How can mastering essential kitchen skills and safety practices empower us to cook confidently and responsibly?

This unit builds your practical kitchen skills and safe food-handling habits so you can cook with confidence. You’ll learn accurate measuring and scaling, knife and equipment use, personal and food safety, and how to follow recipes so food is both safe and delicious.

How do policies, politics, and power shape the way our food is produced, distributed, and accessed?

We’ll investigate the systems and decisions that shape access to food — from local production and supply chains to national policies and environmental impacts. Students will research real cases, evaluate causes and consequences, and propose practical, equity-focused solutions. 

How has Canada’s Food Guide evolved over time, and what does it reveal about the relationship between nutrition science and public policy? Who has been harmed, what voices have been silenced, and what dark history is erased in the history of Canada's Food Guide?

This focused mini-unit unpacks the history, evidence, and politics behind Canada’s Food Guide and compares international approaches. You’ll learn how guidelines are made, what the Guide recommends, and how policy influences what people eat. You will also learn about Canada's role in Nutrition testing at Residential Schools and the lasting impact it has had on the formation of our Food Guide, and Canada's Indigenous communities. 

What roles do macro- and micronutrients play in our health, and how do energy and nutrient requirements shift from infancy to older adulthood?

This unit covers nutrient fundamentals (macro & micro), digestion and metabolism, energy balance, and how nutritional needs change through life. We’ll also explore nutrition-related disease prevention, population differences in nutritional status, and evidence behind popular trends and functional foods. 

Assessment in HFA4U is grounded in Growing Success and prioritizes growth, feedback, and meaningful learning over grades. Achievement is expectation-based and informed by observations, conversations, and products, with an emphasis on recent and consistent evidence of learning.