2025 Annual Report
Report
Nourish
Health Care Innovation
2025 was the year Nourish shifted from being a catalyst to becoming part of Canada’s health-system infrastructure. Across the country, hospitals, policymakers, Indigenous leaders, suppliers, and global partners turned to Nourish for coordination, clarity, and courage at a time when budgets were tightening and the polycrisis was accelerating.
We advanced our theory of change by proving that leadership development, shared infrastructure, and Two-Eyed seeing can move whole systems. With our third national Symposium, new national communities of practice, and the growth of Coolfood and Food is Our Medicine, we equipped leaders with the foresight, tools, and relationships to redesign the public plate. Nourish’s network reaches 20% of all hospital meals in Canada and has already shaped provincial nutrition standards, federal food-safety policy, sustainability accreditation pilots, and national climate strategies.
Our impact deepened and diversified. Together with our partners, we reached over 20 million meals, reduced food-related emissions, expanded Indigenous-led learning, launched the Nourish Arrow as a Canadian Food as Medicine framework response to Tufts’, and brought hospital food to the centre of national conversations at the Victoria Forum, the EAT-Lancet 2.0 launch in Stockholm, Health Canada’s FPT Traditional Indigenous Food Safety Community of Practice, and Canadian Malnutrition Awareness Week. Hospitals across most provinces began shifting menus, sourcing locally, integrating cultural foodways, and embedding planetary health into care. British Columbia launched its new Acute Care Nutrition Guidelines shaped by Nourish’s work. And, we authored a low-carbon food procurement guide for Buyers for Climate Action, a coalition of leading green public buyers.
“The true testament to the impact of Nourish and its programming is the staying power of the work. They become part of the organizational culture.”
Wendy Smith, Mohawk MedBuy
And we built staying power.
Our alumni continued to shape policy, form provincial working groups, influence supply chains, and lead innovation far beyond their program years – evidence that Nourish cultivates leaders who transform systems long after funding cycles end.
At its core, this work is about life – people who deserve food that heals, staff who need nourishment to care for others, communities striving for dignity and resilience, and lands that can no longer bear the weight of extractive systems.
The year ahead is about scale.
In 2026, we will launch the Nourish Commons as a shared national platform for food and health leadership toward the 100 Million Better Bites challenge; strengthen hospital policies around planetary health menus and procurement; focus communities of practice that help hospitals shift from early pilots to widespread adoption; and steward inter-ministerial collaboration, regulation, and practice around hospital food as a powerful leverage point for planetary health, resilient food systems, and strong economies
2025 Annual Report: On the Road to 100 Million Better Bites.
Transforming how Canadian Health Care Systems approach Food and Health