Health committee  Thank you for the question. In terms of the nutrient content of food, I want you to know that I started out my career, more years ago than I care to remember, squeezing tomatoes in a horticultural research institute laboratory where they were actually genetically breeding tomatoes to increase the vitamin C content.

Health committee  That's were we are.

Health committee  We're at the end of the consultative phase; we feel that we've done the consultation. You will be getting the details of who's been consulted and how we've gone about this. We are now just at the time of wrapping it up and putting it forward.

Health committee  No, you haven't, and I'm glad you asked. I'd like to say that it's a very important issue for us. In fact, we did a multicultural needs assessment. One of the first things you learn is that language and pictures are what become important in making the information more relevant to various ethnic groups, so we're looking very carefully at how we could evolve the food guide to make it available in various languages.

Health committee  I'll start the answer by saying that I don't want to leave you with a misunderstanding. What I want you to know is that there is a standard. It's called the nutritious food basket, and it's put together based on the current food guide. It was done post-1992. It's used by people across Canada at the community and provincial levels to cost a basket of food so that you can get some sense, just for the very reason you're identifying, that the cost of food varies across Canada.

Health committee  Within the message platform of Canada's Food Guide, we try to provide flexibility so that you have the various food groups and you have a range of foods from which you can select. Indeed, seasonal foods are often much less expensive than out-of-season foods, so there's all that kind of flexibility built in.

Health committee  No, no. I have lots of them here. Let me take a step back. I would say to you that in terms of our science underpinning this, the Susan Barrs, the Katherine Gray-Donalds, Stan Zeotkin at Sick Kid's, Valerie Tarasuk at U of T.... You're going to actually be seeing Valerie Tarasuk this Thursday.

Health committee  We're not looking at eight pages; I think we're looking at six. So it's a much shorter piece—

Health committee  Well, those extensions are exactly what we're looking at right now. Indeed, we're looking at the web as providing us a wonderful opportunity to get very focused. I'll tell you what the challenge is here. We had a tear sheet in 1992. We went out and did our review. And what did everyone say to us?

Health committee  Recipe books? Actually, we have a communicator-educator piece and a piece on the web that goes a long way to getting a little more specific. We hear all the time, you know your fruit and vegetable recommendations? Who are you trying to kid? Nobody's going to eat that—nobody. So what we're taking is the next step, which will show you how you could put yourself together over the course of the day to make what we're suggesting as the amount of fruit and vegetables you need to eat.

Health committee  But there are wonderful recipe books out there, wonderful cookbooks that do build on all of this kind of....

Health committee  Okay, can I start? What I'm really wanting to emphasize more than anything else is that everyone you've heard from saw a draft guide that went out for the precise reason that we wanted to hear from people on how this doesn't work. So all of the criticism is based on what went out for consultation and is now being re-looked at.

Health committee  The food guide is never finished until we receive concurrence from the minister, and we are just at that final, moving it through the department, taking a look at it stage. We've got one or two further pieces that we're investigating, but we're quite close. Is it finished? Is it nailed shut?

Health committee  Okay, I think it's a very good question. Let me go back. It's important for you to know that for over 30 years we didn't even known what Canadians eat in this country. We haven't had the data to tell us what Canadians are eating. In the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey, we had good data on what Canadians are eating for the first time.

Health committee  No. Just to anchor this, the food guide was under review. In January 2004 we said, let's all look at what we've learned from the review, and then let's agree that we need to revise. So that was the timeframe and how this evolved. For us, the obesity issue is very significant. I would go back to December 2001 when, with Obesity Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, we held a two-day meeting in Toronto to look at what's going on with obesity and healthy weights.