easy and fast. However, buying food in an isolated community in the north is still based on a survivalist mentality. Instead of trying to gather food from the land, shoppers seek out food that is the least expensive and products that will last a long time.

Transporting food to the north is no easy task and by the time groceries have arrived, prices have been marked up substantially to take in the cost of air travel, travel by barge or by winter road. The amount of time it takes to transport this food also affects the type of food that arrives in the community. If it takes days for grocery products to be transported in a variety of types of transports, then fresh foods are out of the question. Instead most foods that arrive in the north come in cans, plastic packages and cardboard.

There is a practical issue when it comes to canned foods. When people go out on the land, they want to bring with them prepackaged food that will not spoil. At the start of goose-hunting season, many hunters head out on the land with nothing but their cans of food in anticipation of a harvest of fresh geese for the season.

However, there are many questions about these canned and packaged foods. These products are prewrapped, precooked, processed, amended and flavoured. All this is done in an effort to preserve the food for weeks and even months after it has been initially packaged. At the start of production, food is also produced in a cost-effective manner to reduce the final cost at the store. Meats of all types are preprocessed and injected with all sorts of preservatives and mixed together in an endless mass production line. This means that the food is treated more as a product to sell to someone rather than something that will provide a good healthy meal to a family.

The recent listeria contamination has raised new and old questions about the safety of processed foods. To date this food contamination has made many people sick across the
country and a dozen are now reported to have died. Listeria is a bacterium that causes listeriosis. This bacterium is found in soil, vegetation, sewage, water and the feces of animals and humans. Eating foods that have the bacteria can cause serious illness including brain and blood infection and even death in extreme cases.

One of the surprising things that I discovered from this recent food scare was the fact that there had been recommendations from Health Canada stating that pregnant women, the elderly and immuno-compromised patients should avoid cold cuts and some other deli foods because of the risk of contracting listeriosis or other foodborne illnesses. Before the contamination made headlines across the country, this was a low-key recommendation that few people knew about. It certainly was not well known in the Native community where our Elders regularly consume this type of food in an effort to save a bit of money.

Older people in general tend to be more careful with their money. Our Elders in the north understand the value of money, no matter how little, so they make their dollars stretch as far as they can. They are on fixed incomes so they tend to shop for deals. The problem is that many times, these savings occur at the cost of a person’s health with the purchase of unhealthy foods. I remember watching many of our Elders in the north purchase and consume canned meats and prepackaged foods in order to save a few dollars. What our Elders really prefer is to sit with the rest of their family when out on the land to eat whatever wild game is being served.

Many of our people have questioned the health value and safety of these packaged foods for many years. In northern isolated communities, the rate of cancers related to the bowels and digestive tract are high. It does not take a professional with years of training to figure out that what we eat directly causes what afflicts our communities. However, most Native people are stuck in a cycle of poverty so they are forced to buy cheaper processed foods. No doubt they would all prefer to buy steaks and chops but the sad reality is that most of the time they end up with hot dogs, cold cuts and canned stews and soups.

My friend Sarah suggested to me recently that the best solution is to just give up store-bought meat altogether. Perhaps she has the right idea. Faced with all the problems with meats these days becoming a vegetarian does have its merits. Anybody for Tofu hot dogs?