Some people have been asking me about the food up here in Nunavut. With horror stories from websites like Nunavut Food Prices, I was curious myself what my diet was going to be like coming up.
While
availability, selection and price varies from region to region and time of
year, here's a snapshot of my grocery shopping experience with these
exhibits.
2
oranges: $4.19
Avocado:
$3.19
Broccoli
crown: $6.92
Beets:
$1.60
Garlic:
$2.25
Mushrooms:
$2.89
Onions:
$2.55
Pepper:
$3.30
A dozen
eggs: $4.35
Cream:
$4.89
Cheese:
$10.99
Butter:
$6.59
Can of
frozen juice: $2.89 (x2)
Six
chicken breasts: $40.99
Bacon:
$4.90
Vegetable
oil: $10.85
VH sauce:
$5.45
Pasta
sauce: $5.69
Chef
Boyardee: $4.85
Can of
tuna: $4.59
Loaf of
bread: $5.85
Kale
chips: $7.99
Total:$164.37
When I first moved to Cambridge Bay, I was
advised not to complain publicly about the price of food, because nobody wants
to listen to that new guy in town griping about how it was so much better at
home. And to be honest, I’m pleasantly surprised with the selection of food
that is available, given the fact that Rob can have his favourite brand of
Japanese ramen, I can have my avocado, there are frozen spring rolls and kale
chips, and these oranges are being flown in from…where, Florida? And where are
these mangoes coming from?
As you
can see, the price of food here is roughly similar to the grocery shopping at
the gas station down south, with some notable exceptions (such as meat). That’s not so bad, right? There’s a couple
things to keep in mind though. One, many of these prices are actually the
subsidized price – that is, the government puts in money to lower the price, so
normally, the price of these items would be even higher. Secondly, while I might grumble about the
price of cheese at sixteen dollars and meat at sixty, the reality is that with
my job I can afford to pay that price, even if I’m not used to. My neighbours down the road, however, earning
only a couple hundred dollars a month on social assistance still have to pay
the same price for food. It boggles my
mind to try to figure out how some folks manage to feed their family of five
within their budget.
rob's culinary experiments in the Arctic: muskox tacos
Arctic char omelettes
Also, I have no idea how vegans would get by around here – not that I’ve met any. It’s been challenging enough for me, as an Asian who is accustomed to eating Asian food every day.
Traditionally,
the Inuit had a pretty healthy diet.
There’s nothing more fresh, organic, and free of chemical preservatives
than Arctic char that you’ve caught yourself.
Narwhal meat contains the same amount of vitamin C as an orange. “Country” food is still considered to be
pound-for-pound the most nutritious thing you can get here. Wouldn’t it be better for Inuit families to
just hunt muskox like the old ways, instead of paying high prices for less
fresh food at the grocery store?
Unfortunately,
things are not the same anymore. Living
off the land was a lot more possible for Inuit people when they were able to
lead a nomadic lifestyle, following the migration patterns of the caribou and
other wildlife. Now that, after European contact, they have been settled into
permanent communities, it’s a lot harder to hunt the same way. Inuit hunters often have to travel much
further, hundred of kilometres, to track down their food source, and then
travel that distance back to get to their homes in the town. Adaptations have been made, of course, to try
to deal with this – Inuit hunters hunt with guns now, and there’s a government
subsidy program that gives snowmobiles to hunters. But the truth still remains – living on
country food alone is still costly, time-consuming, and just not a reality for
most people.
Arctic Char
This
leaves a lot of people in Nunavut caught between a rock and a hard place. The price of food has become a hot topic
political issue in Nunavut, as can be seen in recent protests at Iqaluit grocery
stores and the recent forum on food security in Nunavut. And it is an important issue that Canadians
need to be informed about. We know from
the television news about the starving children in Africa or North Korea, but
many of us forget that right in our very (conceptual) backyards, there are
Canadian children suffering from malnutrition.
EDIT: The CBC released this related article on food security in Canada today.
