Canada's Food Guide is a good place to start to help you to plan healthier meals.  But the standard food guide may be more difficult to use if you are preparing traditional foods from one of Canada's many diverse cultures.  Toronto Public Health has developed some resources through its "Peer Nutrition Program" that gives guidance on how to prepare a variety of flavorful ethnic dishes in a healthier way.  This sometimes involves modifying the preparation process for those dishes.

For example, the traditional dishes from the Caribbean island nations often contain fresh fruits and vegetables, legumes and other good sources of fibre, and fresh fish.  But the preparation of these dishes sometimes calls for large amounts of oil and fats, salted fish, and other ingredients that can pose a health risk if consumed often.  Toronto Public Health's Peer Nutrition Program has developed healthier recipes for Caribbean foods (as well as recipes from multiple cultures) that make healthier substitutions for some ingredients.

For a multicultural list of healthier recipes compiled by the Peer Nutrition Program, see: http://www.toronto.ca/health/peernutrition/recipes.htm