Canadians not eating enough grains, U of S study finds
Study suggests not enough Canadians are meeting food guide recommendations
Nearly 80 per cent of Canadians don’t eat the recommended amount of grains, consequently missing out on the key nutrients grains provide, a University of Saskatchewan study found.
The Canada Food Guide recommends six to eight servings of grains a day for adults, which varies depending on age and gender. According to the study’s lead investigator, Hassan Vatanparast, only 17 per cent of Canadians meet those guidelines.
The study found the dominant type of grains consumed by Canadians to be enriched, non-whole grains like white bread and pasta. While whole grains are generally known to have the most benefits, enriched non-whole grains contribute folate, iron, and fibre.
Vatanparast said the study was prompted by a lack of data on how Canadians consume grain — the only previous study published in Canada was in 2004.
When the 2015 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) data became available in July 2017, Vatanparast said researchers were motivated to go through the data to find out the grain consumption patternof Canadians, and to look at the negative perspective regarding the impact of grains on obesity.
“We wanted to fill in a gap in the scientific literature,” said Yanni Papanikolaou, who has worked on many studies predominantly based on National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey data sets in the United States, and acted as a scientific adviser for the University of Saskatchewan study.
Papanikolaou is a former director of the Kellogg Company.
When beginning research into the grain consumption of Americans, Papanikolaou said one of the things researchers often heard was that consumption of grains is linked to higher body weights. That brought out one of the research questions in the study: whether grains contribute to being overweight or obese, he said.
“(In the Canadian study), it didn’t matter what grain food pattern you were consuming, whether in children or adults, there were no associations with body weight,” he said. “So, people who are choosing to avoid grain foods because of weight-related parameters, our studies, both the Canadian and the U.S. data, are showing that there is no benefit to eliminate grain foods.”
The early findings of the study were presented at the 2018 annual Canadian Nutrition Society conference. The research is expected to continue at the University of Saskatchewan into 2020.