Evidence of meeting #38 for Health in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Batters Conservative Palliser, SK
Wonderful.
Dr. Marangoni, I take it your product is patented, sir.
5 p.m.
Professor, Department of Food Science, University of Guelph
Yes, it is.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Batters Conservative Palliser, SK
Excellent. When will you start to sell shares in this product?
5 p.m.
Professor, Department of Food Science, University of Guelph
It depends on the legislation.
5 p.m.
Conservative
Dave Batters Conservative Palliser, SK
I'm kidding, of course.
I'm going to talk to some of my colleagues who own Tim Hortons restaurants. We'll see if we can get them onside to start to pump out your little Tupperware container.
I found this quite fascinating today. Of course, some people would say there are issues of fundamental freedom at stake here. There's an issue of freedom in that if I want to eat doughnuts or chocolate chip cookies, it should be my God-given right to do so. Yet society has to then pay for a bypass or an angioplasty however many years down the road.
I think this is really important to look at, not only in terms of childhood obesity but even more so in terms of coronary artery disease, with organizations like the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society that would be very interested in these proceedings. It really has a lot to do with heart health.
I commend you for your support of this report. I know we'll certainly be having discussions on the government side of the House, taking a very careful look at this report.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
5 p.m.
Bloc
Luc Malo Bloc Verchères—Les Patriotes, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us.
As I listen to the comments this afternoon, I've come to realize certain things. First of all, trans fats are toxins. Secondly, in terms of food safety, there are no guidelines as to the minimum amount of trans fats that a person can ingest.
Professor Marangoni stated that he had come up with a substitute for trans fats. I don't sense that the people here today are brimming with excitement or enthusiasm over this discovery.
My question is for Mr. Hetherington. How do you feel about this discovery which I think is quite exciting? As committee chair, I tasted the Professor's cookies and I found them to be quite delicious.
5 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Baking Association of Canada, and Member, Trans Fat Task Force
I didn't taste the cookies, so I don't know. I only wanted to have an opportunity to share with the committee members.
In answer to your question, it's interesting. Mr. Marangoni and I previously spoke about his product. One of the questions I put to him, as I've identified here, is this. One of the challenges we face is with the laminated dough or the puff pastry. In our discussions, we didn't resolve whether or not there really was an application. The focus has been on the cookies, cakes, muffins, etc.
I'm actually having the professor do some trial work with one of our members who produces a puff pastry-style product to try to identify exactly what the outcome would be. If the outcome is a positive one, it would obviously go a long way to address the challenges we're facing.
5 p.m.
Senior Vice-President, Government Affairs, Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association and Member of the Task Force, Trans Fat Task Force
I'm excited about the prospect of this new product as well. But I also know it takes time to get a product to market and it takes time to get health approvals on any new product.
I actually have a lot of questions in terms of how quickly you're going to be able to master all of those hurdles. As I said earlier, we don't want to find out later that it was a great idea, but it actually had the same impact in terms of health. How quickly can we rule that out as a concern?
Those are the types of questions that I and some of my members would have.
5:05 p.m.
Professor, Department of Food Science, University of Guelph
If I may answer that, in the Royal Society of Chemistry paper that just came out, we did a clinical trial showing that it actually had no effect on the lipid-protein metabolism. It behaved such that in a controlled release of lipids, it lowered the insulin response in the body. It was interesting. But once you put it in with a million chocolate chips, it doesn't mean that you know what's going to happen. That's the problem with a lot of these things.
Yes, we're waiting for validation. It's a conservative industry. They want to see that it works very well for everything. Until that happens, it's not going to happen.
5:05 p.m.
Professor, Department of Food Science, University of Guelph
It could take a year.
5:05 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, and Co-Chair of the Task Force, Trans Fat Task Force
It would.
It's a canola product, is that right?
5:05 p.m.
Professor, Department of Food Science, University of Guelph
You can use any oil you want and make your constituents happy. You can use soybean if you're from the east. You can use canola from the west. And you can use both of them if you're from the Far East or something like that, I don't know.
One issue on which I have not heard from any of you is the trade issue, which in this case is gigantic. Hydrogenated fat is a Canadian product. You have the western growers with canola and their big hydrogenating plants. They send it to the rest of the country. They'll lobby, because their livelihood depends on this hydrogenation.
In the United States it's soybeans. If you talk to the U.S. soybean board, they'll tell you that their hydrogenation of soybean oil is what provides...and the livelihood of the entire Midwest comes from this. If you legislate against them, the farmer must have some idea that this is not going to put half the country out of business. That's why ADM is now selling fully hydrogenated interesterified fats, with steric acid. They're supposed to not be bad for you, but they're saturated.
So these issues have to be taken into account. This material here uses locally grown products. In the U.S. what has happened is that soybean growers have lost and palm imports are increasing exponentially. I'm not saying that is good or bad, I'm just saying that the farmers are losing out here.
Sometimes you will hear those issues take precedence over whether you kill more people or not. They are very important. I guess those people should be calmed down and told that whatever solution you use, you're not going to put half the farmers out of business.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Thank you very much.
Ms. Priddy, I really hesitate to go for one more—Okay, that's fine.
5:05 p.m.
NDP
Penny Priddy NDP Surrey North, BC
I'll be very quick. I have really just a statement, because I think we missed a point.
Ms. Brown, when you were asked whether the trans fat report really had any implication on the obesity report, I think you said sadly not, in some ways. But I don't want to paraphrase you.
5:05 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, and Co-Chair of the Task Force, Trans Fat Task Force
No, as a fat, it's very important.
5:05 p.m.
NDP
Penny Priddy NDP Surrey North, BC
As a fat, yes. However, what we do know is that obese children are more health-compromised in terms of wound healing, in terms of respiratory problems. Then if we make them six times more compromised because of the—I mean, we already have children health-compromised because of their obesity, in terms of recovering from illnesses and so on. So to actually add to that, I think, would have significant implication for the group of children we're looking at.
Thank you.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Thank you.
Just to recap as we draw this to a close, the message or the question to the trans fat committee is that it's not just that we have to eliminate trans fat; we have to replace it with low saturated fat. The second part of that message gets tamed down, and I think the doctor really addresses it with this product.
I want to thank you for the work you've done. As a committee, I think we have to be careful, when we message our report, that we give both sides of that message in the report.
Is that fair? Would everyone at the other end agree with that?
5:05 p.m.
Chief Executive Officer, Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, and Co-Chair of the Task Force, Trans Fat Task Force
Absolutely, and we hope that came out clearly in our report. We've done whole tables on healthier alternatives. The task force could have said that just replacing with saturates is good enough—because they are six times less dangerous—but what we actually said was that if we can, we should even move past that to healthier alternatives.
I hope that came through in the report.
5:05 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rob Merrifield
Thank you. I just wanted to clear that up.
I was also really intrigued to find out which product has 45% trans fat: peanut butter. I'm pleased that one of my last peanut butter sandwiches was in grade 10 or 11. It makes me feel a little bit better and a little healthier.
With that, I want to thank everyone who testified before the committee. We look forward to reflecting your views in our report. Thank you very much.
Members, thank you for your questions. Next Monday we're hoping to have a review of the report. We will spend a little bit of time, just after the video conference, to do a review of the report. Hopefully that will work out. I would encourage the new members to please read the report and come with questions. Thank you.
This meeting is adjourned.