Celebrated Food Advocate Gives Valentine's Day Message

"Deconstructing Dinner" Radio Host Jon Steinman Gives Keynote

Sponsored by the North Saanich Food for the Future Society, Valentine's Day at the Chalet Muse Winery was sold out for Jon Steinman, radio broadcaster and host of the national food show "Deconstructing Dinner," also available on podcast and ranked by Apple iTunes as Canada's top food podcast. Based in Nelson, B.C. at Kootenay co-op radio CJLY, Mr. Steinman is part of an award-winning independent media network working for a food secure Canada. Besides hosting his popular radio show, he travels and speaks to communities and organizations all over the country who are concerned about food production, transportation and safety.


Mr. Steinman presents a variety of challenges, issues and problems facing the Canadian consumer when it comes to food and warns against the threats to our food system of agri-business multi-national conglomerates such as CarGill and Monsanto. He talks about the need for resilient food secure communities and cites a variety of successful co-operative and local food growing examples from Nelson and elsewhere. He also tries to answer such questions as:

  • why do tomatoes look so perfect and how much fuel did it take to bring them from Mexico?
  • my neighbour grows tomatoes so why doesn't my local market sell his tomatoes?
  • what do 'organic and non-organic' mean?
  • why does organic produce require more packaging and labeling than non-organic?
  • why is 'fair trade' and 'unfair trade' coffee made by the same company?
In his presentation on February 14, Mr. Steinman explored some of the answers to these questions and left us with a strong message: Get involved, get organized and get active in supporting local food production and marketing. It may be as simple as planting your own fruit or nut tree or vegetable garden, raising eggs with 2 or 3 chickens or supporting your local farm market. Or it may require wide-scale involvement through creation of a local co-op program and marketing strategy. Whatever your community decides to do, Mr. Steinman challenged us to do something.

For more information and to get a list of radio stations who carry his program, archived shows and podcasts, please visit Jon Steinman's Deconstructing Dinner website at www.deconstructingdinner.ca

Thanks to the North Saanich Food for the Future Society for bringing this event to North Saanich, to the Chalet Muse Winery for providing the venue and to all of those who attended. Please don't forget to support "Growing Home" and your North Saanich Farm Market, which has winter market events and will open in June for its second full summer season.