Sure, thank you.
I would agree with you that the nutrition facts panel is confusing. The federal government could do something immediately to help Canadians make healthier choices at point of purchase with respect to the facts panel, and that is to standardize the portion size on the nutrition facts panel, which is something we suggested in our earlier remarks.
It's confusing now. It's not standardized, and we need to make that easier for Canadians. When they're picking up two products that look similar, they should be able to have the same portion size on them. That's something we would say the government can do.
The Health Check symbol is put on a variety of products based on a variety of criteria that are contingent on whatever that product is. It contains both healthful and the more unhealthful elements of the product. One element might look at sodium and fibre and fat, another one might look at sugar and sodium, so it really depends. Some of the ingredients would vary.
Breadstuffs, for example, would have sodium levels. They would also have a certain amount of fibre requirements, etc. The criteria are pretty complex, and there are about 80 different categories of the criteria, based on the food and based on what makes sense. You wouldn't necessarily have fibre in something that doesn't make sense, but you certainly would in some of the breads, etc.
The criteria are clearly stated. They change over time and they change as the food guide changes. We brought in sugar criteria when the food guide said to avoid added sugar, in the absence of any kind of federal advice around sugar. So they're changing constantly, and we have to make those clear to the companies so that over time they have to adapt their products to meet the changing nature of the program.
That's one of the real benefits of having a program like the Health Check. As we've been migrating the sodium targets down over time, for example, the companies are given, generally speaking, about 14 months to reformulate their products to meet those targets. We've made some pretty significant changes to the sodium levels recently. Some of the companies have dropped out. They haven't been able to meet the targets. Others have reformulated to meet those targets.
One of the things we find very interesting is that a number of companies, as they're considering bringing products to the market, are meeting with us now to find out what those targets are, so they can formulate the product in such a way that it meets the target and they can get into the program.
So it does have an influence, certainly, on the healthfulness of the food supply.