Community kitchen combats anemia in children

IQALUIT — A community kitchen in Kuujjuaraapik is helping children become healthier and happier by filling their tummies with iron-rich food.

“Without any tests, the people here have been seeing changes in their children,” says nurse Doris McDonald, who organized the community kitchen. “They are noticeably more alert.”

When McDonald first arrived in Kuujjuaraapik two years ago, she discovered that two-thirds of the children who came to the community’s health clinic had anemia, a blood condition caused by a lack of iron in their diet.

Combating anemia

This iron deficiency, commonly found in children and pregnant women throughout Nunavik, can lead to low energy and generally poor health.

McDonald was quick to locate the medical problem and prescribe iron supplements, but finding a long-term solution to the causes of anemia was more of a challenge. Suggesting that families should spend their money on nutritious food didn’t seem to be the answer.

“They told me, Doris, we have no money!,” McDonald says. “The people here aren’t rich and food is expensive. I understand that when you don’t have money, you can’t spend it.”

At a get-together with women in the community, elder Annie Quarak recalled how in the early 1960s a kitchen staffed by Inuit and Cree women provided good food for their families. An Australian nurse had started this project, but when she left in 1964, the kitchen closed.

At that time, the concept of a collectively-run kitchen was novel, but today these kinds of kitchens are popular in Southern Quebec.

They bring together families who pool their limited food budgets to save money and cook better, low-cost and nutritious meals together.

In Kuujjuaraapik, McDonald felt that such a kitchen might work to curb anemia.

The goal was have to set up a community kitchen that would be run by women, and to open a mini-daycare for their children at the same location. A facility, formerly the Cree nursing station, was found, and 16 families helped paint and fix up the premises.

With help from local businesses, the municipality, the Nunavik regional health board, the Kativik Regional Government and anti-poverty, employment and training programs, the kitchen project slowly began to take shape.

Money from this same patchwork of sources would help pay for food, kitchen staffing, consultants and for a study on the project’s impact on anemia in the community.

Continual struggle

Despite a continual struggle to find enough money to keep the kitchen going, after nearly a year of operation, McDonald considers the project a success.

Only eleven out of 38 preschoolers in the program who had anemia still take regular iron supplements.

The daycare has also been taught them how to spot and avoid eating lead shot in the meat of wild game.

The consumption of lead appears to be related to higher than average levels of lead found in some residents of Kuujjuaraapik. Lead can also block the body from absorbing the iron it needs.

The women who have been trained as cooks at the kitchen are keen. They have learned how to make well-balanced meals and, at the same time, how to better invest their food money.

Their children are also enjoying tasty, balanced snacks and lunches. With the help of student dieticians from MacDonald College and the Université de Montréal, the kitchen’s chefs-in-training have developed 100 recipes, such as caribou stew with dumplings, and tuna and Arctic char burgers.

Last Tuesday Alice Fleming and her fellow chefs cooked up fish chowder and macaroni with beef for some 40 children and adults. Fleming, whose two-year old daughter attends the daycare, said that she’s learned how to cook in a new way.

“I cook differently at home, too, and my family likes it,” Fleming said enthusiastically “Whenever I cook something, it’s gone right away.”

Pregnant women can also buy meals at a minimal cost. As well, they receive two Arctic char a week as a supplement during pregnancy.

When Kuujjuaraapik’s new daycare opens in the fall, the kitchen will move, too.

Meanwhile, the positive results of the kitchen project are under evalulation.

McDonald hopes that other daycares in Nunavik will consider adopting the iron-rich cuisine developed by cooks in Kuujjuaraapik.

“If they want to set up such a program, we have 12 trained cooks to help them,” said McDonald.