Health Committee on March 1st, 2011

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Right, but you don't mean, say, pills. When I take my allergy pills--

[Paul-Guy Duhamel]

No, no, not pills; pills obviously are not consumed--or I hope not--as foods.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

No.

[Paul-Guy Duhamel]

Any kind of food item that is sold, any NHP sold as food and consumed as food, should be regulated under the same law.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Of course.

Thank you.

[Paul-Guy Duhamel]

You're welcome.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

My next questions are really a continuation from those of Monsieur Malo. They are about labelling and how to change labelling.

I'm thinking about things that should be minimized--sugar, fat, salt. I read labels. I'm a nutrition freak. I'm careful about fat. I'm careful to get enough vitamin C. Little did I know that I'm poisoning myself with salt just by eating breakfast cereal. It's insane.

For things that need to be minimized, such as sugar or fat or sodium, how can we change the labels so that they work for consumers?

[Véronique Provencher]

My impression is that this change goes beyond labels. It is more of a change in the product itself. The industry needs new ways to reformulate food. We can also work on the quantity of salt already in food. We can see that the salt content is extremely high, but what other choices do we have? We can see that this is a high content, but we still have to eat. I believe that we have to focus on reformulating food. This is hard because, for example, salt has an impact on taste. It changes the taste of food. It is certainly hard, but when you mentioned innovation, these are examples of innovations that can be put in place.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

When we were studying salt, a dietitian told us that it would take about three weeks for the palate to change and adjust to salt. It's not decades. It's not that long.

[Véronique Provencher]

The food label serves to inform consumers, but, when we want to decrease or increase the consumption of certain nutrients, dietary fibre, for example, I believe that this issue is the formulation of the products. I agree that we should put all these things clearly on the label, but, in my opinion, it must done in a standardized way and not focus on one class of product.

You said, for example, that there was an attempt to increase the daily consumption of foods and vegetables. But let me point out that there are no labels on fruits and vegetables. Labels are generally placed on processed food. We give a great deal of information to people on processed food, but we give very little on staples. So we must try to put the different foods on an equal footing and to reduce the gap between what is good and what is bad.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Merci.

Mr. Duhamel, would you comment?

[Paul-Guy Duhamel]

Véronique just told us very nicely that reformulation of food labels is something we could certainly work on. Just to have a comparable, when you look at different products.... If we had a nutrition label that allowed products to be compared, it would be easier. For instance, in your case you could choose the one that had less sodium in the cereal of your liking. If you go to the supermarket and use the nutritional label as it is right now, you would have a hell of a time doing that. Just having a nutrition label that allows you to compare easily would make that choice so much easier.

[Megan Leslie, NDP, Halifax, NS]

Does either of you have research that shows that the nutrition labels are working?

[Véronique Provencher]

In fact, current studies show that people who say they read food labels also say that they have better food habits. However, I want to emphasize the word “say”. They say that they are concerned with their food and that they read the labels, but when they draw up a list of what they eat, we see that there is a bias toward desirability. People often tend to make things appear rosier than they really are. We have not conducted any observational studies. Currently, direct observations of the effect of a claim or a label on behaviour is something that is not found in the literature. If I recall correctly, one study showed that it did not necessarily have a significant impact. This was a specific case where a label was associated with a food item. When people did not know that the nutritional value was being measured, the label was ineffective. This is the important point. However, when people know that things will be measured, there is a bias towards to the measurement.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you very much.

Go ahead, Dr. Carrie.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here today. My background is that I am very much into healthy living. I'm one of these guys who also reads labels, tries to get exercise, and looks at a balanced lifestyle. We've seen from our testimony that people are trying to label foods as healthy versus non-healthy. I think Véronique just said that we have to get away from the good and the bad and look more at informed choices. It seems that some people like to look at diets just in silos.

Mr. Hunter, you represent canola, which is a fat. In other words, we've heard a lot of people saying fat is bad, but every cell of your body needs fat. Fat is necessary. Fat is something that every human being needs to survive.

Could you comment on the role that research and education needs to play in encouraging nutrition, instead of having these silos of good and bad type of thing? Could you comment on the work that you're doing with research and education?

[Robert Hunter]

You've pointed out a very good point. The oils and fats industry has gone through the roller coaster of no-fat diets, low-fat diets, good fats, and bad fats. It's really come down to educating consumers about understanding that fats are different. Not every fat is the same, and you need to consume more of the good fats and less of the bad fats.

I'll use an example of labelling playing a very important role in that. That's in the United States, where canola oil actually has a food label claim about its ability to reduce the risk of heart disease when used in place of other fats. It specifically lays out to a consumer the benefit of consuming a healthy fat, but not increasing the consumption of that fat. That health claim has been a very key part for our industry. We've experienced considerable growth in the United States as a sector, and that health claim has been a very good area for us to point to. It shows where education is working among consumers, because they're starting to understand the difference that saturated fat is bad fat, so they need to use or consume less. Canola oil is a great oil because it's low in saturated fat. They're making that connection.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I myself have noticed things over the years. It used to be butter versus margarine, and eat this or eat that, and there was a lot of misinformation. You mentioned that in the States you can label it and make a claim like that. For the committee's information, can you make that claim in Canada?

[Robert Hunter]

We cannot make specific claims about canola oil in a product here in Canada. We are actually working with Health Canada to build the case for canola. To make a health claim here actually requires a lot more research than doing so in the United States requires. We're in the process of getting more of that research put together for Health Canada in order to be able to make that claim in Canada, because we feel that such a claim should be able to be made for canola oil.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

In other words, sometimes fats can be a good thing.

[Robert Hunter]

They definitely can.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I wanted to ask Mr. Sherwood a question too.

First of all, thank you for your presentation. I looked over your statement that Canadian soft drink consumption is down but obesity continues to rise. In a way it contradicts other testimony or suggestions we've heard about innovations in marketing to kids and reduced-calorie beverages in schools.

On the last point you talked about--informed choices for Canadian families--I think you know that last fall the government announced a nutrition facts education campaign in partnership with Food and Consumer Products of Canada. I was wondering if you could comment on the role of consumer education in helping consumers take more responsibility for their own health, and on what role that plays both in encouraging healthy living and in understanding these nutrition labels as your industry is putting forth this labelling change.

[Justin Sherwood]

First of all, let me start and address the “Clear on Calories” initiative. I know Food and Consumer Products will be appearing before you later this week. Obviously, we think that's a great initiative. Any information you can put in the hands of consumers, quite frankly, is the tool most often used for making informed decisions.

Clear on Calories is really threefold, and it addresses a number of the points that were brought up by the dieticians, the first of which was standardized serving sizes. As I indicated--and there is pamphlet in the document I circulated, which says this--we are treating the whole bottle as a serving size. That is a market departure from the industry's previous position, which was that larger bottles, like some of those being consumed just down the road, were typically considered by our sector to have multiple servings and were labelled on a 250-millilitre basis. If the consumer actually consumed the whole thing, they would be getting two or three times the caloric content, so, number one, we're changing how we position our serving sizes.

Second, the nutrition facts panel on the back will be modified to reflect that, and then the icon will be put clearly on the front. It won't show a pronouncement of healthy versus unhealthy, but simply the caloric information for that container. We believe that will provide Canadians with the ability to make informed choices relative to caloric content when they are going down the line in the beverage aisle without even having to actually turn bottles around.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Oshawa, ON]

I have another question, which is about technology. Around here you see everybody playing with their BlackBerrys and things like that.

I've heard a lot about healthy foods. I believe in healthy diets, because you have to have a balance, and there is a lot of room in an individual's diet to have a lot of different things. I was wondering if you had heard of technology to provide additional in-store information on nutritional labelling.

For example, if I had a smart phone, could I scan the bar code of a product, or if I had it in a cupboard, could I scan it and say, “Colin wants to take in this many calories and this amount of fat and everything into the diet”? Are you aware of technologies that will allow the consumer to look at these things?

I see two people who want to comment on that.

[Justin Sherwood]

Very quickly, I believe there are some technologies like that, but I'm not aware to what extent they are standardized and verifiable.