Canada’s Food Guide — an Epidemiological Experiment Gone Wrong?

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Diet Before and After 1977

Before 1977, Canada’s Food Guide recommended no more than 5 servings of bread or cereal per day for adults, and now recommends 6-7 servings per day of Grain Products for women and up to 8 servings of Grain Products per day for men. In 1961, Canada’s Food Guide recommended only 1 serving of citrus fruit (as fruit) or a serving of tomatoes daily & only one other fruit. Now adults can have any of the recommended 7-10 servings of Vegetables and Fruit per day as fruit (or juice). Even as actual servings of fruit, current recommendations can be chosen as 4-5 times the amount of fruit as in 1961.

Since 1977, and in ever increasing amounts, Health Canada has shifted their recommendations away from healthy fats and low-carbohydrate diets, towards diets where carbohydrates form the main source of calories. Current recommendations are for 45-65% of calories to come from carbohydrates and only 20- 30% of calories from fat. Our society has become ”fat phobic,” thinking all sources of fat are ”bad”. People drink skim or 1% milk and eat 0% yogourt and low-fat cheese; all the while making sure to have ”enough’ carbohydrates; 6-8 servings of grain products (including bread, pasta, and rice). Hidden as Vegetables are even more carbohydrates than the 7-10 servings of Vegetables and Fruit, which are recommended for an adult to eat, making no distinction between starchy vegetables (like potatoes, yams, peas, and corn) and non-starchy vegetables (like salad greens and asparagus or broccoli). People can literally eat all their Vegetable and Fruit servings as carbohydrate-laden starchy vegetables and fruit and ”meet” Canada’s Food Guide!

Now, Canadians are encouraged to fill themselves up on toast or cereal for breakfast, sandwiches or rice for lunch, and pasta or pizza (with ”healthy toppings”) for supper; all in an effort to ”meet” Canada’s Food Guide.

At the same time, people have been conditioned to avoid fats because they believe that fat is ”bad”, while making no distinction between healthy fats from avocado, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish and fats from chemically cured bacon and nitrite-laden sausage.

Canada’s Obesity Rates since 1977

In ever increasing amounts, Health Canada has recommended that we avoid fat and get 1/2 to 2/3 of our calories from carbohydrates. How has Canada’s obesity rate changed since then?

Children

In 1978, only 15% of children and adolescents were overweight or obese.
By 2007, 29% of children and adolescents were overweight or obese.
By 2011, just the obesity prevalence for boys was 15.1% and for girls was 8.0% in 5- to 17-year-olds.

Adults

The prevalence of obesity [body mass index (BMI) ≥30 kg/m2] in Canadian adults increased two and a half times, from 10% in 1970-72 to 26% in 2009-11.
In 1970-72, 7.6% of men and 11.7% of women were considered obese.
In 2013, 20.1% of men and 17.4% of women were considered obese.

And looking at waist circumference rather than BMI, 37% of adults and 13% of youth are currently considered abdominally obese.

So, how have Health Canada’s recommendations of a high carbohydrate low fat diet been working out? It seems to me like an epidemiological experiment gone wrong.

There must be a better way. Maybe the “old ways” were better.

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To your good health.

Joy

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References

  • Canadian Medical Association Journal (May 11, 2015), Food Guide Under Fire at Obesity Summit
  • Janssen I, The Public Health Burden of Obesity in Canada, Canadian Journal of Diabetes, 37 (2013), pg. 90-96
  • Nutrition Division, National Department of Health and Welfare (1961). Rules out – guide in.
  • O’Connor, L, Imamura F, et al, Prospective associations of sweet beverage intake and type 2 diabetes, Diabetologia (2015)
  • World Health Organization, Guideline: Sugars intake for adult and children (2015)

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