Category Archives: Sustainable food resources

Post 10 (Final post): Blog summary and Group project presentation!

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This will be our final blog post! Can’t believe we made 9 post like this for keeping track of our group project. This is the first time we made a progress blog like this one, and it has definitely been a educational experience for us. We realized that keeping a blog going is a lot of work, and it can be frustrating at times to keep up with the course required contents. For some weeks, our group had lots to write about, but for other we were simply waiting on community partner’s reply to proceed with our project. Because our project is more of a research based project, we lacked media contents of ourselves for our blog. We tried to make use of past Special Olympic games images to fill this gap. A suggestion for future LFS students: Try to keep track of your project with images to have more media content for the blog (ex. take image at every meeting/event). This was something we definitely could have done for our blog. The quality of our blog reflect our lack of experience, we hope that future LFS 350 students can use our blog as a template to build their blogs to be much better!

For the final week of LFS 350, our group did our group project presentation in front of our community partner and class peers. Our group prepared all week for our group project presentation. Everyone had a maximum of 2-3minutes to speak to keep our presentation under the time limit. Workload for this presentation was evenly divided. Personally, I felt good about the presentation, everyone did their part, and our practice for the presentation kept us under the time limit. During the question period of our presentation, Seb answered most of the questions. I heard from other members after the presentation that they wanted to help answer the questions as well, but they lacked confidence in front of the class. Overall, our presentation went very well, some concerns was brought up during the question period on our project result. We will take their advices into consideration for our final report.

Thank you for reading our final blog! For future LFS 350 students reading this blog, we hope for the best of luck with your project! Cheers!

post 9: Final report task distribution

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Welcome back to our post!

This week was our last week before our short presentation in front of our class. After 2 month of continuous struggle with project planning and on-going modifications, we have a clear picture of what we want to accomplish for this project, now we just need to divide the task among our group members. We decide to divide task individually instead of meeting and working as a group. This is mainly because of our class schedules time conflicts which made it difficult for us to meet together for the project. It would be nice for us to have more time to work on the project together during some of our lecture times. For us to make use of lecture time for the project will definitely be easier to organize group meetings, and our time spend will be much more efficient. After a brief meeting this Tuesday to divided our task, everyone accomplished their work, and we were able to share our part though Google-doc and facebook. Everything is going well, personally I am excited for the presentations next week to see what everyone else accomplished for their project.

One of the task we hope to accomplish this week was visit a dietitian and get some advice from them to help us with our project. Shi Yuan presenting our group did the interview. Here is a rough overview of the event from her:

We met up with a dietician Dr. Nooshin Alizadeh-Pasdar, PhD, RD on Friday, Nov.22. We wanted to ask for some suggestions and feedback from her on nutritional aspects for our guidelines. She gave as some recommendations:

1. Affordability. GMO free and organic foods are about at least 30% more expensive than conventional foods. Can food services/athletes really afford to buy them?

2. Some GMO free/ organic foods from California are relatively cheaper than those produced in Vancouver. Is locally produced really necessary?

3. Drinks are not necessarily sugar-free. Low sugar is fine. Athletes need extra calories. (Salt as well).

4. Grain–whole grain is better.

5. Eggs– omega-3 fortified eggs are better.

Disappointingly, since she didn’t have any research experience in sport events/big public events, she didn’t give us many recommendations on big scale events. However, she reminded us that foods affordability and FOOD SAFETY are important for a big public event.

Information from Dr. Nooshin is helpful for us. We’ll adjust our guideline accordingly. Thanks Nooshin!

Post 8: Project is on its way!

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We apologies there hasn’t been a lot content on this blog lately! Everyone has been busy with the midterms, presentation, and etc. But rest assure! Our project is coming along nicely!

On November 5, our group representatives, Seb and Weber, met again with our community partner from UBC food service. Our SEEDS project coordinator was also there, and she showed us a food procurement project done by LFS students from 4 years ago. It was a well done project by our predecessors. Their food procurement guideline is concise, organized, and educational. Although some of the information is out of dated, we can definitely learn from its structure and apply our knowledge to it and forge a modern version food procurement guideline for the Canadian Summer Olympic Games.

At the meeting, two key concerns for the guideline was brought up by the UBC food service community partner. First concern is the flexibility in the approval standard of our guideline. “Do we want set the standard so high that no one wish to apply? or do we want some flexibility with the guideline?” We decided that we shall be incorporate a point system for the food vender’s manual in order to address this concern. For every category of food, a rating of best, good, and avoid will be given to food in that category. 1 point for best, 0 point for good, and -1 point for avoid. Every food category used in the food manual need to have at least a positive score for it to be approved. This way, we are giving flexibility to the food venders, but also retaining high quality standard for the food manual at the event. Second concern is how we are rating these food standard. Since UBC is hosting this event, our community partner hope to achieve at least the food standard already in place on UBC campus, such as third party certification, free trade, ocean wide food standard, and etc. Our group project will definitely reflect their concern, and we will set the UBC food standard as the basis of our food procurement guideline for the 2014 Summer Canadian Olympic Games.

 

Post 7: Group Reading Presentation

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On October 30th, we lead a class discussion revolving around Godfray’s article entitled “Food Security: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion People.” The author identified a number of problems and potential solutions associated with providing food for an increasing and affluent population, while simultaneously mitigating inadequate access on a global scale. Generated discussions circulated around prioritizing problems with the current food system, with our impressions focused primarily on distribution practices and waste management systems.

Our experience with the CBEL program, as well as our interactions with fellow students have exposed us to the unequal distribution of resources in the Vancouver area. While our efforts have been tailored towards a relatively well-funded food procurement system, dedicated to incorporating a multitude of nutritious local produce, our peers have unveiled the paradoxical food insecurity prevalent in the lower-income demographic. The contradiction between social classes in Vancouver demonstrates a a small-scale model of Godfray’s key message, in which global disparity presents a double burden involving catering to the rich while providing for the poor.

Post 5: Finalizing project direction

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This Thursday, our group met for the second time with our community partners from the Seeds program organizer, 2014 Summer Special Olympic organization representative, and UBC food services members to finalize our proposal. We are happy to announce that we have been approved by our community partners to focus our project direction to the nutritional component of food menu. We decided to separate the foods into nutritional and sustainable categories. The organizer expected us to separate the category into more specific groups. This way, they can use these categories as future reference to compare and add more food to the menu. This standardized table will also be a good educational component for athletes and coaches to read and learn during their dining at the games.

For the following week, we will email the UBC food services in order to meet with the dietitians and hopefully receive some food advices for our project. We will establish different criteria for food groups. Our goal for this will be to explain why these criterion are important to distinct different categories of food. After we have sorted food into different groups, we can finally define the term “sustainability” for this project; especially what sustainability means to our group

Post 3: Meeting with the community partners

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During the past week, we had a chance to meet with our community partners! Although not everyone was able to attend due to class conflicts, four members was able to attend the meeting. We were able to meet with two Special Olympic organizers (one via conference call), the Director of the UBC SEEDS program, as well as the UBC Food Service Director. The other Special Olympic SEEDS program on Waste Disposal also joined our meeting with two of their representative.

At the meeting, we discussed potential areas of direction, building off of what has already been established. We discussed ways that may benefit most from our our interaction with they projects. They include the Totem Park cafeteria, several of the cafeteria for the Athletic Village, the Thunderbird Arena concession, the “Hungry Nomad” food truck, as well as external public vendors.

Since our initial meeting with our community partners, our team has been dissecting the menu provided for the Totem cafeteria during the games. We hope to identify any ingredient that may be substituted with either more nutritious or sustainable option. We have been searching the reasons behind sustainable food procurement, and plan to integrate this information into an educational component of our project. We hope to inform the consumers and athlete the type of food they’re eating and the necessity of sustainable food system that produced those food. This can be served as a foundation on which to construct standardized guidelines that the SEEDS program may consult for future food event management.

 

 

 

Post one: Introduction

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Hi! Welcome to our blog!

This blog is created by UBC (University of British Columbia) students engaged in the LFS 350 course. The purpose of this blog is to share with others the progress of our research project and some exciting events and news on the Special Olympics Canada main host by UBC in 2014. Throughout the next 10 weeks, we will be working  closely with our community partner from UBC Food Service to  organize a sustainable food procurement of Special Olympics Canada 2014 Summer Games on UBC campus.

The main objective of this project is to find a sustainable food sourcing and food delivery plan for the vendor of the 2014 Special Olympics Canada Summer games. We will also be looking for opportunities in food delivery at the event that will help improve human and ecological wellbeing, as well as creating a food procurement guideline for the event vendors to set a standard.

Our group consist of eight members: Shaoran Li, Mong Xin, Seb Zackowski, Li Tong, Ke Liao, Yuan Shi, Wenbo Liang, and Yuanxi Wang. During our first meeting on September 11, 2013, we have elected Seb Zackowski as our group representative to contact with our community partners. Wenbo Liang will be the blog administrator  responsible for updating our blog. Some ground rules was also established during our first meeting.

Rule #1- Do not procrastinate! Try finish the parts you are responsible for prior to the deadline instead of rushing at the last minute.

Rule #2- Respect others. Be on time for the group meetings. Finish hearing what others has to say before you share your thoughts. Give productive criticisms.

Rule #3- Don’t be afraid to speak up! Ask others if you need help. Share your ideas with other group members.

Rule #4- Be involved with the group. Everyone should contribute to the group project.

After our first group meeting, Seb Zackowski has emailed our community partner and set up our first meeting with our community partner on September 19, 2013. Detail of this meeting will be available on our next blog.

Thanks for reading our first blog post! A new post will be available on our blog every week!

Introduction to LFS 350

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The Land, Food, and Community series is a number of classes that the students of UBC Land and Food Systems take every year.  The students of Land Food and Community II (LFS 350; formerly known as AGSC 350) complete extensive projects on food security issues in British Columbia.  Students work in groups of 6 or 7 to explore issues within their assigned communities and themes, and team up with members of the community to tackle these issues.  In this way, students can engage in their education by learning from community partners and immersing themselves in “real world” situations outside the classroom.  Community Partners can learn about what students are doing and learning at UBC, and can work with students to make a positive impact on their organizations and communities in terms of food security.  The Land and Food Series classes are unique from most other university courses as they emphasize teaching as a “community of learners” and community based research instead of top-down instruction and research.  Students learn from the teaching team, their peers and the communities of British Columbia making for an education that bridges university academics with real world issues.