WINNIPEG -- Researchers from the University of Winnipeg are calling out Canada’s Food Guide for not being inclusive to all Canadians.

A new food guide was released in January 2019 to fit the latest nutritional research, but the researchers say the guide does not work for everyone, especially Indigenous communities.

“It offers a pan approach to eating, and there are so many diverse Indigenous communities across Canada, that having a food guide that doesn’t provide enough information to speak to those different communities, just fails to meet the health and nutrition standards that we need,” said Taylor Wilson, one of the researchers for the project.

Wilson said one example is the Food Guide’s suggestion for water as a drink of choice.

“There are so many First Nations communities, and other Indigenous communities across Canada, who don’t have access to clean drinking water.

To help remedy this, the researchers are now working with Fisher River Cree Nation to create a cookbook using traditional recipes and ingredients and develop a food guide for that community.

Wilson, who is from Fisher River, said the community is unique, noting they live adjacent to Ojibway communities, which changes their food landscape.

“They’re extremely resilient, they want to get back to their own traditional food systems, so it’s the perfect community to get started in,” she said.

Wilson notes a food guide will differ for each Indigenous community, depending on their food landscape.

“Having an Indigenous food guide that looks the same across all of these Indigenous communities isn’t exactly what we’re looking at,” she said.

-with files from CTV’s Rachel Lagace