Gathering with food: Northern voices

What does eating together mean to you?

In March, we celebrated Nutrition Month. Throughout the month, dietitians across Canada highlighted food’s potential, including the ability of food to bring us together. In support of this theme, Northern Health held a photo contest, asking Northern community members to submit photos of themselves eating together with family, friends, or co-workers, with a brief description of what eating together means to them.

It’s inspiring to see how our communities come together over food and we wanted to highlight the wonderful submissions we received. These posts have some common themes, including:

• Meal and snack times provide an opportunity to connect with loved ones.
• Life can be quite busy, so having some time to gather, relax, and celebrate food can improve your physical, mental, and emotional health.
• Food also teaches valuable life skills, such as teamwork, food preparation, sharing, and many more!

In the pictures, it’s clear that families across the North use mealtime to connect with loved ones. These are some of the responses to our question, what does eating together mean to you?

Some of my fondest memories have been centered on food… from social and family gatherings to parties and celebrations... I associate the smiles, laughter, and fun with how food can really bring people together, through simple preparation, eating together or cleaning up the last of the skimmings.” -Pamela from Prince George

Thanks again to all who submitted fantastic entries to our Nutrition Month contest, and a special shout-out to our contest winner, Marian from Prince George! While we enjoyed reading each of the submissions, Marian’s collage of pictures really demonstrated the variety of ways in which food can bring us together, through food preparation, cooking, and eating!

Explore some of our other blog posts to see how food can bring us together:

• I shared our 2018 dietitian pro-tips!
• Dietetic intern Terry gave us a great recipe for no-bake energy balls
• Dietetic intern Allie uses food as a means of self-care
• Tamara explores the family meal