GUELPH, Ont. — The Greenbelt Fund has announced a grant program aimed at encouraging more Ontario-based hospitals, long-term care facilities, daycares, schools, universities and colleges to serve homegrown food.

The grant will be provided by Greenbelt’s Broader Public Sector Investment Fund program and is designed to foster change at the production, distribution and operation levels.

The initiative will be discussed today, Feb. 17, at Toronto’s St. Joseph’s Health Centre.

The Greenbelt Fund is a provincial-funded not-for-profit corporation designed to help build a local food economy.

ETOBICOKE, Ont .— The movement toward local, back-to-basics food continues to ignite passion among chefs, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a little room for science-based culinary innovation.

Such innovation was on display last night, Feb. 15, at Humber College where chefs, restaurant owners and other foodservice types packed into a lecture hall to watch chef John Placko, Maple Leaf Foods’ director of Culinary Excellence and  guru, give a demo, designed to entice onlookers to sign up for four upcoming workshops at the college about food science.

Placko’s passion for the culinary art form began a few years ago. Since then, he has become an avid traveller, learning about the trend that he sees in play at the top restaurants in the world, including Spain’s El Bulli, the U.K.’s Fat Duck and S. Pellegrino’s World’s Best Restaurant, the Denmark-based Noma. “If you visit Noma, you have no idea the food is [manipulated], it feels to so local,” explains the toque.

TORONTO — Public health officials in the Greater Toronto Area are investigating reports of thousands of ungraded eggs allegedly being sold by select wholesalers and retailers, according to the Toronto Star.

The Star reports that there are pending charges against nine companies. So far, six Toronto establishments — Sharable Bakery, Greystone Bakery, Farm Fresh Supermarket, Casa Imperial Fine Chinese Cuisine, ABC Bakery and Besmeats Wholesale Ltd.— are under investigation. The three other establishments in York Region have not been named.

Inspectors believe some of the ungraded product came from a distribution warehouse in Scarborough, Ont. Jim Chan, food safety manager for Toronto Public Health, told the Star more than 100,000 ungraded eggs were discovered at the unidentified facility last Friday. “Some of the eggs still have fecal matter on the egg shells, quite a bit of dirt and even feathers are inside the boxes, which are all indications of ungraded eggs,” he told the newspaper. “We brought CFIA [the Canadian Food Inspection Agency] in and they confirmed they were ungraded eggs.”

TORONTO — Hero Certified Burgers has turned a record-setting sales promotion into an $8,000 donation to Toronto’s SickKids Foundation.

Late last year, the Toronto-based gourmet burger joint partnered with the online group buying site WagJag for a limited-time offer. The chain sold its signature burger combo — burger, fries and a fountain beverage — for $4.50, half the regular price.

The public response was enthusiastic, and when the 72-hour offer expired, 15,825 combos were sold with 50 cents from each donated to the SickKids Foundation.