Farewell
“I feel like every project I work on is a dream, so long as I am learning”
– Simeon Kondev
Executive Summary
It is estimated that approximately 1 in 7 children in Canada are at risk of starting the school day on an empty stomach due to a lack of access to nutritious food (BCC, 2014). The Breakfast Club of Canada, a non-profit organization, works with communities across Canada to combat this issue by implementing breakfast programs into schools in order to provide students access to healthy breakfasts. In collaboration with the BCC and our community partner, Robin Ryan, the goal this semester was to research average food costs as well as develop well-balanced, innovative recipes and menu plans that could work within the school’s limited budget of 45-65 cents per student. From these objectives, the following questions emerged. First, how can this be done without having recipes and menu plans too similar to those already developed by the BCC? Next, do donations, discounts and wholesale prices influence the budget allotted to each student? Finally, what strategies need to be used in order to create recipes, collect data, cost and present all of this in a user-friendly manner in such a short time frame?
Data collection began by developing a list of 11 essential food items. Once finalized, our research and recipe development could commence. In total, 20 sit down and 20 grab and go recipes were developed. Next, grocery store associates in 10 selected regions across BC were contacted by telephone and/or email to obtain prices for each ingredient. Recipes were then priced, and ingredients were adapted when necessary in order to stay within budget. The finalized recipes were then incorporated into a 40-day menu plan that could be used by schools across Canada.
Costs for ingredients were only obtained from 3 of the 10 selected locations in BC. These locations were Vancouver, Nanaimo and Anahim Lake. Foods within urban areas like Vancouver and Nanaimo, compared to remote areas like Anahim Lake were often less expensive. Due to this, most of the recipes developed for Vancouver and Nanaimo fell within the proposed budget. The price of the recipes doubled when costing for Anahim Lake, and often fell well outside the budget.
Overall, we recommend BCC to encourage schools to contact local grocers and farmers to receive donations or discounts. Moreover, create an incentive to support and participate in local breakfast programs in order to increase awareness of this organization. We also think it may be in the BCC’s best interest to seek government support through funding so that they can increase their budget and in turn be able to provide more food and healthier food to students in all geographic regions.
Moments of Significance
What?
Our group aimed to develop innovative and nutritious recipes for the Breakfasts Club of Canada. However, after we collected prices and began costing each recipe, we realized that working within the constraints of our budget of 65 cents was going to be much more challenging than we had initially thought.
First, receiving feedback from only three out of the ten locations we contacted was really discouraging and kind of frustrating. Although we all took on a professional stance and clearly explained that the information gathered was only going to be used to help young students in the community, it was upsetting to see that we still received little or no help at all.
Next, once we began costing recipes for Vancouver, the first few were barely under budget, or slightly over budget. For example, when costing out the banana chocolate chip pancake recipe for both urban locations, we were only 3 cents under our proposed budget. Having already compared ingredient prices between regions, we knew the recipe was going to be well over budget when costed out for Anahim Lake.
Our team realized we were going to have to improvise and readjust some of the ingredients for our recipes. For example, we wanted to include almond butter in a lot of our recipes, but decided it would be more cost-effective to use items such as Wowbutter. By using this alternative, we were able to stay within our budget more easily. We also decided that adding ingredients such as chia seeds and pumpkin seeds was not a very good idea because they were also quite expensive. For the case of Anahim Lake, they did not even carry chia or pumpkin seeds at the grocery stores. When these items were used we would typically go well over budget. Consequently, we were not able to get as creative as we would have liked and aimed for with our recipes. At this point, our team was feeling somewhat discouraged and restricted. We wanted to provide Robin with the best recipes that we could, but felt we were unable to do so due to the strict budget.
Lastly, when we submitted our menu plans and recipes to the dietitian at the BCC, we received some disheartening feedback such as:
- Recipes are too similar to those already being used by the BCC
- We must eliminate the use of chocolate chips, salt and honey/maple syrup from all recipes
- Recipes lack originality
- Some recipes are very similar to one another
So what?
The idea around providing nutritious and innovative breakfasts that include at least three of the four major food groups to students in all parts of the country is a great idea, but sometimes not a feasible one when on a very limited budget. Data collected on costs of certain food items in different regions of British Columbia showed that there is a notable increase in prices in rural and remote communities. This has a huge impact on recipe development especially when confined by a strict budget while attempting to follow the guidelines set out by the BCC.
When we realized that we would most likely be over budget for recipes in Anahim Lake, this caused a lot of stress and despair. It was stressful for our team because our goal was to create new and creative recipes using the knowledge we gained in school, but this goal was starting to seem less realistic the more we went on to cost. Making the appropriate adjustments either meant sacrificing nutrition or budget, a decision we did not have the power to make. However, for the purposes of this project we aimed to remain within or very close to the budget, subsequently reducing the creativity and nutrition of some of the recipes. Moreover, our community partner mentioned that in certain areas where nutritious options are less available, ensuring that children even have food on their plate becomes a priority.
The feedback we received from the dietitian was slightly heart-breaking, because we knew that our recipes lacked some originality and were not as nutritious as we had hoped, but we did the best with what we had budget-wise. This feedback was difficult to swallow, especially for the nutrition students in the group, but we accepted it and moved on with the project. We made some adjustments in the time remaining for this project and delivered what we feel to be the best product we could have created under these circumstances.
Now What?
We are still waiting to hear back from our project coordinator on the altered menu plans, but after our presentation and hearing what he had to say, we feel that we met his expectations and our own for how well this project went and how much we achieved.
If we were to go back and do things differently, the only thing we might have changed would have been to consult with the dietitian at the very beginning of the project. Although we felt we knew a lot about nutrition and how to create healthy recipes, there were some discrepancies between our own guidelines and those of the dietitian. For instance, we did not think twice about adding a few chocolate chips to pancakes, or a pinch of salt to eggs or drizzling a bit of honey on top of pancakes, but the dietitian did not agree. This kind of information would have been very useful to us while developing and costing recipes, rather than a week before the end of the semester.
The issue with a limited budget and having to make sacrifices was something out of our control. Still, it may have been beneficial to account for wholesale prices, discounts and donations when costing recipes to create a more realistic price for the meals. This was however beyond the scope of this project in that we had limited resources and time. In addition, since budget allocations was not in our own hands, we could not account for changes. To address some of the issues around budgeting we would recommend that the BCC should partner with local grocers to bring further awareness to this organization and increase participation from community members.