Evidence of meeting #42 for Health in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was children.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Acting Chair Liberal Carolyn Bennett
We will call the meeting to order.
Ms. Gagnon, do you have a comment?
10:20 a.m.
Bloc
Christiane Gagnon Bloc Québec, QC
Yes, Madam Chair.
Before we begin, I would like to know if a discussion on my motion is on the agenda.
I would like us to set aside a period of 10 to 15 minutes at the end of the meeting in order to discuss my motion which asks the auditor general to look into the mandate, costs, management and effectiveness of the Common Drug Review.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
10:20 a.m.
The Clerk of the Committee
Ms. Gagnon, I do not know if we will have time to discuss your motion because we have many witnesses to hear.
Furthermore, we can meet with a reduced quorum to hear witnesses but we require a quorum of seven members to deal with a motion.
10:20 a.m.
Bloc
Christiane Gagnon Bloc Québec, QC
I know that more members of the committee will join us later on. If we have a quorum at the end of the meeting I would like us to take ten minutes to deal with my motion.
I detect reluctance to deal with my motion today. I get the feeling that some people are not eager to see it passed. This might be the reason for delaying the discussion.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Acting Chair Liberal Carolyn Bennett
I anticipate Mr. Merrifield will be coming. If we have a quorum, we will be able to put your motion to a vote.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Acting Chair Liberal Carolyn Bennett
Welcome from l'Angleterre, Karen Tonks. Can you hear us there?
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Acting Chair Liberal Carolyn Bennett
Good afternoon.
I think it's a bit easier knowing who's here. I'm Carolyn Bennett. I am from Toronto and a member of Parliament for St. Paul's.
Would the others just say who they are? I think it's a bit tough talking into the camera.
You have met Ms. Gagnon.
Maybe you would like to introduce yourself, Madam.
10:20 a.m.
Bloc
Christiane Gagnon Bloc Québec, QC
My name is Christiane Gagnon. I am a member of the Bloc québécois, for the riding of Quebec. I have been the health critic since the last Parliament.
Thank you.
10:20 a.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
My name is Luc Malo. I am a member of the Bloc québécois, for the riding of Verchères—Les Patriotes which is located on the south shore of Montreal, in Quebec.
10:20 a.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Good morning. I'm Laurie Hawn, the member of Parliament for Edmonton Centre in western Canada, in the province of Alberta, the capital of Alberta. I'm pleased to see you this morning.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Acting Chair Liberal Carolyn Bennett
Luc and I have just returned from Whitehorse in the Yukon where we were totally inspired by the Canada Winter Games and the young athletes. We're wide awake and ready to learn what we can do better.
Welcome, Karen. We're keen to hear your presentation. We have 40 minutes for your time. We've gobbled up a bit. Right now we're looking at about 20 minutes if that's okay.
10:20 a.m.
Chief Nutritionist, Tesco PLC
My understanding is that you wanted about five or so minutes for me to tell you some of the background and then an opportunity to ask questions.
10:20 a.m.
Liberal
The Acting Chair Liberal Carolyn Bennett
That would be perfect. The Library of Parliament has given us a very good overview. So fire away.
10:20 a.m.
Chief Nutritionist, Tesco PLC
First of all, perhaps I can introduce myself. My name is Karen Tonks, as you said. I'm the company nutritionist for Tesco. I don't know how much you know about Tesco as a retailer in the U.K. We are the largest; we have some 800 stores across the U.K., but we also have stores in central Europe, Asia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Japan, and we've just announced we'll be opening stores in California as well, on the west coast of the United States, so we're global in that respect.
As far as healthy eating and nutrition and health are concerned, we have a long history in the U.K. of being involved in this subject. When I first started as company nutritionist with Tesco nearly 20 years ago, we'd really just started. The evidence was coming through in the U.K. that poor diet was contributing to ill health and early death, and our customers were coming to us and asking for help.
Some people may say that retailing is a strange place to provide information and advice on nutrition and health, but it's at retail that customers make their food choices, so they were coming to us with products and asking what we could do.
In 1985 we started a whole healthy living program. It looked at four key aspects. One was providing nutrition information on the backs of our products. Up to that point, nobody had done so, so nobody knew exactly what was in some of the food products they were purchasing. They also wanted information about what the nutrients meant and what healthy diet was all about, and that's really when we started producing significant numbers of leaflets and information for customers to help them understand what fats and saturates and salt and sugar were all about, and what they should do about them in their diet.
The other things we looked at were additives. Our customers, both 20 years ago and today, still consider that additives are a significant aspect of a healthy diet, and they should be avoided, especially by children.
They also wanted us to improve products. They wanted products that were healthier--that were lower in fats, lower in salts, and lower in sugar--so we launched a healthier living range of products back in 1985. All those four aspects have continued to develop over the last 20 years.
We now clearly have legislation in Europe that governs back-of-pack nutrition information and format. It's still voluntary in Europe and the U.K. That legislation is under review, but we apply it to all of our 6,500 products voluntarily. We also provide per serving information. Also, because the legislation asks us to declare “sodium” on the back of the pack, and that's not a familiar term to most consumers, we convert “sodium” to “salt” and put “salt” on the label on the back of the pack as well.
Really the most significant developments in terms of nutrition information have been over the last two years, when it was becoming more and more evident that consumers didn't understand what can be actually quite complex information on the backs of our labels, even though it's probably simpler than the U.S. version, which has lots of different nutrients on it.
To resolve that issue and to help consumers understand the nutrition information, we put GDA labelling on the front of the pack. Basically that means we put calories, fat, saturates, total sugars, and salt per serving on the front of the pack, and we also put the percentage of a typical adult's guideline daily amount. That gives the consumers a benchmark and enables them to position the food within the diet and understand whether it's high or low, and they use their own rules of thumb.
That is now on all our products. It took us just under two years to re-label all the front labels of our products. A number of leading food manufacturers that you might be familiar with--Unilever, PepsiCo, Kraft, Masterfoods, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Kellogg's--have all adopted the same scheme, so in our stores there are probably 10,000 products that will have this labelling; that's probably about 40% of U.K. food packs.
Across Europe, manufacturers have also adopted a similar scheme. So it's beginning to appear across Europe, not only on manufacturers' products, but also in some of the significant retailers in Europe: Carrefour, METRO, Casino, Delhaize, and Ahold.
Really that's where we are with labelling. Those are the most significant developments in terms of nutrition labelling. But of course labelling won't resolve all of the health issues, particularly the rise in obesity. Alongside labelling, there have to be other aspects. One of those that we take quite seriously is product improvement and reformulation. Over the past 12 months we have reduced the salt level in over 500 products. We've reduced fat in over 125, saturated in 143, and sugar in about 53. This year we're reviewing another 2,000 products to make sure there aren't excessive amounts of nutrients in these products. If you don't have to put as much salt in sauce to make it flavoursome and acceptable to customers, we won't do it. We challenge our product developers to really target those key nutrients and bring them down.
The consumers are responding to the front-of-pack labelling and are choosing healthier products. Our sales figures show that when people see a high-salt or a high-fat level, they will look for a healthier alternative. Whilst the numbers might not sound like very much--reducing fat in 125 products or reducing salt in 500--when you look at the amounts we've actually taken out, just by reducing by one-third the salt in white and brown bread, that's 200 tonnes of salt we've taken out of our customers' diets. We've taken it out of a lot of typically high-salt products like canned soups, etc.
We think that's really making a difference in terms of our consumers' health. As I say, their purchasing behaviour is demonstrating that it's true. Of course, alongside that is education and information and helping people understand labelling. You can't just put numbers on a pack and expect people to be able to use them. We've been doing a lot of advertising, very simple advertising that just helps people understand what the numbers on the front of the pack look like, and how to use them, how to interpret them. That includes putting out lots of leaflets, credit-card-sized cards that they can put into their purses for reference, so they know the guideline daily amounts also. Because we're very conscious that people like taking information home, we've continued with further leaflets. We also have magazines and healthy living clubs so that people can read about the subject, about labelling, and about diet and the diseases related to diet and what they need to do to change their diet.
Alongside that, we have one of the biggest online shopping systems--I believe in the world actually, but maybe don't quote me on that--whereby people can go online and do their shopping and have it delivered to them. It's grocery home shopping. We have now put all the information online, so actually if you're at your computer at home doing your shopping, you can see the same information as you would if you were picking up a product from a shelf. The consumers online can actually have access to the same information, and we hope to see them making healthier choices as a result.
Alongside that, we're very much aware that there is a barrage of information about what is healthy, what isn't healthy, and what you should and shouldn't be doing. We really try to simplify it for our customers. We've launched a health calendar this year, and each month there will be a different message. We're asking our customers, along with us, to change one thing about their diet and their lifestyle, so people can take it step by step.
In January, it was all about eating a healthy breakfast and making sure you have breakfast, because that's a significant benefit to health. In February, it's all about oily fish and eating enough fish in the diet. It will continue in coming months with making sure you drink enough water and also keep active. In April, when we have the London marathon in the U.K. and everyone starts thinking that they should be getting out and running and the weather starts getting better, we have a lot of activity in-store and information to really encourage consumers to go out there and do something towards getting fit and healthy.
We are also working with community groups, so we're very much going into the community--and I'll talk a little bit about some of our active schemes--but we're linking in with the National Children's Home and also the Pre-school Learning Alliance, really working with young people. With the National Children's Home, it's about young people who have been in care and are now leaving the care home and setting up by themselves, making sure they've got the skills and the knowledge to shop and cook healthily. With the Pre-school Learning Alliance, we're talking about the pre-schoolers and about their diet and how they get support and information.
In terms of access and making sure consumers have access, we have our “fruit and veg pledge” this year: for the whole of the year, we will have at least five types of fruits and vegetables that will be half price, so we're making it very cheap.
In the “get active” program, you were saying that you've been to the Yukon--we have the aim of inspiring two million people to get involved in some kind of physical activity in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. So we have all sorts of things working around that. We launched our sports for schools and clubs voucher scheme, which means basically if you spend a certain amount in-store, £10, you get a voucher. The schools and clubs can collect the vouchers and trade them in for physical activity equipment, whether that's simple balls, or goals, or training sessions to encourage them to do that.
The “great school run” is a very popular scheme, and we're actually in the Guinness Book of World Records. We got over 750,000 children active and running. We provide lesson plans on health and fitness, and then they do a two-kilometre run around their school fields, all on the same day. It's all on June 21. We're doing it again this year, and we're hoping for half a million young people this year.
We're also sponsoring the British cycling “go ride” scheme, and that's again encouraging young people to take part in cycling. And we also sponsor the junior and mini great runs that take place before the great runs, the northern great run and southern great run in the U.K. And in particular, one of our key active things, and one I'm pleased to take part in personally, is in cancer research; we have something called “race for life”, which basically encourages women to do a five-kilometre run, although they could walk or they could be pushed if they're in a wheelchair. So everyone can take part and is sponsored to raise money for cancer research. But we sponsored the races, and we have sponsored for them in the last few years. There were 240 races last year, with three-quarters of a million women taking part. We also sponsor the 10-kilometre runs, which encourage men to take part as well.
So, as you can see, we do a number of activities, whether it's labelling, product development, or actually communication for all customers, all ages, and all backgrounds.
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
The Acting Chair Liberal Carolyn Bennett
We're short on time now, so we're going to have to ask each party to get your question and your answer in within three minutes.
If you don't mind, Scott, one of the first things I'd like to know is whether there's a standard. Here in Canada the heart smart program is related to the food guide. What standard did your labelling come to, or is it just asking everybody to reduce?
Scott, do you want to add to that before Karen answers?
10:35 a.m.
Liberal
10:35 a.m.
Chief Nutritionist, Tesco PLC
What was the basis for trying to reduce...? Could you repeat the question?
