From Canning to Clicks:

📦 From Canning to Clicks: How Delivery Culture Took Over Our Lives

By Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita

I was born in 1962, and when I think about how much the world — especially here in British Columbia — has changed, it sometimes feels like I’ve lived on two different planets.

I remember my grandmother's kitchen. The stove burned wood. The food was grown or gathered, canned or cooked from scratch. Milk might have been delivered by a milkman, but everything else? You either grew it, made it, or went out and got it yourself. There was very little waste. Food came in glass jars, paper bags, and cloth sacks. Plastic was rare. Convenience meant you didn’t have to hitch the horse.

My mom, born in 1930, lived through the Depression and WWII rationing. She knew how to make a little go a long way. When my parents moved to Surrey, they bought a little hobby farm. We had chickens, a garden, fruit trees — and a deep freezer. My mom canned peaches, made jam, and baked bread. That was normal.

Then the malls came.

We lived for the Sears Christmas Wish Book. It came in the mail, and my siblings and I would fight over it, circling toys with pens, dreaming. Later, Eaton’s had a catalog too. Shopping was a planned event, usually requiring a car trip to town or the newly built mall. You didn’t buy something unless you needed it. And when you did, it came in a paper bag and lasted.

Fast forward to now…

It’s 2025. I walk outside and see more delivery people on bikes, scooters, and in cars than I’ve ever seen. It’s like an army of couriers — rain or shine, dodging traffic, hauling padded bags and cardboard boxes. Amazon, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Skip the Dishes… you name it. It's not just packages and electronics. People get toothpaste, sushi, socks, dog food — delivered to their door within hours.

Every item arrives cocooned in layers of packaging. Cardboard, plastic wrap, bubble wrap, packing tape, bags within boxes. The waste is staggering. Some apartments have more Amazon boxes in their recycling than they have groceries in the fridge.

What have we traded?

• We traded time-saving convenience for local connection.
• We traded self-reliance for one-click dependency.
• We traded home-cooked meals for algorithm-chosen snacks.
• We traded neighbours helping neighbours for gig workers under pressure.
• We traded a sense of enough for an endless stream of more.

And the irony?
We now have to bike to the food bank or struggle to get housing, while vans and scooters flood our neighborhoods delivering stuff most of us can’t afford anymore — to people stuck inside, overwhelmed, or overworked.

Meanwhile, the cost of living skyrockets. And those gig workers delivering all the convenience? Many can’t even afford to live in the cities they serve.

Where did the simplicity go?

There’s nothing wrong with progress — but we have to ask, progress for who?

When a generation that once grew their own food and made their own bread now watches their grandkids wait for a robot to drop off takeout at the doorstep, it’s time to pause.

Maybe we don’t need to go all the way back to wood stoves and hand-churned butter — but maybe we need to reconnect with what we’ve lost: community, self-sufficiency, dignity, and a sustainable way of living.

Maybe we need to can something. Bake something. Share something.
And maybe we need to ask: who’s really benefiting from this so-called convenience?

💭 Reflective Questions:

• When was the last time you made something instead of ordering it?
• What part of “convenience culture” are you willing to give up to live more sustainably or reconnect with your community?

#DeliveryCulture #Consumerism #Sustainability #CommunityConnection #VancouverVoices #Zipolita

Where Does Your Food Come From? The UBC Map and Why We Need a Diet Revolution

 

Where Does Your Food Come From? The UBC Map and Why We Need a Diet Revolution

A new UBC project, Canada Food Flows, has mapped out where our fruits and vegetables come from, and the results are eye-opening. In British Columbia, 81% of spinach, 70% of lettuce, and 97% of avocados come from the United States and Mexico. Why? Because our food system is designed around convenience and corporate profits, not health and sustainability.

It wasn’t always this way.

What Our Parents Ate in Vancouver (1930s–1950s)

Back then, people didn’t eat imported avocados and mangoes or guzzle sugar-filled energy drinks. They ate local, seasonal, and home-cooked food because there was no other option.

1. Local & Seasonal Food

• Berries were picked in the summer and canned or preserved for winter.
• Meat came from local farms and butchers, not factory-farmed animals pumped with hormones.
• Milk was delivered in glass bottles—no plastic waste, no added sugars.
• Bread was fresh, often homemade, not packed with preservatives to sit on a shelf for weeks.

2. No Ultra-Processed Junk

• No high-fructose corn syrup. No energy drinks. No Starbucks charging $7 for sugar-laden coffee.
• No aisles full of processed garbage—meals were made from scratch.
• People didn’t waste money on fast food because it didn’t exist like it does today.

3. Food Waste Wasn’t an Option

• Leftovers were eaten, not thrown out.
• Vegetable scraps were used for soups and broths.
• People had gardens and grew their own food—even in cities!

Fast Forward to 2025: We’re Paying to Be Sick

Today, people pay $7 for a coffee, $20 for a fast-food meal, and don’t think twice about throwing food away. Meanwhile, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are skyrocketing. Kids are being raised on sugar, processed meats, and ultra-processed snacks. They don’t even know what real food is.

We Need to Flip the Canadian Diet on Its Head

• No more mass-produced, ultra-processed junk.
• Eat what actually grows here—berries, turnips, squash, greens.
• Stop depending on imports—no more avocados, oranges, or tropical foods.
• Revive traditional Indigenous food knowledge—wild salmon, wild rice, game meats.
• Say no to corporate-controlled food—support local farms, buy from farmers’ markets, or grow your own.

Time to Wake Up

We don’t need to live off overpriced, over-processed, sugar-laden garbage. We need to demand better, eat better, and teach the next generation what real food is.

Your Move: What Will You Change?

• Can you grow your own food? Start small.
• Can you ditch fast food and cook at home?
• Can you cut out processed sugar, alcohol, and garbage snacks?
• Can you educate your kids about food?

It starts with us. We can’t keep eating like this and expect to be healthy. Let’s wake up, take control, and change the way we eat—before it’s too late.

EVERY CHILD SHOULD SEE THIS

Why you may ask, should every child see this. I believe they are the only hope. The mess we are in can only be turned around by them, but they need to know what they are fighting.

This is a trailer for an excellent film that I hope everyone will watch.

Mommy, Why is the Foodbank Food Rotten?

Blog post by Tina Winterlik © 2013
zipolita@gmail.com
http://zipolitazstudioz.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/#!/zipolita @zipolita
http://gplus.to/zipolita Google+

So my little girl, she's really good. She and I have been through a lot of up and downs. We've been really blessed but sometimes things are pretty shitty...to be honest.

Anyways so we went to the foodbank. It took a lot for me to even get to this point. My kid has fond memories of the foodbank,  in Nelson, she remembers them giving out bread and muffins. So she was sort of excited to go last night. But there was nothing like that there. She was happy there was  Macaroni and Cheese dinner, I haven't bought that in a long time as I don't like the yellow dye and preservatives in there. But we took some and I took the granola bars for my snacks/lunch at school. Both Angel and I are hypoglycemic so we have to eat a little something here and there to keep our blood sugar levels balanced. When we don't we feel grumpy, nausea, and lose our appetite, just a whole range of negative things happen.

As mentioned  Angel was excited, I was just happy that I found a place we could go, I had a letter and hopefully it would help.  First we had no bags. They didn't tell us we needed them. We found out from someone in the lineup. Thankfully our friend was waiting in a car, I phone them and they dumped out something and quickly brought them to us. Otherwise we would have had to get out of line and go to a store or something and come back. It was cold dark and raining, not something I wanted to do, especially with my little girl in tow.

You can see what happened next on my other blogpost.  http://tinawinterlik.blogspot.ca/2013/11/have-you-been-to-food-bank-lately.html

So I brought it all home and put it away. I had looked at the dates on most of it and cringed but put it in the cupboard anyways.

So you can see that this top one is old. I tried one, but as soon as I opened it, it smelled off, like rancid oil but I bit it anyways...(sort of like that song, "found a peanut, ...it was rotten....ate it anyways...")

Well I spit it out and tossed them all out. I felt bad but they are bad. :(

Maybe that's why there was a big box of them and they guy before us just looked at one and tossed it back. He knew. :(

 Now this stuff, I was sort of excited about, I thought Granola, I love Granola, I never get to eat Granola, but since it has Flax, I'm guessing this will be rancid too, although it's just a bit out of date. But let's address this, the granola bars I bought at No Frills recently were dated for May 2014. So you can imagine when the date is April 2013, well they are pretty friggin old already. So how old is this cereal really?

 This package of Macaroni and Cheese should be okay, the box is torn that's why it was in there. Since I need to boil it, it should be fine.

This on the other hand is the one I made this morning for my kid's school lunch. I cooked it up and thought it smelled off. I put it in her thermos and as I lifted the spoon I took a little taste, YUCK! Definitely off!!  So I tossed it and luckily there was a can of chicken noodle soup that was dated 2015 so I made that for her.

When I told my kid all this, she was disappointed. She asked me "Mommy, why do they give rotten food to the foodbank?"

I had to explain how the supermarkets can't throw it out with out looking bad and people think it's nice to give it to the food banks.

What they don't realize is that maybe people going to the food bank already have a comprised immune system or that they just aren't that well because they are hungry. So then they have to eat rotten food and get sicker and then that adds to hospital and medical costs.

Something needs to change here folks, wouldn't you agree?

I remember years ago reading in the province about some poor mom, she had one child and  was in an abusive relationship. She ended getting pregant and then leaving the man. She spent all her day walking from one soup kitchen and then to the next to try and feed her kids. The thing I remember her saying was there was maggots in Kraft dinner.

We can do better can't we. This is Canada.

Anyways, I'm glad I put on a few pounds in the summer because I would rather lose a few more than go to the food bank. But my kid that's a different story. She's growing and needs to eat well, so I have got to change things around somehow here.

With that I would appreciate your positive thoughts and prayers and to you I hope your not experiencing this and if you are I send you love and light!!

P.S. There were eggs there too, that they gave us before we left. Dated Nov 7. I sure hope there's no stinkers in there. Now that would be awful. :(