By Andrew Pipe
and Yves Savoie
Heart & Stroke
The new Canada’s Food Guide has the potential to help challenge the impact of diet on Canadians’ health. But more must be done to realize that potential.
Andrew Pipe
The updated version of this vital document, the first such major change to the Food Guide since 2007, has been much anticipated because we need to fix the diet train wreck Canadians are on.
We’re consuming too much salt, saturated fat and sugar, particularly from highly processed food and sugary beverages.
Our children are at particular risk. For the first time, we have kids who have spent their whole lives eating unhealthy diets high in processed foods.
We’re all paying the price in terms of failing health and rising health-care costs. The cost of diet-related disease in Canada is estimated to be over $26 billion per year and poor diets are a leading risk factor for death.
Yves Savoie
The revised Food Guide is the opportunity to chart a new dietary course for Canadians. It’s used directly in shaping menus and allocating budgets for food for most public institutions, from schools to seniors’ residences. And the guide is taught to Canadian students and is used by industry, retailers and consumers to shape what we eat.
Fortunately, in creating this new guide, Health Canada has resisted the industry lobbies and followed the scientific evidence. It concluded we need to eat more fruits and vegetables, making and enjoying more meals as families, and eating less processed foods and sugary drinks, including fruit juices that can contain as much or more sugar as soft drinks.
But there are two crucial next steps to be taken before Canada has a complete healthy eating strategy.
The first is helping Canadians in the grocery store. With tens of thousands of products to choose from and little time to make purchase decisions, we need an easy way for Canadians to identify products that are consistent with the direction of the new Food Guide.
We need clear, easy-to-understand alert labels on the front of packages of foods that are high in salt, saturated fat and/or sugar. Our current system of complicated numbers hidden on the backs or sides of packages isn’t sufficient to help consumers make quick decisions.
The most effective labels don’t give any numbers – they simply say through a prominent label/symbol on the front of packages: “High in sugar” (or saturated fat or salt), and note the information comes from a legitimate source, such as Health Canada.
Such a simple and clear system has been beneficial elsewhere. Consumers will act on clear advice about the nutrient content of a product by choosing them less often. And many manufacturers will reformulate their products with lower levels of salt, saturated fat or sugar specifically to avoid being branded with an alert label. That helps everyone.
The second vital step is to ensure big-business marketing doesn’t undo the positive messages of the Food Guide – one of which is to “be aware of food marketing.”
This message is especially important when it comes to children. In fact, it’s so important that we need to stop allowing companies to market foods high in salt, sugar and saturated fats to children. This includes sugary cereal in boxes that are often adorned with cartoon characters and colours that appeal to children. Distressingly, young people get more of their caloric intake from highly-marketed ultra-processed foods than any other age group, especially kids nine to 13 years old.
Marketing makes healthy food buying a war that parents can’t win. They need help.
The House of Commons has already voted with a strong majority on legislation that’s now before the Senate that would ban such advertising to children. Senators must act on the will of the democratically-elected House of Commons and move forward with the final step to build a more healthy future for children in Canada.
As there was with the Food Guide, there will be loud pushback from food industries and companies to protest these necessary elements of a healthy eating strategy.
The government must continue – as it did with the Food Guide – to stand up to industry lobbying and follow the scientific evidence.
Let’s give Canadians a fighting chance to meet the excellent goals of our new Food Guide.
Dr. Andrew Pipe, CM, MD, FRCSPC (Hon), of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute, is a professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa and chair of the Heart & Stroke board of directors. Yves Savoie is chief executive officer of Heart & Stroke.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
