Healthy Eating and Nutrition

Students not only have to deal with adjusting to high-level coursework, social changes, and living away from home, but also health-inhibiting factors like tight budgets, busy schedules, and figuring out how to eat well without parental guidance.

The stress response is your body’s signal to adapt to changes in the environment. Everyone reacts differently to stress, but many people find comfort in food, which may lead to overeating or choosing less nutritious foods. What you eat can affect your mood and how you perform academically and nutrition can play a powerful role in your physical and mental health.

Canada's Food Guide

In 2019, Health Canada released a brand new food guide. There's no longer an emphasis on food groups and recommended servings. Instead, the new recommendations include eating plenty of vegetables and fruits, whole grain foods and protein foods, and choosing protein foods that come from plants more often. The guide was prepared using high-quality scientific reports on food and health, excluding industry-commissioned reports given the potential for conflicts of interest.

Mindful Eating

Mindful eating is an experience that engages all parts of us, body, heart and mind, in choosing, preparing and eating food. It involves all the senses. It replaces self-criticism with self-nurturing. It replaces shame with respect for your own inner wisdom. -Jan Cozen Bays, MD

Benefits

Mindful eating can help you develop a new, more balanced relationship with food.
It can teach us how to listen to our bodies to help determine when and what and how much to eat.
It can help us learn how to enjoy our food even more.
It can help us appreciate where our food comes from and therefore create a more balanced relationship with our environment.

Eating on A Budget

It IS possible to eat nutritiously without emptying your bank account. Try some of these tips on your next grocery shop.

Food Security Resources

In a recent survey of Canadian post-secondary students, two in five students surveyed experienced some level of food insecurity.

There are supports on and off-campus that students can utilize to access food at no or little cost.