Home About Articles Contact Grocery Shopping Column

Health reporting

Canadian Healthcare Network •

‘Polypharmacy is not a bad word’: Piecing together newer therapies and emerging treatments with standard guidelines for depression

Canadian Healthcare Network is an independent online community for Canadian healthcare professionals in medicine and pharmacy. It is the online home of the Medical Post and Pharmacy Practice + Business.Membership is free and allows doctors, pharmacists, nurses and many others to get the latest breaking news, updates on clinical guidelines and read (and even write) commentary from your healthcare peers.

Canadian Healthcare Network is an independent online community for Canadian healthcare profes...
The Globe and Mail •

How this Nunavut grandfather grocery shops for his 12-person family

Welcome to The Globe’s series, What’s in my cart?, where we ask Canadians how they stock their kitchens. Have your own personal grocery story? Share it here.

Alan Sim grocery shops for a family of 12. Feeding a dozen people – including a son, his girlfriend, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild – is a feat in itself, but on top of having many mouths to feed, Sim has also dealt with the challenge of grocery shopping in Canada’s Arctic for 30 years.

The 68-year-old lives in Cambridge Bay...
The Globe and Mail •

How a doctor with iron deficiency shops for groceries

Welcome to The Globe’s series, What’s in my cart?, where we ask Canadians how they stock their kitchens. Have your own personal grocery story? Share it here.

During her second trimester of pregnancy, Justyna Bartoszko’s shortness of breath and fatigue became undeniable.

She, like one in four women, had become iron deficient during her pregnancy, and her levels of the mineral reached so low that she became anemic.

“After I had my iron infusion, it was really remarkable how much better I felt,”...
The Globe and Mail •

How a doctor with iron deficiency shops for groceries

Welcome to The Globe’s series, What’s in my cart?, where we ask Canadians how they stock their kitchens. Have your own personal grocery story? Share it here.

During her second trimester of pregnancy, Justyna Bartoszko’s shortness of breath and fatigue became undeniable.

She, like one in four women, had become iron deficient during her pregnancy, and her levels of the mineral reached so low that she became anemic.

“After I had my iron infusion, it was really remarkable how much better I felt,”...
The Globe and Mail •

How this PEI-based chef shops for ingredients for West African dishes

Welcome to The Globe’s series, What’s In My Cart?, where we ask Canadians how they stock their kitchens.

When Ghanaian chef Ian Mensah Bonsu moved to Canada in 2017, it was difficult to find West African food or grocers where he lived: Charlottetown.

Compared with Canada’s multicultural hubs such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, the population of the Prince Edward Island capital has been relatively homogenous. But, spurred by provincial efforts to boost PEI’s declining population, there has...
The Globe and Mail •

Travelling 30 times a year, I’ve learned how to buy healthy groceries at home and abroad

Welcome to The Globe’s series, What’s In My Cart?, where we ask Canadians how they stock their kitchens.

Twenty-five to 30 trips a year can sound taxing for the average person, but for Jennifer Bain, it’s become the average. The Toronto-based freelance travel writer, and former Toronto Star food and travel editor, is used to jetting off frequently. But constantly eating in airports and restaurants made it hard for her to maintain healthy eating habits, and eventually, after more than two decade...
Toronto Star •

Building bridges: New initiatives aim to improve medical support for Black communities

Moses spent a month in the hospital. At one point, as he lay hooked up to an IV delivering pain medication, there were 10 or more people in the room discussing his treatment, recalls his mother, D. Ramsay (who requested their family’s full names not be used for privacy reasons). “It could be so overwhelming at times,” she says. “I’m a Black mom, so I have to be very mindful.” Before the family had access to ongoing care at SickKids, Ramsay, an employee engagement manager, was in the habit of kee...
The Globe and Mail •

To battle hypertension, this 82-year-old looks for low-sodium foods and natural flavour-boosters

Welcome to The Globe’s new series, What’s In My Cart?, where we’re asking Canadians how they stock their kitchens.

Meticulous measuring, testing and documenting were routine for Sandra Nowlan when she was a microbiology and biochemistry student at Cornell University in the 1960s. Years later, she took that attention to detail she practised in the laboratory to the kitchen after changing careers from scientist to writer.

She tested hundreds of recipes before publishing Delicious DASH Flavours i...
The Globe and Mail •

How a woman with rheumatoid arthritis shops for food that keeps her symptoms at bay

Welcome to The Globe’s new series, What’s In My Cart?, where we’re asking Canadians how they stock their kitchens.

Cristina Montoya was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation, at the age of 21. The onset was quick, says Montoya, whose symptoms began with swollen fingers.

“I wasn’t able to lift a piece of paper without hurting myself,” says Montoya. The pain in her fingers became so unbearable she needed help showering, getting dressed and feeding he...
The Globe and Mail •

The best change for my wallet and diet? Giving up my car and getting groceries delivered

Welcome to The Globe’s new series, What’s In My Cart?, where we’re asking Canadians how they stock their kitchens.

Giving up his vehicle began as an experiment, says Dale Henry, a 65-year-old Toronto resident. He retired from a 23-year career as an emergency services worker last year and, shortly after, retired his car to see if he could make do without one. Almost immediately, he found it fundamentally changed the way he grocery shopped.

“Without my car, I can’t do those major marathons where...
The Globe and Mail •

As an ‘anti-diet’ fitness instructor, my grocery trips are guided by intuitive eating

Welcome to The Globe’s series, What’s In My Cart?, where we’re asking Canadians how they stock their kitchens. If you’d like to tell us your story, fill out this form or e-mail reporter Daniel Reale-Chin at: realechin@gmail.com

Before Daniela Luchetta became a personal trainer in early 2020, she had always enjoyed keeping active. She felt healthy and physically capable, but she was overweight – food was always a significant part of her Italian-Canadian family life growing up in Toronto’s Little...
The Globe and Mail •

How this parenting expert prioritizes protein when grocery shopping for her young daughters

Welcome to The Globe’s series, What’s In My Cart?, where we’re asking Canadians how they stock their kitchens. If you’d like to tell us your story, fill out this form or e-mail reporter Daniel Reale-Chin at: realechin@gmail.com

Natalie Syrmopoulos describes her two young girls (ages 11 and 8) as gladiators: strong-willed and full of energy. In her own career as a parenting coach, the 46-year-old has been using her own experience as a mother and a wife, coupled with her background in psychology...
The Globe and Mail •

Hunting is a long-standing tradition in my family. Here’s how I shop for groceries

Welcome to The Globe’s series, What’s In My Cart?, where we’re asking Canadians how they stock their kitchens. To share your thoughts, fill out this form or e-mail reporter Daniel Reale-Chin at: realechin@gmail.com

Michael Caufin had his first experience hunting as a 13-year-old adolescent when he and his 12-year-old cousin joined their fathers’ hunting group at the Hullett Provincial Wildlife Area, about two hours west from where he grew up in Vaughan, Ont.

“The most important lesson I got fr...
The Globe and Mail •

Program to improve health care for marginalized populations puts Black physicians in racialized communities

Marie Claud Felicien immigrated to Canada from St. Lucia as a teenager in 2000. As newcomers not yet covered by public health insurance, her family had to pay $60 to $70 out-of-pocket for appointments, Ms. Felicien said.

That experience informed how Ms. Felicien treated her patients when she worked as a nurse and now shapes the ethos at Women’s Health in Women’s Hands (WHIWH), a community health centre for racialized women in Toronto, where she serves as director of primary health care services
The Globe and Mail •

Program to improve health care for marginalized populations puts Black physicians in racialized communities

Marie Claud Felicien immigrated to Canada from St. Lucia as a teenager in 2000. As newcomers not yet covered by public health insurance, her family had to pay $60 to $70 out-of-pocket for appointments, Ms. Felicien said.

That experience informed how Ms. Felicien treated her patients when she worked as a nurse and now shapes the ethos at Women’s Health in Women’s Hands (WHIWH), a community health centre for racialized women in Toronto, where she serves as director of primary health care services
The Globe and Mail •

Suicide-prevention initiative trains people to provide care within their own communities

A teenager who loved to act and sing, Lucas Rushton performed at his high school in Truro, N.S., and with the youth theatre program at Halifax’s Neptune Theatre, the largest professional theatre company in Atlantic Canada. His passions in music, theatre and film were wide and varied; he loved Elvis and the Trailer Park Boys.

Lucas had a lot of plans, says his mother, Laureen Rushton, including studying performing arts at Sheridan College. “Someday, he planned to make it to Broadway. That was my
The Globe and Mail •

Kids Help Phone launches initiative for Black youth

Kids Help Phone is launching a new initiative, RiseUp, that aims to provide more culturally informed and accessible mental-health services to Black youth across the country.

The services include free wellness support that Black youth can access 24/7 by texting RISE to 686868, the Kids Help Phone number.

“When youth text RISE to that number, they will be paired with a crisis responder that knows the youth is Black and can give them services that are tailored to them,” said Barbara Ukwuegbu, the
The Globe and Mail •

JAMP Pharma Group to acquire 100,000 square feet of Pharmalab Inc. manufacturing space

Quebec-based JAMP Pharma Group says it will acquire a large manufacturing facility in the province in a bid to boost pharmaceutical production in Canada, which is faced with thousands of drug shortages.

The purchase from Pharmalab Inc., announced Thursday, is pending approval by the Superior Court of Quebec. It is set to add more than 100,000 square feet of manufacturing space to the portfolio of JAMP, which hopes to repatriate the production of more than 100 different new generic drugs in the
The Globe and Mail •

New program trains barbers as mental-health first responders for Black communities

“I started with a goat that my grandfather bought. I would style the tuft of hair on its head and cut it,” Ms. Thomas said.

Since immigrating to Canada in 2013, Ms. Thomas has continued her passion, trading a goat for the heads of her clients at Klean Kut Barbershop and Salon in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. There, she says she sees some clients weekly, and like many barbers and hairdressers, has built deep relationships through her practice.

It’s that barber-client rapport that Self Care
The Globe and Mail •

Non-profit aims to bridge gap between Black health-care professionals and patients

Despite completing a master’s degree in clinical psychology two years ago, Myriam Georges-Estigène was struggling to find permanent work. So in April, she decided to take matters into her own hands and start her own clinic.

To help get the word out, Ms. Georges-Estigène, an Ottawa-based Black psychotherapist, listed her private practice, Peace by Piece Counselling and Psychotherapy, on the Black Healthcare Professionals Network’s directory. This public database of Black doctors and health care
The Globe and Mail •

Ontario small-business owners grappling with ‘overwhelming stress’ over effects of COVID-19 pandemic

Small-business owners in Ontario are struggling in a mental-health “echo pandemic” and lack the resources to deal with employee and self-burnout, a report from the Ontario Chamber of Commerce has found.

Mind the Gap, released on Tuesday, examines the economic effects of COVID-19 and how a lack of mental-health program funding has affected small businesses.

“Many of the small-business owners in the chamber network feel that they have been left on the front lines of the mental-health crisis afte
The Globe and Mail •

Majority of racialized Canadian employees have faced workplace racism during their careers, study shows

The majority of racialized Canadians have experienced racism at work, including workplace harassment and professional inequities, a new study shows.

The study by global advocacy group Catalyst surveyed more than 5,000 racialized and ethnic women, men, transgender and non-binary employees in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Britain and the United States. It showed that 66 per cent of people surveyed have experienced racism in their career, with 54 per cent of workers reporting that

Let's get social