Brad McKay talks future of food at Algonquin College

Jim: We have a monthly breakfast series about the
future of health and wellness. It’s about

bringing our community in to discuss and have
conversations about a very very important

topic - about our health in the future.

Jim: Today we had Brad McKay come in. He’s the CEO

of Healthcare Food Services.
Brad: We’re here at the international restaurant

at Algonquin College where the students and
the culinary program have served an absolutely

wonderful breakfast for the attendees. We’re here
talking about food, health and wellness, and

it’s part of a speaker series that has been
put together by Algonquin College and the

Champlain LHIN. This morning I talked about
healthy food in the future and I talked about three things:

How food will become healthier in the
future because meat consumption will go down

and it goes down as economies advance. I talked
about how overall caloric consumption will

go down in the future as food becomes more
and more expensive and the era of cheap food

is over. Thirdly, I cautioned the group to
think in decades rather than years because

these changes in food habits will take a long
time to occur. Our habits in food are deeply

rooted in evolution and demographics and culture, and a
quick fix isn’t in the offing, but if we

are interested in a long fix we’ll be happier
as a result.

Jim: From my perspective as the Dean of Hospitality,
“you are what you eat,” having proper

nutrition is extremely important for your
health and wellness.

Brad: Algonquin is playing a leading role, and the
whole health and wellness institute that they are

planning on I think is absolutely stupendous.
We need to be thinking in an integrated fashion,

to take our population from where it is today,
to where it needs to be in the future.

Jim: We have our healthy living education initiative,
we are creating a community hub, that will

help us continue to evolve and produce leaders
in the field. And provide the graduates that

employers are looking for.
Brad: I think it’s important for Algonquin to

stay engaged, as it already has, with the
population base here in the Ottawa area, but also with

the health care providers in Ottawa area. They’ve
done that brilliantly through their association

with the Champlain LHIN. Around the world,
you don’t see a lot of initiatives like

this so Algonquin is really on the leading
edge of in terms of getting a large collaboration

of experts together to focus on creating and
teaching a healthier environment for all of us.