Island diet the topic of choice at Organic Fest

Glendale Gardens was busy, hot and sustainable on the weekend.

Thousands visited the Saanich horticultural centre for the Organic Islands Festival annual celebration for sustainable living.

With 150 stands strewn about the multi-level gardens, organic and/or alternative food samples were plentiful.

But the theme which stood out the most was how to create sustainable change on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, notably the Vancouver Island Diet.

Oak Bay MLA Ida Chong, the newly named Minister of Healthy Living and Sport, introduced local experts as part of a four-person panel debating what needs to be done to revive the Vancouver Island Diet.

The panel included Carolyn Herriot, co-owner of the Garden Path Centre in Saanich, who is working on the book Zero Mile Diet, a follow up book to her best seller A Year on the Garden Path, and Dr. Bill Code, president of the Island Farmers’ Alliance. The well-spoken Herriot trumpeted the cold hard facts that life expectancy is shrinking, and growing your own food is a simple, necessary solution.

“The prestige of a chef has grown so much in the last 20 or 30 years,” said Code. “It’s farmers that don’t get any respect yet they’re just as important. We need to think of farmers in the same way.”

Kids too, enjoyed the festival, with an entire village dedicated to the encouragement of future farmers.

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