I’ll begin. The first question referred to the impact of the current Guide, which was published in 1992. During the 1990s, I worked on provincial surveys. We worked with all 10 provinces to gather information on what Canadians were consuming. We’re talking about adults 18 and over. Using questionnaires, we asked them whether they were familiar with Canada’s Food Guide. It’s very likely that we can refer to that data and see whether people who were aware of the Guide followed its recommendations and what their weight was. With that data, I’ll make the link to what Ms. Bennett was saying.
I have here an article from the
Journal of the American Dietetic Association, “The obesity crisis: don’t blame it on the pyramid”,
which clearly states that—and I quote:
Because obesity is such a complex issue, it is overly simplistic to argue that a single educational device such as the Pyramid offers a root cause for the problem.
I’d like to clarify that the article deals with the evaluation of data from a survey that established a link between people with a low body mass index and those who followed American food guide recommendations. The same type of analysis could probably be performed using the data from the provincial surveys that we conducted in the 1990s. We could likely demonstrate that people who follow Canada’s Food Guide recommendations have a lower body mass index.