Healthy foods for North available online

Thunder Bay’s Quality Market now offers an online grocery service to First Nation communities throughout northwestern Ontario.
“We’ve been working with Quality Market for about two years now and what we’re trying to do is provide a way for our remote communities to access fresh produce, fresh vegetables and fruit,” said Grand Chief Stan Beardy. “The reason we are doing that is we have a high rate of diabetes and they need fresh vegetables on a daily basis.”
Beardy said most communities only receive fresh groceries once a week.
“A lot of times it is almost next to impossible to get fresh vegetables and fruit, so we approached Quality Market two years ago or so to work with them around the concept of Nutrition North.”
Beardy said community members just have to order the food and it will be shipped up to their community on a regular scheduled Wasaya flight.
“What we’re hoping is that once we have the Nutrition North program in place, those customers from the north would be able to take advantage of the freight subsidy,” Beardy said. “It’s not all in place yet, but you need a starting point. The starting point is to get a grocery outlet in an urban centre to work with the First Nations to begin to push for a government subsidy program to try to address the healthy foods but at the same time look for subsidies to offset the freight costs.”
Quality Market is a family-owned business that offers hundreds of varieties of healthy prepared foods for today’s busy lifestyle as well as the basics in grocery, dairy and frozen foods.
The online grocery store offers food at the same prices available in Thunder Bay with a small additional fee for preparing the order and freight costs minus the Nutrition North subsidy. Payment must be made before the food is shipped though Visa, MC or AMEX.
The following communities are eligible for full subsidies per kilogram:
Level 1 Level 2
Attawapiskat $1.40 $0.05
Bearskin Lake $1.30 $0.05
Big Trout Lake $1.60 $0.05
Fort Albany $1.30 $0.05
Fort Severn $2.60 $0.80
Muskrat Dam $1.50 $0.05
Peawanuck $2.40 $0.60
Kashechewan $1.30 $0.05
Angling Lake, Kasabonika, Kingfisher Lake, Pikangikum, Sachigo Lake, Weagamow Lake and Wunnummin Lake are all eligible for partial subsidies of $0.05 per kilogram for both Level 1 and Level 2 subsidies.
The Nutrition North subsidy applies to eligible food and non-food items shipped by air to eligible communities, with Level 1 subsidies applying to the most nutritious perishable foods and Level 2 subsidies applying to other nutritious perishable foods, to non-perishable foods and to non-food items.
Complete eligible food lists are available on the Nutrition North Canada webpage at http://www.nutritionnorthcanada.ca/fel/efn-eng.asp.