Canada’s new food guide prompts praise, criticism
Shift emphasizes vegetables over meat, dairy
Drink water. Go light on the animal products. Fill half your plate with fruits and vegetables. Fruit juice is liquid sugar, not fruit. Avoid processed foods. Limit booze.
Canada’s new food guide is being praised for its simplicity, for doing away with confusing, “idiotic and ridiculous” recommended portions and serving sizes, and for promoting a plant-heavy eating plan that’s more in line with dietary guidance from other countries, where the smallest section in the grocery store is the dairy aisle.
But the guide is also being criticized for being too simple and fuzzy, for including “healthy eating” tips that sometimes border on the mildly patronizing, and for demoting dairy and beef — foods that, until now, enjoyed almost miracle-food status in one of the country’s most venerable documents.
The new guide, the first rewrite in more than a decade, recommends Canadians choose proteins that come from plants — not animals — more often.
Gone is the rainbow of the old four food groups, replaced by a single plate, half of it filled with fruits and vegetables, and a quarter each to whole grains and proteins. “Milk and alternatives” and “meat and alternatives” have lost their status as official, standalone food groups and have been lumped into the protein-rich category instead.
At a technical briefing in advance of Tuesday’s release of the updated food rules, Dr. Hasan Hutchinson was asked why anything dairy appeared to be largely absent from the composite plate and snapshots of “healthy eating.”
“Certainly in the picture of the composite plate you’ve got, ah, yogurt — that’s right there in the protein group,” Hutchinson, director general of Health Canada’s office of nutrition policy and promotion, told reporters. And, while it may have been hard to see, there was milk in a bowl of porridge and berries.
Hasan said the long-awaited rewrite is based on a rigorous scientific review using the best available evidence, and that industry-commissioned reports were intentionally excluded to reduce any perception of conflict of interest — real or perceived — and to maintain “the confidence of Canadians.”
Among the changes: The previous four food groups — vegetables and fruit, grain products, milk and meat — are history. Instead, food is now separated into three groupings: vegetables and fruits, whole grains (such as whole grain pasta, brown rice and quinoa) and protein foods (lentils, lean red meat, fish, poultry, unsweetened milk and fortified soy beverages, nuts, seeds, tofu, lower fat dairy and cheeses).
Also gone are recommendations for specific portions or daily servings. No one wanted the old measures, said Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an associate professor in the department of family medicine at the University of Ottawa.
“Nobody weighed and measured their foods. Nobody really followed it, nobody knew what a serving size was. They were ridiculous and idiotic,” said Freedhoff, a bariatric medicine specialist.
The new guide instead focuses on proportions, with an emphasis on a high proportion of plant-based foods.
While some have accused Health Canada of pushing an environmentalist agenda, the agency says the food guide’s primary focus is health, though it does acknowledge eating more plant and fewer animal-based foods can “help to conserve soil, water and air.”
In fact, water should be our “beverage of choice,” the guide says. And it warns of the health risks of drinking excess amounts of alcohol, including cancer, hypertension and liver disease.
Canadians are also being advised to limit our consumption of highly processed foods and to prepare meals and snacks using ingredients that have little to no added sodium, sugar or saturated fats. It offers lifestyle advice: Cook more often. Eat meals with others. Take time to eat.
The Dairy Farmers of Canada maintains there is “no scientific justification to minimize the role of milk products” in the Canadian diet, and warns that lumping milk products together with other protein foods will lead to “inadequate intakes of important nutrients.” The industry had warned that any drastic change to the guide would harm a sector already reeling from concessions granted in recent trade agreements.
Hutchinson, of Health Canada, said the agency still recommends lower-fat dairy as part of a nutritious diet.
Sylvain Charlebois, a professor in food distribution and policy at Dalhousie University, sees trouble for the dairy sector ahead, “since you are now seeing a federal agency discouraging consumers from drinking more milk or eating dairy products.”
“We have a very protectionist system in Canada and domestically we have a federal agency that doesn’t necessarily endorse the nutritional role of dairy products as much as they used to,” he said.