Please give your input to DefaultVeg at UVic. If you’d like to become a DefaultVeg Ambassador or encourage your department to adopt DefaultVeg, please email us.
- Nicole Fetterly, RD, MSc
- Project Director, DefaultVeg at UVic
- nfetterly@uvic.ca
Advocating for sustainable diets that support our health and that of our food system and planet has been my focus for over 15 years. As a registered dietitian, I educate groups and individuals through written resources and presentations or lectures to provide them with practical solutions to “eat closer to nature” or “eat food, not too much, mostly plants” (-Pollan). In my Masters research, I used choice architecture or nudge theory to study whether we could encourage UVic students on meal plan to eat more veggies. Now my advocacy efforts are centered on implementing Default Veg at UVic and encouraging our food service providers to make this important switch in their menu offerings and food purchasing to improve the health of our community and reduce our Greenhouse Gas emissions from food.
- Holly Cecil, MA
- Project Administrator, DefaultVeg at UVic
- cecil@uvic.ca
I believe that good food, grown and cooked in the best ways and shared between friends, is one of the great joys of life. Since the 1990s my research has centred on the interrelationships between diet, environmental impacts and global health, working both in Canada and the UK. Through my undergraduate and graduate degrees here at the University of Victoria, my research interests grew to include climate change, and the political, economic and social barriers delaying the shift to sustainable diets so urgently needed within the larger spectrum of carbon footprint reductions. My Master’s research exposed the underreported impacts of livestock agriculture on climate change and the environment, and was awarded UVic’s 2019 Lieutenant Governor’s Silver Medal for Outstanding (non-thesis) MA across all faculties at the University of Victoria. I value our amazing DefaultVeg team here at UVic, and the researchers sharing knowledge and resources from the many universities currently spearheading sustainable dietary shifts (thank you Cambridge!).