Canada’s Food Guide to... Unhealthy Eating?
(Many of the concepts in this chapter can be explored in greater detail on Yoni Freedhoff, MD’s blog “Weighty Matters”.)
Despite the appeal of the food guide and the promises that Health Canada makes in terms of having your best interests in mind, there are skeptics. There are conspirators. But there is also some evidence to suggest that the development of the more recent food guides hasn’t solely been based on nutritional needs and information. It appears that industries are also involved, and have made a considerable impact on the final outcome of the guide (Freedhoff, 2006). http://www.weightymatters.ca/2006/11/big-food-has-seat.html Many of these theories however were published earlier than 2011 - the year the newest food guide was released - although it has been revised to some extent. That isn’t to say the information is no longer relevant at all; industries will continue to have at least one foot in the door with respect to Canada’s eating choices, so though the numbers may differ, the idea remains the same. What I’m trying to convey here, is that maybe the food guide isn’t your best option for eating what’s right for your body type; maybe there is a better way to organize your food in a way that meets your own nutritional needs and allows you to function at your optimal level. These are just a few of the reasons why I think Canada’s Food Guide has a lot left to be desired.
The Food Industry
On January 20th, 2004, Health Canada held a meeting - by invitation only - for the revision of the 1992 version of Canada’s Food Guide. Somewhat surprisingly, one third of those attending were representatives of the Food Industry. The list included (but was not limited to) The Canadian Meat Council, Dairy Farmers of Canada, and Food and Consumer Products Manufacturers of Canada. Of course it makes sense that the Food Industry be aware that the Food Guide is being revised; if the recommendations are changed, the products that Canadians purchase will also likely change over time (Freedhoff, 2006). http://www.weightymatters.ca/2006/11/big-food-has-seat.html This could mean a difference of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in either direction for any of the industries involved; but does that mean they need to be involved in the revision of the guide? Probably not.
However the Food Guide Advisory Committee, a 12 member Committee in the top level of the revision process (and later renamed the Food Expert Advisory Committee), consisted of 25% members who are also a part of “Big Food” (Health Canada, 2011). http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/consult/frac-ccra/index-eng.php Yoni Freedhoff, MD, family doctor and writer of the online informative blog “Weighty Matters”, compiled a selection of quotes from the biographies of some of the Big Food members involved in the revision process. Many of these phrases contradict each other, and overall are counterintuitive in respect to making responsible, non-biased decisions for the new food guide. Take, for example, Sydney Massey, Nutrition Education Manager and Spokesperson for the BC Dairy Foundation. The foundation’s stated mandate - as it was back in 2006, the year the article was published - was "BC Dairy Foundation (BCDF) is a not-for-profit organization with the mandate of increasing consumption of milk in British Columbia". This, coming from the same woman who said that “you can show an association between wearing skirts and breast cancer, but it doesn't mean that wearing skirts causes breast cancer." when interviewed about the data that suggested increased milk consumption was linked to an increased risk of ovarian cancer. So of course, we can expect that she would be pretty biased when it came down to dairy recommendations in the food guide (Freedhoff, 2006). http://www.weightymatters.ca/2006/11/big-food-has-seat.html
In the end, we don’t really know who’s in charge of the Guide. In 2007, Health Canada removed the list that once outlined who attended the revision meetings, and wrote in its place:
“Invitees to the meeting included representatives from a broad range of national stakeholder organizations, such as health professional associations, non-governmental organizations, consumer groups, universities/academics, food industry and trade organizations and federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments. Approximately 200 stakeholders were invited; about 110 stakeholders attended the meeting" (Health Canada, 2007). http://www.weightymatters.ca/2006/11/big-food-has-seat.html
Why should you need to be a stakeholder in order to have a say in the nutritional needs of Canadians? Why are industries even involved in the revision process, when they could be replaced by those who actually know what the word “nutrition” means and want their country to be as healthy as possible? Overall, I’d say that it is unlikely that blindly following the food guide is your best opportunity for a healthy lifestyle.
Getting Enough Micronutrients
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Micronutrients, as mentioned in chapter 1, are vitamins and minerals that are essential - in small amounts - for healthy cell growth and metabolism. You could argue the importance of these nutrients in comparison to macronutrients; in the big picture, the macronutrients are probably far more important to keep track of in your diet. Even in 1982, when far less food was recommended in the daily servings in the food guide, no significant cases of micronutrient deficiencies were recorded. Despite all of this, the current food guide has been designed in such a way that with the recommended servings, Canadians can meet their micronutrient needs (Freedhoff, 2006). http://www.weightymatters.ca/2006/11/at-least-youll-get-enough-zinc.html
This doesn’t make a lot of sense; it would be far more beneficial to design a diet that minimizes the risk of chronic diseases, rather than a a diet that decreases the potential for micronutrient deficiencies, and this has also been addressed in the newest version of the guide. It is beginning to focus more on promoting the consumption of whole foods, rather than the consumption of foods that will provide you with specific micronutrients. And with the shift toward promoting foods rather than nutrients, the guide now encourages Canadians to eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish, legumes, and nuts, while at the same time eating free sugars, red meat, salt, and hydrogenated oils only in moderation (and preferably not at all) (Freedhoff, 2006). http://www.weightymatters.ca/2006/11/at-least-youll-get-enough-zinc.html
That isn’t to say that the food guide shouldn’t focus on nutrients at all; we can’t forget about the macronutrients. These nutrients are needed in much greater amounts than micronutrients, so it might be beneficial for the food guide to incorporate macronutrient amounts into their guide (that said, it would be beneficial for the food guide to include a lot of aspects of nutrition that it currently doesn’t, including different body types, metabolisms, and fitness levels).
The Problem with Fat
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Another reason to put a greater focus on the macronutrients is because of the glaring misconception many people have about fats, which is that all fats are “bad”. People follow low-fat diets without a lot of knowledge or guidance and end up not benefitting healthwise in any way. What may come as a surprise to some people is that the amount of fat you have in your diet is not nearly as important as what kinds of fat you have in your diet; having the right kinds will not make you fat. Of course there are the saturated and trans fats mentioned in Chapter 1, which are undisputedly not part of a healthy diet. These fats, as well as the good fats, played a big role in the draft of the food guide when it was being revised back in 2004 (Freedhoff, 2006). http://www.weightymatters.ca/2006/11/all-fat-is-bad.html
A study was done back in 1956 which showed that countries that consumed higher levels of saturated fats had higher levels of heart disease. However this was not linked to the total amount of fat being consumed; in fact, the country that consumed the highest amounts of fats total also had the lowest levels of heart disease. There was also a series of articles released in January 2006 that outlined the results of a dietary fat trial, where women were randomly assigned to low-fat diets or to a control group and were monitored over 8 years. The results? Low-fat diets did not lead to lowered risk of colon cancer, breast cancer, or heart disease (Freedhoff, 2006). http://www.weightymatters.ca/2006/11/all-fat-is-bad.html
Then there are trans fats, which make up a considerably high percentage of the calories an average Canadian will consume from fat (3-7% in 2006). Trans fats are unarguably bad for you; they’ve been shown to raise bad cholesterol, lower good cholesterol and make our blood stickier, increasing the risk of blood clots (Mensink, 1990). http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199008163230703?hits=20&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&excludeflag=TWEEK_element&resourcetype=HWCIT&tmonth=Nov&searchterm=dietary+trans+fatty&sortspec=Score+desc+PUBDATE_SORTDATE+desc&fmonth=Nov&andorexacttitleabs=and&FIRSTINDEX=0&fyear=1989&where=fulltext&searchtitle=Articles&tyear=1991&sendit=GO&tocsectionid=Original+Articles&tocsectionid=Special+Reports&tocsectionid=Special+Articles&tocsectionid=Videos+in+Clinical+Medicine&tocsectionid=Clinical+PracticeAORBClinical+Therapeutics&tocsectionid=Review+ArticlesAORBClinical+PracticeAORBClinical+Implications+of+Basic+ResearchAORBMolecular+MedicineAORBClinical+TherapeuticsAORBVideos+in+Clinical+Medicine&tocsectionid=EditorialsAORBPerspectiveAORBOutlookAORBBehind+the+Research&tocsectionid=Sounding+BoardAORBClinical+Debate&tocsectionid=Clinical+Implications+of+Basic+Research&tocsectionid=Health+Policy+ReportsAORBHealth+Policy+2001AORBQuality+of+Health+Care&search_tab=articles& They've also been shown to increase inflammation in our body, in turn resulting in more incidences of heart disease and diabetes (Lopez-Garcia, 2005) (Salmerón, 2001). http://jn.nutrition.org/content/135/3/562.abstract?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=willett&fulltext=trans&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT and http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/73/6/1019.abstract?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=salmeron&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT
By conducting another study - having women consume trans fats rather than follow a low-fat diet - it was shown that women who get 3% of their calories from trans fats are 50% more likely to develop heart disease over 14 years than those who ate the least amount of trans fats in the study (Oh, 2005). http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/161/7/672.abstract?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=1&author1=willett&title=dietary+fat&andorexacttitle=and&andorexacttitleabs=and&andorexactfulltext=and&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&resourcetype=HWCIT
There are also good fats, or the unsaturated fats, which were also mentioned in Chapter 1; essentially, these fats have been tested in studies and shown that replacing just 5% calories consumed from saturated fat by unsaturated fat can reduce the risk of a heart attack by 40% (Albert, 2002). http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa012918?hits=20&andorexactfulltext=and&FIRSTINDEX=0&fyear=1996&searchid=1&excludeflag=TWEEK_element&where=fulltext&resourcetype=HWCIT&searchtitle=Articles&sendit=GO&searchterm=blood+levels+of+long-chain&tocsectionid=Original+Articles&tocsectionid=Special+Reports&tocsectionid=Special+Articles&tocsectionid=Videos+in+Clinical+Medicine&tocsectionid=Clinical+PracticeAORBClinical+Therapeutics&tocsectionid=Review+ArticlesAORBClinical+PracticeAORBClinical+Implications+of+Basic+ResearchAORBMolecular+MedicineAORBClinical+TherapeuticsAORBVideos+in+Clinical+Medicine&tocsectionid=EditorialsAORBPerspectiveAORBOutlookAORBBehind+the+Research&tocsectionid=Sounding+BoardAORBClinical+Debate&tocsectionid=Clinical+Implications+of+Basic+Research&tocsectionid=Health+Policy+ReportsAORBHealth+Policy+2001AORBQuality+of+Health+Care&sortspec=Score+desc+PUBDATE_SORTDATE+desc&fmonth=Nov&search_tab=articles&andorexacttitleabs=andTests involving omega-3 fatty acids - found in unsaturated fats - have been shown to lower bad cholesterol levels, prevent an increase of triglycerides, and reduce development of arrhythmia (BMJ, 2004). http://www.bmj.com/content/328/7430/30.reprint
So what does this have to do with the food guide? Despite the evidence and despite the reports advocating for their elimination, the words “trans fat” did not appear once on the 2004 draft of the Food Guide. Health Canada even had a Trans-Fat Task Force recommend the elimination of trans fats from our diet, and Health Canada’s laws require that food labels list whether they include trans fats; yet the food guide made no mention of this (though the newest version does now mention trans fats, and encourages eating foods low in unhealthy fats) (Freedhoff, 2006). http://www.weightymatters.ca/2006/11/all-fat-is-bad.html
Macronutrient Ratios: A Modern Approach to Healthy Eating
Based on the nutrients and energy systems discussed in Chapter 1, it would seem to make more sense that a person’s diet be based on how much of each macronutrient they need daily, rather than how many foods from each food group they should eat daily. This concept of macronutrient ratios is becoming more common; several years of research leading up to this concept have compared the relationships between nutrient intake and the prevention of disease, and from this information came the widely accepted ranges for consuming carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. Rather than focusing on specific “allowed” foods or on micronutrients only, the ranges help ensure that you are consuming a sufficient amount of macronutrients - the fuel for your body - as well as other essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals (Hand, 2008). http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/nutrition_articles.asp?id=372 Below are the healthy ranges for the three macronutrients that can suit the general population:
45%-65% of calories from carbohydrates
20%-35% of calories from fat
10%-35% of calories from protein
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One common ratio is 40:30:30, where an individual will eat slightly more carbohydrates than proteins and fats, but the percentages are all relatively similar (Saleem, 2013). http://dietdatabase.com/macronutrients-and-micronutrients/ Another source may recommend a ratio of 50:30:20, where a much larger percentage of carbohydrates are consumed (Hand, 2008). Depending on what your specific nutritional needs are, you might for example consume a higher percentage of carbohydrates per day, while someone else may eat mainly fat and protein. http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/nutrition_articles.asp?id=372 There are even tools online that you can use to calculate what ratios of macronutrients would best suit you (although be sure to take the information with a grain of salt):
Personally, the claims made about the Food Guide and its somewhat "shady" operations are quite convincing to me. I have recently looked into my what body type I may have, and am starting to plan and create a new meal plan which may benefit me more than just getting the "right" number of grain products in my meals every day. In the next chapter, you will read more about how different individuals - whether they be athletes or normal people - might benefit more from personalized macronutrient ratios than they would from following the Food Guide.
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