Health and Nutrition

Welcome to the Nutrition section of our site. On these pages, you’ll find ideas for re-energizing your daily life by eating well and making good food choices. You’ll also find information on meal planning, food preparation courses, cookbooks, and cooking shows. Along with social and physical activity, a good diet can go a long way toward keeping fit and feeling mentally alert and agile.

Fast foods are a major temptation in the daily rush of work, home, and socializing. So is skipping breakfast and snacking poorly. But as we know, packaged foods typically have high levels of saturated fat, sugar, and salt, as well as preservatives and artificial flavours that can be detrimental to health. Processed foods are also more expensive than healthier fresh foods, an important consideration if you’re living on a fixed income or have a large family to feed.

To expand your range of food choices and meal ideas, see Wise and Healthy Eating and Accessible Nutrition Resources. You’ll also find links to information on medical conditions and diets. For a look at how good nutrition can sharpen your thinking, see the article “A Brain-Healthy Diet” under Eating well—thinking well.

Schools of thought vary on which foods are considered healthy and how best to categorize them. In Canada, for example, we organize foods into four nutrition groups—see Canada’s Food Guide—while in the U.S., foods are arranged into a “Food Pyramid.” Conventional wisdom says we need a certain amount of starch per day to stay healthy, while promoters of low carb diets may disagree.

If living on a fixed income is preventing you from buying what you need for a healthy diet, search for Food Banks on the 211Toronto website. On the same site, you can also find out where Free or Low Cost Meals are available to people on a limited income.