Recently, I discovered that Canada has replaced the 1992 Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating. Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide was released in February 2007 (okay, so I’m a little late noticing it, but it’s news to me). I must say that I am quite impressed, especially when comparing it with the Food Pyramid offered by the United States.
For one thing, Canada’s Food Guide is accessible to a multicultural population. It is available not only in English and French, the two official languages, but also in Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, Korean, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil, and Urdu. The examples of serving sizes include a wide range of foods, such as pita, tortilla, couscous, and kefir. In addition, there is a Food Guide specifically for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, which includes foods traditionally eaten by Canada’s Native population.
The format of the main visual presentation is appealing. Canada’s Food Guide is represented as a rainbow. Each color band represents a food group and contains pictures of foods from that group. The inner bands have less area than the outer bands (think back to math class), and they represent the groups for which fewer servings are recommended. In comparison, I become irate every time I think about the new version of the Food Pyramid in the United States. What were they thinking when they changed it? The former version was logical–it had horizontal bands, with the base of the pyramid representing the group for which the largest number of servings was recommended, and the top representing foods to be used sparingly. There were illustrations of foods that belonged in each group. Now, it’s just a bunch of different-colored triangles. Unless you’ve memorized the thing, you don’t know which color represents which food group, and the difference in the sizes of the triangles (representing more servings for some groups and fewer servings for others) is much less obvious. And they added a picture of a figure climbing stairs on the side, to represent the importance of physical activity. Woo-hoo! How on earth could any reasonable people who cared about making good nutritional information accessible to the public have decided that this was an improvement over the previous version?
The nutritional advice in Canada’s new Food Guide seems sound, based on what I’ve been reading. I love the fact that they gave an entire list of junk food to limit: cakes and pastries, chocolate and candies, cookies and granola bars, doughnuts and muffins, ice cream and frozen desserts, french fries, nachos and other salty snacks, alcohol, fruit flavoured drinks, soft drinks, sports and energy drinks, and sweetened hot or cold drinks. Compare that to what the US government has to say about “discretionary calories.”
Canada’s Food Guide is vegetarian-friendly. It advises people to “Have meat alternatives such as beans, lentils, and tofu often.” It also places fortified soy beverages in the Milk and Alternatives category. In comparison, the US Food Pyramid does not provide any non-dairy options in the Milk, Yogurt, and Cheese group, leaving an entire food group inaccessible to people who cannot consume milk or choose not to. In the US version, lactose-reduced and lactose-free products are pushed. The possibility of a person not consuming dairy is acknowledged, but with disclaimers that make it sound like a less-than-desirable option: “Calcium-fortified foods and beverages such as soy beverages or orange juice may provide calcium, but may not provide the other nutrients found in milk and milk products.” (from the milk group link above) “The amount of calcium that can be absorbed from these foods varies.” (from this page) However, vegetarians may not appreciate the recommendation of Canada’s Food Guide to “Eat at least two Food Guide Servings of fish each week” (although I personally like fish and I think that eating fish is healthier than eating land animals). I am a little disappointed by the wimpy advice, “If you eat luncheon meats, sausages, or prepackaged meats, choose those lower in salt (sodium) and fat.” Why not, “If you eat luncheon meats, sausages, or prepackaged meats, cut it out and find something better to eat!”
An interesting change from the 1992 version of Canada’s Food Guide is that the Vegetables and Fruit group has replaced the Grain Products group on the outside of the rainbow (the largest band, indicating the greatest number of servings recommended). This is consisent with the recommendations in Dr. Fuhrman’s Simple Family Food Pyramid in the book Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right by Joel Fuhrman, M.D. Dr. Fuhrman’s pyramid struck me when I read his book over three years ago because I had always seen grains promoted as the food group from which the greatest number of servings were recommended. The government of Canada bumping grains down and promoting vegetables and fruits to this prominent position definitely lends credibility to Dr. Fuhrman’s recommendations.
All in all, I think that the changes to Canada’s Food Guide were positive and that as a nutritional guide, it is superior to the United States’ Food Pyramid. Maybe when the United States finally wakes up and gets a socialized medical system running, the government will realize that each person’s poor dietary choices and ill health cost all of society. Maybe then the government will sponsor better nutrition education. Let’s hope so.
Originally posted May 23, 2008 on http://burckeri.wordpress.com
