Health Committee on March 3rd, 2011

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all of you for your presence here today. I certainly enjoyed your presentation.

As we all know, one thing we can agree on is that it is more and more confusing to try to eat healthily every day. Sometimes we look at the calorie intake when we should be looking more at the nutritional value. At the same time, we see that more and more effort is being made to make sure that young families especially are eating better and getting the message to eat healthily and to think of healthy habits.

In my constituency just last week I visited a new school where I'd taught in the past. With this new school came a nice new cafeteria. I went to the cafeteria to speak to the kids, and while I was there I noticed the meal they were having. It was very healthy. There was nothing fried. There was pasta and whole wheat rolls. It was very encouraging. For dessert I think they had a bran bar or a bran muffin and milk. They seemed to be enjoying it and didn't seem to wish they had something else.

During my years there, they used to go across to the fast-food takeouts, so I thought, “Wow, what a big difference”. As well, it's in a poor area, so I felt very good about that one change in the lifestyle.

As a result of the work you're doing and the work that schools are doing, are there any changes you see that make you proud, especially with young families?

[Dr. Maura Ricketts]

I wouldn't say this is something to be proud of, but when I was a child, we all knew that Coca-Cola was a treat. I think one topic that's missing from the table at this point is exactly what you're talking about: a lot of the processed food products we're talking about here are not food. They are not part of the Canada food guide. You can't have a healthy life out of chips. Those things are special, and they are highly processed items. It should be easier to recognize that you don't include them in your daily thinking.

Yes, it's confusing to have those labels, but so what? You really shouldn't be eating too many of them anyway.

I loved what you were saying about the school and I want to thank you for saying that.

[Tilly O'Neill-Gordon, Conservative, Miramichi, NB]

I was very pleased.

[Nathalie Jobin]

I would like to support what you are saying. We can certainly get a bit lost in the complexity of all of these logos, but we must not forget to emphasize the staples, the fresh products, since these are primarily the ones required for healthy eating.

For today's families who no longer know how to cook, who no longer possess the culinary skills to cook using staples, the problem lies in the fact that they have to depend on these foods, and that is where things get complicated. Instead of regulating processed products, the solution may lie in putting families back in the kitchen and enjoying cooking, then teaching them how to eat in a more healthy fashion.

[Derek Nighbor]

I just want to highlight that New Brunswick and most of the provinces now have the nutrition school guidelines for vending machines, cafeterias, and those kinds of things. Ontario is rolling theirs out this fall. We're actively engaged in those discussions. B.C. is doing their review this spring. It's interesting that Quebec was one of the first provinces that really looked at this.

It's a great initiative, and it needs to be backed up with education and reinforcement as to why it's important. One of the things we saw in Quebec was that businesses on four wheels were showing up at the edges of school properties at lunch time. There's always a way. Anybody who has children knows that they can be very creative and be selling stuff out of their lockers in a lot of cases.

Those are very positive initiatives that we've been a part of and that we support across the country. It also goes back to the whole idea of education and positive reinforcement about why foods are good for you, as opposed to always focusing on the negative and what's bad.

[Dr. Anu Bose]

Ms. O'Neill-Gordon, you know that municipalities should be encouraged to look at healthy truck foods too. I saw one in New York called The Rolling Stove. It had very good ethnic foods. It had chapatis and chana, or chick peas. It had woks for stir-fried food. Why can't we have that? A truck does not need to have poutine and freedom fries--we won't call them french fries.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you.

Mr. Lamoureux is next.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to go back to the nutrition facts that you see on the backs of all these different cans and labels. They're all over the place. I find it all exceptionally complicated. It's interesting that someone made reference to studies showing that 30% of people use the label. I'm one of those 30%, I suspect, but I use only a portion of it. I understand the concept of calories, and I know basically what it means when it says sodium and it reads something like 35 mgs. Still, I don't think there's much value for 90% of the consumers. We have to look at ways of changing it.

Mr. Murphy made reference to the potato chip. When a Froot Loops box says a “serving”, it would make a lot more sense if it stated the 1,500 or whatever number of calories the box contains. If that box lasts a week, I'd have a better sense of what it is. If you're talking about sodium, maybe there could be brackets where you could indicate the daily recommended requirement.

All I know is that the nutritional facts are there, but from my perspective we aren't doing nearly as good a job as people think we are. It needs to be much more consumer-friendly. At the end of the day, I'm not sure if this green light-red light from Europe is the best answer. I think the nutrition facts have some potential, but there have to be people thinking outside the box or sitting down in focus groups. These should be people who do not necessarily understand what healthy eating is, but who are interested in trying to get a better understanding.

A year ago, my daughter said I should stop drinking Coke, because I drink a lot of it. She was concerned about the calories. She said I should try Diet Coke, because it has no calories. Well, it makes sense, so I started drinking Diet Coke. I don't like the taste all that much, but I do it because my daughter asked me to. Then someone told me the diet stuff has something else in it that is not healthy, and it's something regarding cancer, so now it's a 50:50 mix that I'll do if I'm at the Burger King or McDonald's.

Information comes at you in different ways. I think we need the professionals—the dieticians, the industry reps—to come forward to say, “Look, here is something we know will work better, because we've sat down with groups and it makes sense to the average consumer”. We need consumer-friendly listings, nutrition facts, or the lights or something.

All I know is that the current system isn't working.

[Nathalie Savoie]

I would say, for Health Canada's benefit, that Canada was one of the first countries in the world to have mandatory nutrition labelling. Anything that you put together can be improved once it's there and people see how it goes, so I think improvement can be made, but as I mentioned before, I don't think we'll ever come to something simple. If we do, then all the other elements you've mentioned are going to be lost in translation. Nutrition is complex, and it's not becoming simpler. More and more research is being done on nutrition, and what we think is certain one day may not look so certain the next day.

I wish I had a simpler answer to tell you, but I must say that Health Canada is dedicated to making this consumer-friendly, and I think they're going to be working on that in the review they're doing.

[Dr. Anu Bose]

Mr. Lamoureux, you left out the consumer when you made your list of all those who should be thinking outside the box. If the consumers' rights associations, which are closest to the coal face, don't also get involved in the conversation, I'm afraid it's going to be very top-down and probably not applicable. I think behavioural economics teaches us that you can take a horse to water, but you cannot necessarily make it drink.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

I'd like to thank Mr. Lamoureux for being brave enough around this table to admit that you go to McDonald's and Burger King. Nobody else has admitted it.

Go ahead, Mr. Stanton.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon. I enjoyed your presentations this afternoon. As I listened to what you said here today, I'm becoming increasingly convinced....

We have spent a lot of time talking about the nutritional label that's on the food, even to the point that somehow the label, in and of itself, will compel more healthy eating. It seems to me we may be putting the cart before the horse.

As we've heard this afternoon, I'm sure we all agree that people have a whole range of preferences and choices. The idea is that we want to inform their choices, but the label itself is only there to serve that purpose. Wouldn't it be better to put more attention on how we inform their needs in the first place? We've given little attention to, for example, the food guide trying to inform consumers about what's good and what's not so good, so that when I go to the store, I will be able to determine that, based on.... I realize the nutritional label is confusing, because the range of possibilities out there is almost endless.

My wife, for example, is interested right now in trying to reduce the sodium in our diet at home. She's interested in sodium. She holds up a can of whole tomatoes and another one of diced tomatoes. They're the same size. One has 70% more sodium than the other, so she chooses the other one. Her interest is in low sodium. For another consumer, it might be something completely different.

Should we be putting more attention at the front end on the means to educate the consumer about those choices? The nutritional label is really the second part of that argument, is it not? Have we got that backwards? I leave it open to Mr. Turnbull and Ms. Jobin.

[Dr. Jeffrey Turnbull]

I think you're exactly right: we have to inform people.

I don't want to use the analogy, but 80% or 90% of this is educating consumers about what is right and what is wrong. The label is about 10%, 15%, or 20% of it; that's my sense. Yes, you can argue about three chips or seven chips and two crackers or four crackers, but you have to know, to begin with, what's good and what's bad. We have to inform all communities. Doctors have a responsibility to inform their patients when they have a specific illness. We have to do much better at informing them about what a healthy food choice for them is, in light of their new illness. Healthy people and patients need to be better informed.

[Nathalie Jobin]

I really think that we should make the general public more aware of the Canada Food Guide's recommendation to use staples. If the majority of the public were to consume staples primarily, the choice between the three bags of chips will be based on taste and pleasure, and not because one brand contains so many milligrams less sodium.

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

That's all I had.

Thank you.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

That's good. Thanks.

We will now move on to Ms. Ashton.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Thank you.

I live in what's largely known as northern rural Canada. It's quite clear that there are definitely some gaps—whether socio-economic, literacy, or accessibility—that obviously affect nutrition and health differences between rural Canadians and urban Canadians.

I know we're focusing more on labelling, but when you have one type of dairy product, or two types of crackers rather than 20 types, or chips that are infinitely more affordable than any fresh baking, for example, your choices are far more limited and obviously take on a different meaning when we're talking about healthy living.

I'm interested in your thoughts more generally. I'd like to know where you see government's role in terms of addressing the gap between rural and urban, and northern and rural in general, given that it obviously does exist.

[François Décary-Gilardeau]

That's a really tough one.

As was mentioned, education and labelling are a big part of the challenge, but I fear that even though we have the best education and we have the best labelling, there will be people who won't walk in because of economic reasons. Buying good food--whole milk, vegetables, fruit--is more expensive than buying Chef Boyardee. Pepsi is less expensive than milk.

I'm really worried about economic access to healthy food. I mean, food prices have been rising really quickly lately, and it's the same with other expenses such as housing. The space for food, healthy food, is getting smaller every day. How are we going to manage that?

In rural and northern populations, the prices have been increasing even more, but the wages haven't followed them. I'm really worried about how we're going to manage to feed these people and feed them well. You are asking a really good question.

I'm from the countryside myself--I'm really proud of it, too--but in rural communities the competition is really weak. I mean, you have the choice of one grocery store and that's it, or else the other one is 20 kilometres away, and you don't drive your car for.... Then you have the elderly, the people with lower mobility, in both rural and urban settings. There are food deserts in Montreal, in some settings.

These are extremely important challenges. We haven't addressed them too much today, but we need to face them today for the next 20 years, for sure.

These are really good questions. There's no easy fix, in my book.

[Niki Ashton, NDP, Churchill, MB]

In my last minute, I'd like to focus on one area that has been emerging in the last few years and has been targeted in many ways to young people: energy drinks. Not only on the marketing side but also on the scientific side, it's an area that I think leaves a lot to be desired.

I'm interested in some of your.... I know it came up briefly, but perhaps you could tell us where government's role ought to be, or to what extent we should be keeping a serious eye on where this area is going.

[Dr. Jeffrey Turnbull]

Perhaps I can start.

Because of the regulatory difference, energy drinks are sold as natural health products. That exempts them from some of the same standards that would otherwise be required through the Food and Drugs Act.

As a consequence, there are two issues: they are often mislabelled and can make claims that are not justified, and they're also not required to label some of the nutritional components that they would otherwise have to.

What I'm concerned about is that energy drinks, when abused or used with other medications or illicit drugs, lead to very serious medical complications. I think this should be regulated, as we would expect of any other product, through the Food and Drugs Act, and--

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Tim Uppal]

Thank you, Dr. Turnbull.

We'll move on to Mr. Brown.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have a few points that we might not have covered, although I know that we've covered a lot of the issues relating to this. This health committee has a subcommittee on neurological disorders, and we've had hearings over the last year. One thing that's come up is that there are increasing rates of neurological disorders in different regions of the country. For example, I remember hearing that there's a greater percentage of MS patients in Saskatchewan.

Is there anything any of you have learned in regard to diet that would cause you to have concerns about why Canada is having a greater percentage of neurological disorders? Is there a certain diet that we can encourage to avoid illnesses like that?

[Nathalie Jobin]

Up until now, we certainly have not been able to identify foods related to those illnesses. There have been several hypotheses, but I could not list them all here. To my knowledge, the current literature does not establish any direct link between nutrition as such and those diseases.

[Patrick Brown, Conservative, Barrie, ON]

That's one of the reasons we need more research in that area.

I heard you speak this morning, Mr. Turnbull, at the CMA breakfast. It's great to have you back at the health committee.

One thing that was mentioned by my colleague Mr. Lamoureux had to do with diet drinks. You see that it says “no calories” on the container, but then it says “aspartame”.

Are there any comments from this distinguished panel on aspartame? Is that something that should be avoided in a healthy diet?

[Nathalie Jobin]

Given the scientific data on the subject, Health Canada is quite aware of the possible side effects of aspartame. If consumed in moderation, I do not believe that there is any reason to worry. However, more and more foods contain it. Consumers should perhaps be asking questions about the number of foods with aspartame that they consume rather than simply saying that there is no problem because they drink only one can of Coke per day and they would have to drink 10 cans in order to exceed the daily maximum of aspartame. The fact is that many other foods contain aspartame.

As for diet soft drinks, my concern is that they get people craving the taste of sugar. That is the problem we have to try to eliminate. Moreover, they cause a lot of cavities in children and do nothing to satisfy hunger. Diet drinks are often consumed with foods high in calories. These are the dietary habits that come from drinking diet Coke. You normally do not eat a fruit salad when you are drinking diet Coke. You usually have fries, chips, a hamburger, etc. Those are the harmful habits. By continuing to drink diet soft drinks, we are supporting those habits.