There’s a cafeteria in the Free Press building, and every morning, to prepare for customers, they cook up some bacon. Just to be ready.
But it’s more than bacon. It’s bait.
Stop in for a coffee, leave with a breakfast bagel, too.
Premier Wab Kinew speaks to students after announcing a universally-accessible school nutrition program at St. George School in Winnipeg on Tuesday. (Mikaela MacKenzie/Winnipeg Free Press)
The smell of bacon probably sells more than a few breakfast bagels every week, even to customers who weren’t really hungry until they walked into bacon’s lure.
Outside the building, when the wind is just right, you can walk through a fresh-cooked potato chip weather system, courtesy of the nearby Old Dutch plant. And then, you want potato chips.
In the early morning on McPhillips, the smell of sweet buns being baked at the Philippine bakery can literally stop pedestrian traffic.
By now, you get the point. Or, at least, some part of you may be getting the point. Maybe your stomach’s rumbling a bit, just by reading those descriptions.
To be clear, this is meant to be a light-hearted way to segue into what is a very serious problem for as many as one in six young Manitobans.
Human beings are lots of different things, but we all have our biological imperatives.
We have to eat in order to function at anywhere near our best potential, and because of that, we’re attuned to smells and flavours. Sometimes, our systems drive us to things that we may not even need. Eating food when it’s there: it’s an evolutionary survival strategy.
And a necessary one.
Imagine trying to concentrate on a new concept or technology while you’re hungry and your depleted metabolism is distracting you with its calls to action.
But distraction is only part of the problem: being hungry can be far more.
For children, it can affect their development and education — leaving them unprepared for not only their next scholastic step, but for other parts of life as well.
The simple fact is that hungry schoolchildren don’t learn well. There are impacts on concentration, measurable decreased academic performance, and even increased behavioural issues, all connected to student hunger. Similarly, there can be mental health effects.
It’s a fact that’s been known for decades, but solutions — even attempts at solutions — have been slow in coming.
This week, the provincial NDP followed through on an election promise to try and address the issue of hungry students.
On Tuesday, Premier Wab Kinew announced $30 million for a “universally accessible” kindergarten-to-Grade 12 nutrition program for the province.
The opposition Progressive Conservatives criticized the announcement, saying that the funding announced wasn’t large enough to meet the NDP’s campaign promise of a universal program.
Does it go far enough? Probably not.
Critics have pointed out for over a decade that Canada is the only G7 country without a national school food program. Manitoba hasn’t even had a provincial program, depending instead on a patchwork of programs and agencies handling breakfast, lunch and snack programs.
So every step forwards, and particularly steps that entrench a consistent program at the provincial level, is a good one.
Nutrition is foundational for education — not all children have access to healthy food, and that disadvantages them through their school years and even into young adulthood.
This is what Premier Kinew told Grade 3 and 4 students when he announced the funding at St. George School in Winnipeg on Tuesday: “This is going to make kids happier. This is going to make kids healthier. This is going to make kids want to read more, do more math, get better report cards.”
A simple, aspirational goal.
And a start. Now, about that bacon …
