Newsletter #1
FOOD POLICY LAB | MAY 2021
Message from the PI
COURAGEOUS LEADERSHIP & STAYING THE BLAZES HOME (with COOKIES)
Welcome to the May 2021 inaugural newsletter for the Food Policy Lab!
This month, we are staying home in Nova Scotia, and keeping our eyes peeled on the latest developments in the province’s COVID-19 immunization plan.
We continue to be inspired and energized by women practicing courageous leadership in government, nutrition, and beyond, to build a healthier and more equitable post-COVID future. With this in mind, Cathy and Emily have been holding strategy sessions on Monday afternoons to sharpen our approach to research planning and make the most of our already packed 2021-2022 workplan.
On May 13, Cathy will be speaking on the annual 'updates’ panel at the Canadian Association for Food Law and Policy conference. Registration is free!—see you there.
Ryan, Korede, and Helen are continuing telephone recruitment for our CIHR-funded CELLAR study. We hope you are looking forward to their calls. A great big thank you to Atlantic Canadians who have already joined and are actively contributing to our understanding of how COVID-19 affects diet and nutrition. Read more about the study in this month’s Project Spotlight below.
Gabriella is polishing our first article on a cost analysis of 2015 CCHS-Nutrition data, and collaborating with Emily and Maria on an examination of regional variation in Canadian diets. Emily is starting a series of retailer interviews in Newfoundland and Labrador in consultation with NL’s regional dietitians and Food First NL. Read more about Emily’s approach to interviewing in this month’s Deep Dive. Emily and Noel are also continuing our SSHRC-funded Grocery Gateways interviews, examining healthy retailing policy instruments with public servants across orders of government. Stay tuned for more about Noel’s research when he presents at the 5th International Conference on Public Policy in July (virtually, and not as planned in Barcelona!)
Laura is coordinating our lab’s module in a new international professional development course on Transforming Retail Food Environments to be Health-Enabling, led by Monash University in Melbourne, with the Australian NHMRC-funded Centre of Research Excellence in Food Retail Environments (RE-FRESH) in which Cathy is an Associate Investigator. Contributing to the short course supports our lab’s continued focus on practitioner capacity-building in healthy retailing intervention design. Read more about Laura’s thesis research in this month’s Researcher Spotlight.
We’ll be filling out our 2021 Census forms.
And we’re making lockdown cookies. Lots of cookies.
Stay safe, get tested, hold fast, get immunized when it’s your turn. We’ll get there. See you in June. —Cathy
PROJECT SPOTLIGHT: CELLAR Study
CELLAR (COVID-related Eating Limitations and Latent dietary effects in the Atlantic Region) is a research study led by the Food Policy Lab at Dalhousie University, to investigate the nutritional impacts of how we eat during the COVID-19 pandemic in Atlantic Canada. CELLAR is led by the Food Policy Lab at Dalhousie University in collaboration with researchers at Memorial University, Monash University, and Deakin University, and with advice from the four provincial governments in the Atlantic region.
The consumer food environment has been transformed by COVID-19, across Canada and around the globe. Many families and food system sectors are facing economic precarity of extended duration and continued uncertainty as we head into the pandemic’s second year. Important public health measures are in place to reduce person-to-person disease transmission, that have changed community patterns of mobility and social interaction. All of these have a potential outsized impact on food access and consumption. By examining Atlantic Canadians’ diets and purchasing in-depth, we can better understand how the pandemic will affect nutrition and health. More importantly, we can help governments to design economic and social policies that support healthy eating for all—during and after the pandemic.
Researcher Spotlight: Laura Kennedy
Meet Laura, a rising star and member of the Food Policy Lab. She is a second year PhD student in the Health Program at Dalhousie, researching healthy eating policies in the healthcare food environment. More recently, Laura’s work within Health Promotion saw the ban of flavoured vaping products in Nova Scotia. As registered nurse by trade, she believes in advocacy for healthy public policy development. We sat down with Laura to learn more about her journey to the Food Policy Lab.
Hi Laura, thank you for speaking with me about your research.
Laura: Happy to be here!
Let’s start at the beginning, what brought you to the food policy lab?
Laura: Well, a couple of things brought me here. Firstly, Cathy Mah, our director. She is a powerhouse and an advocate at all levels of policy – local all the way to provincial and federal. Cathy is someone who inspires and I was drawn to working and learning from her.
Second, I want to learn more about the research process. I have experience using research to advocate for change in government and in the Nova Scotia Health Authority. Now, I’d like to be the one conducting the research. I’m also really interested in healthy food environments and how we can make healthy choices easier choices. I believe policy is a key way to do that!
DEEP DIVE: Interviews 101 WITH EMILY JAGO
Our lab is committed to interdisciplinary peer learning and collaboration. We also believe that everyone, at every level of professional development and training, has important experiences and skills to share that can add to our collective power in asking good research questions. One way that we accomplish this is through our Deep Dive series, a biweekly oral presentation or workshop delivered by a lab member for internal capacity-building. We’ve enjoyed this so much over the last year (learning, supervising, AND presenting) that in this section of the Newsletter, we have decided to share a taste of our deep dive experiences and key lessons with you!
Emily’s Nine Tips on Implementing a Qualitative Research Interview
Allow silence to let people think. This also allows you to think about what you want to ask (especially for unstructured interviews)!
Energy matching: I generally take two approaches. I try to match the person’s energy to make them feel comfortable, or I can take steps to set the tone myself, if it’s the right situation and the right person.
Plan how to actively demonstrate empathy and interest.
Reflection: Both the interviewee and interviews can take time during, and after, the interview to reflect on the interview experience (remember to take field notes if you can). Use field notes as a guide for refining future interviews.
Listen for threads to pull: Sometimes, participants will mention a concept, a theme, or a specific example of an experience, but move on quickly to something else. That mention might not be specific to the question you’ve asked, but pulling that thread can often unravel more details and promote sharing that will add to the overall interview. Sometimes these threads can lead to bigger, bolder conversations, and make your data much richer!
Get concrete: If someone says something too general, don’t hesitate to follow up and ask them to provide a concrete example.
If you think having more than one interviewer present might benefit, feel free to do so; especially if you have different backgrounds that would contribute to the conversation. This approach has worked especially well for us during the pandemic, when interviews need to be conducted over Zoom and the active listening of conducting an interview, taking field notes, attending to research questions, and keeping participants engaged while in a virtual platform can be a lot to manage 1:1.
Actively format and reformat your questions to get the answers you want and need. Interview data is something that you and the participant are creating together, through interpersonal interaction. If you find interviewees answering with mostly “yes” or “no”, consider (and change) the structure of the question as you go. As a simple example, what kinds of responses might you expect from: “Do you like grocery shopping at the store?” vs “Describe your last experience shopping at the supermarket closest to you.”
When concluding the interview, always ask if the participant has anything relevant they’d like to add further this can open up new conversations and raise points that you would have otherwise missed. Remember, you can also always follow up with a second interview or ask for supplementary written responses as well.
WHAT’s COOKING AT FPL: Wheat-Sorghum Date Cookies
We study food and nutrition. We also LOVE to cook.
This month’s FPL recipe is for peer-reviewed COOKIES!
Korede holds the lab distinction of being the first member to publish her cooking in a peer-reviewed journal article format. In her past work as a nutrition educator and researcher in Nigeria, Korede studied the chemical composition and sensory qualities of wheat-sorghum date cookies, and through nutritional evaluation found that enriching wheat flour with sorghum and date palm flour in cookies production improves its nutritional value. The cookie represents a proof-of-concept study to examine how we can promote healthier choices through subtle (and delicious) modifications to commonly consumed foods in the food supply. This is of particular importance in countries such as Nigeria, where macro- and micronutrient malnutrition remain prevalent.
Editor’s note: Makes approximately one dozen small cookies. We’ve proposed some substitutions to the original recipe to help you adapt this to your kitchen.
Ingredients
80g sorghum flour
20g wheat flour
25g date flour (or sweetener of choice)
35g margarine (or unsalted butter)
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp milk powder
cold water to combine
Instructions
Mix the wheat and sorghum flours, date flour, salt, baking soda, and milk powder in a medium bowl.
Add margarine and beat until fluffy and light.
Add water and mix properly to make a firm, short dough.
Knead the dough on a flat board. Use a wooden rolling pin to roll out the dough to a uniform thickness of about 0.5cm.
Cut the dough using a cookie cutter. Place the cookies on a greased or lined baking tray (cookie sheet or half-sheet pan) and keep at ambient temperature for an hour.
Bake in the oven at 180C/3530F for 15-20mins, until golden.
Remove from oven and allow to cool.
CONGRATULATIONS TO…
Ryan, who was awarded the Nova Scotia Graduate Scholarship on admission to the PhD in Health program at Dalhousie University. He is excited to move East and join the rest of the Food Policy Lab when he starts his studies in September.
Dani, on being accepted into Ryerson’s Master of Spatial Analytics! He is excited to start his new journey as a masters student, being able to apply his GIS skills to transportation and health research.
