For the past month now I have been working with the Chippewas of Nawash first nation community; most of my family is from and a lot of my childhood took place! The community is located in outside of Wiarton, Ontario on a reserve called Neyaashiinigmiing. Picture this - water, trees, bluffs and the most amazing sunsets. I can honestly say there is not another place like it.

The project I’ve been working on for the past month with the community is the Nawash Healthy Living Challenge. This challenge was a way to introduce healthy eating into the community and show the impact that small and simple changes make to your health. We have introduced healthier options and swaps for things people would typically eat. A lot of this was really new to a lot of the people that participated in the program, for that reason providing simple and healthy options was really important.

This is where Evive comes in .. I reached out to Evive to support this project and they were more than generous and provided the project with products for everyone to try. The best thing about this, was that we got to try out their new lunches which made eating healthy easy and less intimidating.

3 Ways Evive Lunches Impacted Our Challenge

1. They made eating healthy less intimidating - this is a major thing when making changes to your diet, food is intimidating and quite honestly a lot of people don’t know where to start. Being able to quickly heat up the Mac Squash to put on top of rice noodles for a healthy mac and cheese was a perfect option for the busy moms of the group.

Tom Thai

2. They provided great tasting meals that were effortlessly dairy and gluten free - one of the challenges I gave the group was to go gluten and dairy free for a week! Evive’s products are naturally gluten and dairy-free because they use whole food ingredients. Curries and spicy food was a huge favourite for the group so having the Tom Thai as an option to put over rice instead of a typical milk-based curry type dishes!

Mac Squash

3. They exemplified the perfect components you want in each meal (fat/protein/fibre) - another one of the challenges I gave the group was to post a photo of a meal they made containing a fat, a protein and a fibre. The point of this was to promote the basics of a good blood sugar management meal. Evive’s Bam Chili really exemplifies this because it contains all three elements. The Bam Chili contains avocado and olive oil for healthy fats, beans for protein and quinoa for fibre!

Bam Chili

What some of the people in the challenge had to say after trying Evive for the first time!

“Miigwetch Evive!! Our community had the pleasure of enjoying both your smoothies and chilli/soups and they were healthy and delicious!! The squash Mac was comforting and the Saphire smoothie was so easy to drink - it almost felt sinful! Thank you for making a product that is so easy to make and convenient to have on hand. You have shown me that healthy can equal tasty!!”

- Josie

“Honestly really really good!!” (about the Bam Chili)

- Carmen

“I really wanted to try the Evive smoothie cubes, they did not disappoint.”

- Tyanna