Digesting Canada’s New Food Guide

Canada’s new Food Guide is a welcome update. Gone are the recommendations around serving sizes and portions. Instead, a simple picture of what a healthy meal looks like is provided. The new guide touts a more plant-based diet with a focus on three components, fruits and vegetables (50%), protein (25%), and whole grains (25%).

Let’s take a look at some of the recommendations and discuss a few challenges in following the new guide.

The most up to date scientific literature was leveraged for the design of this Food Guide. No doubt that on average, the guide’s recommendations make sense. The average Canadian should probably eat more fruits and vegetables. However, if we look northwards to Nunavut or out to places where transporting or growing fruits and vegetables is not possible, making Food Guide meals where 50% of the ingredients are unavailable will be challenging. The guide is based on the average, but no doubt there are cultures where this vision will not be practical.

Canada’s Food Guide suggests we cook more often and avoid ultra-processed food. In other words, cook your own food from raw ingredients.

While this may seem like a simple task, the exercise of finding recipes, sourcing ingredients, navigating a grocery store, preparing,, cooking, and then cleaning up is time-consuming, and time is a precious commodity. Consider the present day young family where having a dual-income household is almost a requirement to afford the cost of living, where both parents aren’t home until 5:30pm. Or imagine what it’s like for a single parent. The idea of going to the grocery store when you only have a few precious hours a day to spend with your children is difficult to reconcile. People aren’t choosing ultra-processed food per se, they are choosing to spend more of their time playing with their kids instead of preparing, cooking, and cleaning up after meals.

The problem going forward is that if parents continually buy processed, pre-cooked food, the educational gap for kids regarding cooking practices develops. If children are not exposed to cooking practices, it will be very difficult for them to learn how to cook. Canada ranks 37th out of 41 high income countries in children’s access to nutritious food and we are the only G7 country without a national school food program. This means that not only is there less exposure of Canadian children to cooking practices, they may also have limited exposure to what a healthy meal looks like. Cutting home economics from school curriculums may have been a poor decision after all.

A lack of affordability is often given as the explanation as to why some people do not eat healthy. This mindset is linked with an educational gap. It is possible to make healthy meals inexpensively, it just takes time and knowledge.

 

Within the Food Guide, a part I found interesting is the large section on promoting awareness of food marketing. Considering the Federal Government developed this guide, if food marketing is concerning enough that we need to be formally warned, why not bring in more regulation on food marketing? In addition, adding a warning like “beware of nutritional zealots” could have been justified. There are a lot of health food gimmicks out there.

A recommendation around sourcing meat and dairy locally could have been included. The cruelties associated with factory farming are well-documented and buying local from places like Pinewynd Farm or Silvercreek Farms avoids this issue. In addition, the carbon footprint is lower as the food source isn’t shipped long distances.

Something I’m surprised that was included in the Food Guide, but agree with, is alcohol being called out for its associations with various health risks. In terms of caloric density, alcohol is closer to butter than it is to bread. For the next guide it will be interesting to see if Cannabis is mentioned.

Overall, the 2019 version of Canada’s Food Guide is dramatically improved. Promoting a focus on eating more fruits and vegetables is a good idea for most of us.  Food preparation can be time consuming but is also worth the effort.  Perhaps we can spend time with our children cooking together. To overcome the educational gaps around food preparation and healthy eating, teaching students how to purchase and prepare food in school, coupled with the launch of a national school food program, could provide much needed educational support.

By Brennan Smith, PhD

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