“You can eat well by following Canada's Food Guide!”
It’s the answer to all our modern health problems – obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and the list goes on. Right? The much-publicized new Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating hasn’t really changed much in 30 years. Sure, the pictures now include hummous, tofu, and soy milk in addition to milk, eggs, and beef, but is that really so radical? There are a few more breakdowns for age and sex category in the new Guide, but they are still fairly broad. I fail to see, however, how this new guide will change the way Canadians eat in any significant way. Despite all the hype, the new Food Guide simply doesn’t begin to address the most serious food issues facing Canadians today. There is no suggestion that we should eat less processed foods or local foods, and very little mention of freshness and seasonality.
There are a number of problems with focussing solely on the known macro- and micro-nutrients (carbohydrates, fats, protein, vitamins, and minerals). First and foremost, we don’t really understand these things. When the macronutrients were discovered, scientists thought they had discovered all the secrets to healthy eating. But people still got sick. When the first vitamins were discovered, again we thought we had it all figured out. But how do we know there aren’t more vitamins? And what about other phytochemicals, antioxidants, lycopenes, and so many other compounds we are just beginning to develop an awareness of? Even the food components we do know a lot about aren’t fully understood. How many times in the past 20 years have health claims about nutrients been made, then refuted, then changed, then brought back again? Just think about the margarine vs. butter debate, beta-carotene supplements, red wine, chocolate……. There’s so much more going on than we can hope to comprehend. This nutrient focussed approach is reductionist. It can’t consider the role of the diet as an entity in itself. It also completely ignores social, ecological, and cultural factors which affect not only our own health but the health of our society and the world we live in (and depend upon for our survival).
One of the first things that struck me on a first look at the recommendations in the Guide was the Grain Products group. The new Guide suggests that we choose at least half our foods in this group from whole grains. Half? Please. Why not all, or nearly all? I don’t want to deny anyone the pleasures of a good meal of pasta, a fluffy Basmati, or warm French bread dipped in olive oil, but surely we can do better than half and still enjoy our food. This gives far too much value to bleached white bread and parboiled white rice – both virtually devoid of nutritional and gastronomic value.
Moving on the Meat and Alternatives section….. We are still told to “Select lean meat and alternatives” instead of being told to simply eat less meat, which as a population we desperately need to do. But this isn’t in the interests of the powerful beef lobby, or the food industry as a whole. And anyone who’s ever read anything by Marion Nestle (no relation) knows, that language was dictated word for word by the food industry lobbyists. And that goes right to core – they spent a lot of time and energy at university dictating that exact language to us future dietitians. We were explicitly instructed never to tell anyone to eat less of something (especially meat or junk food) or to label any food as bad (even if we couldn’t find any redeeming quality in it). Why not tell someone that a chicken nugget is bad for you? It is! No wonder I could never bring myself to fully join the ranks of the dietitians.
While I’m on the topic of this odd language that doesn’t include the words “less,” “bad,” or “junk,” I was horrified when I found my way to the “Eating out” section on the website. It is suggested people ask for nutritional information when they eat at fast food outlets. I had to read that a few times to believe it. We should be telling people to avoid eating fast food, except maybe as a very occasional event. This language implies that if we go and ask for the lowest fat hamburger or the small fries we are doing ok. No mention of the scary ingredients (fat being the least concern I would say) in those “foods.”
Why does the Food Guide continue to treat processed foods as equivalent to whole, fresh foods? Of course I know the answer – the food industry. But this is nothing short of a travesty. Sure, they’re not telling us to eat everything from a package, but it is recommended to use frozen and canned vegetables as a good alternative to fresh in order to save preparation time. When that’s all you can get, fine, but these products are not only less nutritious, they are a huge stress on the environment (and they don’t taste so great either). I would argue that one of the biggest problems with the way people eat is the amount of highly processed products consumed. These need to be replaced with fresh, whole foods, predominantly locally grown foods.
I can’t complete this without some mention of the My Food Guide. I found this extremely confusing. The website walks you through the food groups and you are told to choose a number of foods from each group. There are so many subdivisions, especially in the vegetable group, that I had trouble figuring out what I was supposed to do. I was even more confused when I was told that I chose too many different vegetables. Imagine! If someone with a degree in nutrition finds this challenging, what about the average eater trying to figure out what they do? In the end, my personal food guide was simply the regular coloured poster with pictures of some of the foods I regularly eat. It was nice not have pictures of t-bone steak on there, but otherwise it wasn’t particularly more informative than the generic version. It had no mention of regional foods or seasonality. It also didn’t consider the fact that I have a high metabolism and am normally very physically active.
But I shouldn’t complain so much. There is some good in the Food Guide. To their credit, the powers at Health Canada are now recommending that we buy fresh produce in season and freeze it, and that we make our own soups and muffins instead of buying them canned or pre-made. They also suggest we “limit” foods high in sugar, fat, and other evils. But you’ve got to dig deep to find these suggestions hidden in the website.
