Montreal food bank wins provincial award for focus on healthy eating

The Depot Community Food Centre, formerly known as the NDG Food Depot, picked up a provincial prize recognizing its "outstanding" innovative food policy.

Quebec ministers Danielle McCann, Lionel Carmant and Marguerite Blais recently presented the award to the depot.

"We were very touched and very honoured to be selected as the most important project at the ceremony by the three ministers present. It's quite an honour," said Daniel Rotman, executive director of the depot.

The non-profit organization has overhauled its services in the last five years to put a focus on healthy eating.

It offers over 20 programs that range from gardening to cooking classes.

Rotman says the food the depot prepares is fresh and nutritious. He says they put a focus on buying and accepting donations of healthy food for clients.

"For a food bank to be recognized for its impact on health is quite remarkable," he said.

Rotman said the policy was created in collaboration with food bank clients, who said that the price of healthy foods was their biggest obstacle to adequate nutrition.

He said that food banks traditionally measure their success based on the amount of food they distribute, so shifting the mindset to focus on health was "transformative."

But he says it has paid off, and clients are both happier and healthy.

"If we're providing a major source of food for a huge swath of the population that can't afford to get healthy food elsewhere, we have a responsibility to provide healthy food," he said.

"We hope that this award is sort of a validation of the new direction that some food banks are going in."