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Back to HomeFeature Article - March 1, 2012 Frontenac Community Arena reaches Eat Smart standardby Jeff Green

Photo: Heather McMillan, (second from left) presenting the Eat Smart award of excellence to Joy Knox (second from right). Arena Manager Jim Stinson stood to Heather’s left, and Heather Fox, of the arena board, is next to Joy Knox. Back row l. to r. arena board members Ron Vandewal, Del Stowe, and Bill Snyder. The Frontenac Community Arena is jointly owned by South and Central Frontenac townships and is located right on the boundary between the two.

When a lot of us think back to our days at indoor hockey rinks, we remember the sound of skates on ice, the smell of the change room, hot chocolate and, in my case, Milky Way chocolate bars.

In an effort to foster healthy, nutritional eating, Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington Public Health is promoting efforts by local recreation centres to add some other tastes – fresh fruit, trail mix, milk, whole grain bread, water and fruit juice, along with the hot dogs and hot chocolate that people are used to.

A number of recreation centers in the City of Kingston have achieved a set of standards that the Health Unit developed in 2010 in line with the provincial Eat Smart program, and in the second year of the program, the Frontenac Arena in Piccadilly joined 5 other centers in the City of Kingston in achieving the Eat Smart Award of Excellence.

“We joined the program last fall,” said arena manager Jim Stinson, “and found that we were already half way there and had only to add a few extra items to reach the standard.”

Heather McMillan, a Public Health Dietician with KFL&A Public Health, heads up the Eat Smart program. She said that offering nutritional food choices in recreation centers fits in with the entire ethos of recreation centers in the first place.

“People are going to recreation centers to be active. Athletic children and athletic parents are spending lots of time at recreation centers, and it makes sense to offer them a healthy choice when they look for a snack or a meal,” she said.

Nutritional food is one of the three criteria within the Eat Smart program.

“The others are offering a smoke free environment, and safe food handling,” Heather McMillan said.

Jim Stinson realises that attaining the Eat Smart standard will require changes on an annual basis as the program develops, but he feels that the Frontenac Arena staff and patrons can handle the changes.

“The program is about offering choice, not about eliminating choice,” he said, adding that over time there have already been changes in the kinds of products that skating families are looking for at the Frontenac Arena.

“We don’t sell anywhere near the amount of pop we sold even a few years ago,” Stinson said, “but we do sell quite a bit of hot chocolate.

In addition to the Eat Smart program at recreation centers, Heather McMillan also works with the private and public sector on an Eat Smart program in workplace cafeterias throughout Kingston, Frontenac, Lennox and Addington.