Thank you, Mr. Chair, for allowing me to speak at this hearing.
As a nutrition professional, I am very aware that it is not easy to encourage people to eat well. Food choices are influenced by a series of complex interactions between individual factors and social, cultural, economic and environmental determinants.
Early intervention, which targets everyone and is designed to help people maintain or improve their health before it is compromised, has a great deal of positive influence over health. In fact, the earlier the intervention, the better the potential gains. Nutrition labelling and claims are part of the environmental strategies designed to improve public health. However, at present, nutritional labelling is lacking in a number of areas. The current system must be improved if we are to get consumers used to reading, interpreting and using nutritional information effectively in order to make healthy food choices.
I want to address five aspects of labelling: the nutrition facts table, health claims, logos, food labelled as natural health food products, and restaurant menus.
We have three recommendations for you on the nutrition facts table in order to meet the nutrition labelling objectives that will truly assist consumers to make informed choices. Firstly, serving sizes of similar foods must be standardized as much as possible. Requirements for the nutrition facts table were established as a labelling tool to enable consumers to easily compare food value and to make informed purchases. However, when the serving sizes of similar products are not exactly or approximately the same, it becomes difficult for consumers to compare products and make good choices.
We also recommend updating the basis for establishing the daily value (DV) on the nutrition facts table using DRIs for 2011. As a former member of the Sodium Working Group, I believe we should also replace the daily value of sodium on the nutrition facts table. Reducing it from 2,400 mg to 1,500 mg would reflect adequate amounts of sodium.
The third and final recommendation is to emphasize, on the nutrition facts table, certain less desirable nutrients present in large quantities in a food as a way of alerting consumers to that fact. Values on the nutrition facts table that exceed 15% of the daily value could be in red. Nutrients that should be emphasized, for example, are total amounts of fat, saturated fat, trans fat, sodium and sugar.
We also have several concerns about health and nutrition claims. Using health and nutrition claims on food packaging is often seen as a marketing tool that companies can use to attract consumers by highlighting certain nutritional aspects of a food. However, these claims are frequently used to showcase the positive aspects of a food, while sometimes ignoring the negative aspects. This approach can encourage consumers to use a food product because of one of its characteristics, without taking the others into account.
To prevent this from occurring, it may be necessary to incorporate ineligibility criteria for the use of all types of health and nutritional claims. That would ensure that consumers are not misled by positive claims on foods containing less desirable elements.
I will now move on to the presence of the many commercial logos on food products, which has already been raised today. In 2006, the Canadian Council of Food and Nutrition reported that 80% of Canadians wanted labels or packaging to clearly indicate the presence of healthy foods. The solution for determining whether or not a food is healthy is not just reading the label but also understanding it. The nutrition facts table is reliable, but it is not the first thing a consumer sees, as it is on the back of the package. Several symbols are now found on the front of the packaging. Of those Canadians who read labels, about half of them look for that type of symbol to guide them in their choices. However, the use of these commercial logos is open to criticism in a number of ways.
These numerous logos greatly confuse consumers because there is no standardization in the manufacturers' criteria. Manufacturers use these logos mainly for marketing purposes. It raises the question of how compatible these logos are with the overall approach to nutrition. Finally, we find it unfortunate that there is no independent authority to evaluate these criteria. As my colleague François Décary-Gilardeau said, it should also be mentioned that a product with a logo may not necessarily be the best choice in its category, and that is confusing to consumers.
In closing, the fact that there are so many commercial logos and the lack of standardized criteria lead to confusion among consumers when they are buying food. To remedy this situation, we need a third-party agency that would clarify nutritional criteria that allow a logo to be used on a given food. This third party would be entirely at arm's length and would be the only agency authorizing the use of a logo on food.
Finally, we note that there is also some concern as to a differentiation between foods and natural health products. An increasing number of food products, most of which are enriched, make it to grocery store shelves as natural health products rather than under the Food and Drugs Act. There needs to be a clear differentiation between natural health products and foods in order to protect the health of Canadians.
In closing, with respect to restaurant menus, we should if possible demand that...