Evidence of meeting #43 for Health in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was products.
A recording is available from Parliament.
4:35 p.m.
Conservative
4:35 p.m.
Bloc
Nicolas Dufour Bloc Repentigny, QC
Thank you, Madam Chair.
I want to thank all of the witnesses for coming here today.
I've looked at the figures submitted to us earlier by industry officials concerning the reduction in sodium levels. I'm happy to see that they are making an effort to bring these levels down. However, I have a problem with how fast they are acting, and with how drastic their efforts have been on this front.
Mention was made of a voluntary approach for government and industry. I have to admit that I have many reservations about a voluntary approach. We're talking about a public health issue and the government must assume some leadership on this file. It must develop standards. To my way of thinking, the people who market the products may not be in the best position to be involved in a voluntary approach to resolving the problem.
Your expertise is very interesting indeed and you have to express your opinion, but I have my doubts about a voluntary approach. Take cigarette manufacturers, for example. They had statistics in hand on the harmful effects of cigarettes as far back as 1970. Yet, it took a very long time to get them to take any kind of action.
This brings me directly to a question that has been put to you on three occasions, namely why it is that a cereal product sold in Canada contains three times the amount of sodium as the same product sold in Europe. I expect to hear the same argument about taste. I have a problem with that argument. Earlier, you said that we needed to strike a balance between taste and health. I for one believe that health takes precedence over any other consideration and that if the industry sets an example, the public will fall in step without any problem.
As my colleague Mr. Malo said earlier, if people were informed that the extremely salty food sold to them was detrimental to their health, no doubt they would not consciously choose to ruin their health. The industry really needs to step up its efforts to address this problem. I will admit that unfortunately, you have not received much help from the government.
Why is it that cereal products marketed in Canada contain three times the amount of sodium? No doubt you could employ the same production techniques as other countries.
4:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Nutrition and Corporate Affairs, Kellogg Canada Inc.
Yes, I do.
4:35 p.m.
Vice-President, Nutrition and Corporate Affairs, Kellogg Canada Inc.
I proudly make cereal.
When we take a look at the nutritional contribution of breakfast cereals to the Canadian diet, as I mentioned before, there are tremendous benefits. One of the larger benefits is that we do know that consumers who choose breakfast cereals as their breakfast option in the morning do have lower BMIs than other food choices, and that's important when it comes to obesity.
We heard from my colleague next to me that keeping our weight down is also an important factor in blood pressure. So we want to make sure that when we talk about our cereals and the nutritional contribution they make to the Canadian diet overall, we take a look at it holistically.
And yes, we are very committed and very concerned about reducing the sodium intake in our products. I can assure each and every committee member of that. We have a plan in place, it has been in place for a while, and we are making those changes. We're trying to move as quickly as we can. As well, as I mentioned, we do have five products that have no sodium at all. We have selections out there. We do have 13 products that have under 200 milligrams of sodium.
So we have made a conscious effort over the time. We do have one outlier out there that has been identified and we do have a plan in place. If we can move more quickly, if our results come more quickly, if we are successful beyond what we think, then we will certainly be in the marketplace sooner, but we are very committed.
4:40 p.m.
Bloc
Nicolas Dufour Bloc Repentigny, QC
Frosted Flakes, for example, are one product marketed directly to children. In terms of nutritional value and processing, they cannot be compared with fruit eaten at breakfast.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joy Smith
Time is up, Monsieur Dufour.
Would you quickly answer that, Ms. Lowry?
4:40 p.m.
Vice-President, Nutrition and Corporate Affairs, Kellogg Canada Inc.
Frosted Flakes is a product that contributes vitamins and minerals and essential nutrients to the child's diet. As I mentioned at the very beginning, it's a major contributor of iron. As well, it's low in fat. It is a product that the child finds pleasant to eat; therefore, they're getting the nutrients that they require. It is a very nutrient-dense food at 120 calories per serving.
4:40 p.m.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
And thanks very much to our panel who are with us this afternoon. Certainly we've heard some interesting comments, and they've generated some interesting questions around the table.
I have a couple of questions, for anybody who wants to venture an answer.
Why do we have so much sodium in our diet? Is it strictly for palatability? Is it a taste? Is that why it's there, or is there another reason we have the sodium in the prepared foods?
What about the substitutes? Dr. Liu referred very briefly to substitutes, but there have been substitutes on the market for years that people have used in place of free table salt. Are they not viable? Can they be used in the food production industry?
In terms of research, a lot of comments have been made this afternoon that we really need to have the research done to document the results of a lower-sodium diet. We need to make sure there aren't adverse results of that. Is there hard research out there that shows sodium causing all of these diseases that we've talked about; for example, the high blood pressure? Is there hard research that you're basing those decisions on when you talk about that?
We'll start with those.
4:40 p.m.
Director, Corporate Affairs, Nestlé Canada Inc.
We can jump in with some information on salt replacements and the purpose of salt in food and so forth.
I'll let Dr. Karen Young speak to that.
4:40 p.m.
Dr. Karen Young Director, Scientific and Regulatory Affairs, Nestlé Canada Inc.
Thank you for your question.
Absolutely, it has been demonstrated that there is a taste function. But from a functional perspective, salt actually plays a very important role with respect to safety. It is an antimicrobial; it dehydrates many of the pathogenic microbes that are in food. So from that perspective, it absolutely has many different functions, as well as providing texture and so forth.
We have done a lot of research in terms of our development--for example, on incorporating herbs and spices and so forth--to reduce salt levels. We also do a lot of research into the actual replacements for salt. For example, potassium chloride is one of the products we use to reduce salt. However, we have found that if we start replacing too much of the salt, the food has a metallic flavour that the consumer rejects. But we do continue to do a lot of research in terms of flavour enhancers and other technologies that we can use to reduce salt. We're working very actively in that area.
4:45 p.m.
Scientific Director, Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
If I could follow up on the research question, the evidence comes from three lines. The first is the association, which is not cause and effect. That is, if you actually monitor the sodium intake in a country and the average blood pressure, you can actually line them up. So there is a direct relationship.
The next level of evidence, which is more convincing, are the studies that were mentioned earlier. You take a population and actually reduce sodium in one group and keep the other group doing the same, and you can actually demonstrate that in fact there is reduction in the blood pressure.
The third aspect is the long-term consequence in terms of countries that have done this. The best example is Finland. But the challenge there is that there were many things done at the same time, so how much did the sodium reduction actually contribute to this?
The positive aspect from that is that in most of the studies that carried this out, the benefit you see in terms of heart disease is actually a lot more than you would expect from just blood pressure reduction alone. The fact that you are actually engaging the whole population in this type of effort has many other dividends that appear to pay off at the same time.
Those are the types of evidence. As we do this in Canada, we have to make sure we're actually reaching the goals we are looking for.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Is there any difference between the intake of sodium in prepared foods or cooked foods as opposed to free table salt?
4:45 p.m.
Scientific Director, Institute of Circulatory and Respiratory Health, Canadian Institutes of Health Research
Generally 80% of our salt intake is actually from processed food.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
Patricia Davidson Conservative Sarnia—Lambton, ON
Is there any difference in the effect on the body?
4:45 p.m.
A witness
No.
4:45 p.m.
Conservative
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
Thank you very much, and thank you all for being here today.
I'm sitting here and listening somewhat in bewilderment. I'm substituting in, as you can see, so I've not been part of the earlier discussion, but what I'm hearing is that the reduction of sodium makes a dramatic difference. I'm hearing that there don't seem to be clear targets, although we just heard a figure of trying to reach 2,300 milligrams in 2016.
I'm making notes as you're speaking. Somebody said “when the results come more quickly”. That was one comment. Engaging the whole population was another.
I'm struck by the discrepancy in the urgency of reducing sodium, the importance of it as a health preventative, and the lack of goals or targets set by government, coupled with the lack of public information that goes out there. And how do you marry it all? I would be interested in hearing your comments.
4:45 p.m.
Associate Professor, School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, McGill University, Canadian Society for Nutritional Sciences
Could I start to address this?
The problem is that it's very complex. We know the effects of obesity. We could give you figures of $2 billion in health care costs that are related to obesity. It's hard to change. It's hard to get people moving. There are some foods that have fewer calories. We're trying to get people to eat more fruits and vegetables.
Sodium is one of those things where, if we take it out of the food very dramatically, we may find that everybody just pulls in with their salt shaker and really uses them very strongly. We've got to both sensitize the population and slowly change the food supply.
4:45 p.m.
Liberal
Anita Neville Liberal Winnipeg South Centre, MB
But I don't even see you doing that. You talk about obesity. And we've had ParticipACTION programs, or variations on that, in public schools promoting physical education and that sort of thing. Occasionally you go into a grocery store and you can buy a box of sodium-reduced Triscuits or whatever, but there's not a lot of public education on the importance of reducing sodium. There doesn't seem to be leadership from this council, from government, or from whoever on the importance of reducing sodium. And I understand that the palate is an important aspect of it, but it seems to be that you're going way too slowly, given the potential impact in terms of the health of Canadians.
4:50 p.m.
Associate Professor, School of Dietetics and Human Nutrition, McGill University, Canadian Society for Nutritional Sciences
I'm not sure of the exact date of it, but we have a meeting in early December and we are trying to put together very clear targets. And with a lot of these things, we'll need to come back to get budgets to do them. A lot of that work needs to be done. We're just finalizing what we can do in terms of activities, but public education is costly.