CHFA West Trade Show in Vancouver {Highlights and Favourites}

This morning I had a chance to stop by the CHFA West Trade Show happening in Vancouver. CHFA West is the largest conference and trade show in Western Canada serving the natural health and organics industry.  It’s the place where retailers meet the industry’s top manufacturers, distributors and brokers, face-to-face. Perfect if you are interested in organic and natural living!

The day started with a delicious organic breakfast and seminar hosted by Nature’s Path. They are celebrating their 30th birthday and put together a very inspirational line up of speakers who shared their vision for the future of organic food.

I enjoyed learning how Nature’s Path is helping non-organic farms transition to organic and their initiatives to help set up farms and employ young students who are interested in organic farming. As farmers age having a succession plan in place is key and proper training on farming without the use of chemicals is very important.

The speakers also talked about the importance of reconnecting with our food, understanding where it comes from and that organic food is better for our planet and our bodies.

A couple of my favourite quotes from the event were:

Desiree Nielsen, RD and  author of “Unjunk your Diet”: ” We don’t live in a democracy unless we have complete food democracy” referring to our right to know what’s in our food and making GMO labels mandatory.

“We need to educate people not only about eating well but about how their food was grown”

Arran Stephens, Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Nature’s Path: “We should be grateful to the farmers, because of the farmers growing the food we eat, we live!”

“We have the right to know what’s in our food, we should be allowed to know if it’s genetically engineer or not”

Hannah Wittman, PhD, Associate Professor of Food, Nutrition and Health, UBC:  “We need to enable young people who want to get into farming to get the land and have the resources to implement this” 

After the breakfast a group of fellow bloggers and myself headed to the tread show and we had a chance to stop by some great booths.  Below is my personal selection of top products I saw at the event from the booths I visited:

AspenClean:  I already use AspenClean products at home and I was excited to find out that they now have organic essential oils in all of their products!

My favourite product from AspenClean is one that I use daily. Their 100% Natural All Purpose Cleaner. This product also just received the award for 2015 Product of the Year Canada™ in the “Natural Cleaning Products” category!

Aura Cacia: I love the new Yoga Mists from Aura Cacia, they are organic, made with 100% pure essential oils and free of alcohol and preservatives. Great for the body, room and yoga mat! A must have!

Simply Organic: I enjoy baking and can’t wait to try the new Simply Organic non-alcoholic Vanilla Extract! It is organic, pure and exotic! Yay for organic baking!

Wholesome!: Wholesome Sweeteners has rebranded to Wholesome!, they have a new name and a cool new look. I picked up some samples of their Organic Coconut Palm Syrup, can’t wait to have some pancakes with their syrup on Sunday!

Nature’s Path: I had the chance to sample Nature’s Path’s new Qi’a blueberry, cashew, pumpkin seed snack bar at the trade show and it was amazing….seriously delicious! I can’t wait until they are available to the public in the summer, my new favourite for sure!

Disclosure: I was compensated to attend the CHFA events, however all views and opinions on this post are 100% my own.