Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. The Centre for Science in the Public Interest is a non-profit consumer health advocacy group specializing in nutrition and food safety issues, with offices in Washington, D.C., and Ottawa. We don't accept funding from industry or government. We are fortunate to be very well funded by our 100,000 subscribers to the Canadian edition of Nutrition Action Healthletter, which does not carry advertisements.

Health committee  Sometimes companies are just resistant to any regulation, and no matter what it is they just line up against it. In the United States they will be mandating this type of labelling for all restaurants. Some studies have demonstrated that the impact was very small in some neighbourhoods.

Health committee  I think Coca-Cola provides a good example to illustrate your point. I remember being in a debate in another building on Parliament Hill six years ago. The chair had a can of Coke with her and she pointed out to me that it had 39 grams of sugar in the 355 millilitre can. It stuck in my mind.

Health committee  In terms of using the traffic light system in the United Kingdom, there really weren't any incentives. One of the situations that arose is some food companies were using their own monochrome system—just one colour—and they're called GDAs, guideline daily amounts, while other companies were using the traffic lights, so it created a situation where they could test to see which is more effective.

Health committee  It's an interesting question, and certainly there have been some companies over the years that have done some useful things. I think putting nutritional information on your website is a good thing for people who have the energy, enthusiasm, and savvy to get it. There's kind of a limit to what industry can do without regulations.

Health committee  I don't think there's anything in there that helps children. In fact, one of the concerns with energy drinks is that they mostly have sugar in them, and some electrolytes, and also stimulants. A lot of them have caffeine in them, and guarana, and some other substances. There's a culture among particularly young boys that you drink these and maybe it will make you perform better in sports or whatever.

Health committee  First of all, I'd like to say I agree with Madam Pellerin. If I could just add, one of the central rules in economics is that price affects consumption. You increase the price and consumption goes down; you reduce it and consumption goes up. And this is one of the reasons why taxes on tobacco products were such an important tool for reducing tobacco consumption in Canada.

Health committee  Are you talking about menu labelling?

Health committee  Well, on the mandatory system that was in place since before it came up in Parliament in 2005, I'm aware of only one restaurant--Extreme Pita--that provides nutrition information, and it's not even on the menu; it's on a kind of separate menu. For the vast majority of restaurants, you have to go to a website to find out the information.

Health committee  Yes. Unfortunately, this is an issue where you get insight into seeing what governments in Canada are doing by looking to what they're doing in the United States. The United States last month proposed relatively strict nutrition standards for their school meals. They've had a long history of subsidizing school meals.

Health committee  In the United States, the national restaurant industry association has been categorically in favour of it, although probably not for altruistic reasons. They saw a proliferation of menu labelling standards, which were all a little bit different in various municipalities—New York City in particular, Seattle, and others—and states, including California, and they were concerned that their members would have difficulty trying to comply with a bunch of different standards, so they were fully in support of it when it came time to supporting the Obama bill.

Health committee  My recollection is that he referred to a bunch of hypothetical additional strategies. In 2006, the Trans Fat Task Force, after almost two years of deliberations, said, regulations: here's what they should look at. A lot of public health authorities across the country took that seriously--Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia.

Health committee  By Health Canada's own admission it hasn't been successful enough. In my testimony I referred to an estimated 1,800 premature deaths due to trans fat consumption--heart attack deaths, on average--using as a basis the current 3.4 grams of consumption per day. That's not something we pulled out of a hat.

Health committee  First of all, I can't speak on behalf of the Sodium Working Group, although I was a member of that. The recommendations in the Sodium Working Group report were consensus recommendations in that we all kind of grinned and bore it. They recommended sodium reduction limits on a voluntary basis.

Health committee  Yes, that's right. You know, I think the trans fat experience was a useful learning experience for me. I was part of that task force as well, and we recommended, along with the Heart and Stroke Foundation and others, including industry, that there be regulations restricting the amount of trans fat that can be used in foods from the partially hydrogenated sources, the synthetic.