Health Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2012

[Diane LeMay]

Thanks to a national project we were able to put together some training for cooks. A survey of cooks in the daycare network highlighted the isolation that these cooks felt in their jobs. They did not know who to turn to to learn how to cook healthy food for the children who are in daycare.

This survey led to the implementation of a training course for daycare cooks. This initiative is spreading all over Quebec and is having an impact on the cooks all over the daycare network in the province.

Of course—

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

I'm afraid I have to interrupt you because I have another question that I would like to ask. I thank you for your answer.

We organized an agro-food roundtable in my riding to bring together the stakeholders in the agro-food sector and to discuss the locavore movement, and bring together farmers, restaurateurs, grocery store owners, and the entire industry. They all agreed that the federal government displayed an appalling lack of leadership.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

We have 25 seconds, Ms. Quach. Do you want an answer?

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

We see that people who face difficult economic circumstances have difficulty accessing healthy food.

I would like to know what the government can do to help deal with this issue. This question is open to all our witnesses.

[Manon Paquette]

I am not sure I have fully understood your question, but very briefly, I can say that there is a complementary role between our work and government actions. This is especially true in poorly served areas or remote regions with all of this transportation support issue.

In fact, I think that the price of foods in these regions should be regulated, because we see that the price of food is astronomical there and therefore unaffordable for most of these communities. I am thinking of all of northern Quebec, the North Shore, all of those poorly served regions but also all of those regions inhabited by natives. That is also a big problem.

We are very encouraged by the development of greenhouses in northern Quebec.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I am so sorry. I've given you overtime. We'll have to go to the next question.

Thank you so much. You do such great work.

Mr. Strahl.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you very much.

My question is for Phyllis. I note that you were a member of the subcommittee on the sodium working group, so you would have some expertise there.

Can you provide us with some information? Certainly the government can't change regulations in a vacuum. It's going to have an effect when that sort of thing happens. Could you outline what the process would be for food manufacturers to reduce sodium across the board? How long would that take in terms of product development? What would the cost be to the manufacturing sector? Can you expand that to labelling as well? What effect does that have on industry in Canada?

[Phyllis Tanaka]

Making the reductions in processed food with respect to sodium is a complicated process, as I outlined in my presentation.

Everybody agrees that food safety is paramount, so that has to be factored in, in particular with processed meat slices, as an example.

There are technical challenges associated with reducing sodium in particular bakery products. One of the members of the sodium working group who came from a bakery said you just don't have bread without the salt in the mix.

The third factor that gets downplayed but is important is consumer acceptance along the way. When you're changing the food supply that people go out for and are used to, you have to take them on the journey too and help them to understand why the changes are being made for them to accept the product.

The process for a very straightforward product reformulation is approximately 28 months. That's the average time it takes for a company to take a product concept through to product testing to make sure it's going to stay viable in the marketplace. For the most part, industry has been working on sodium reduction for a number of years, doing it in what they call “silent reductions”, because they recognize it takes time to make acceptable changes to the food.

That 28-month period takes care of maybe a 5% reduction. The next iteration would be another 5% reduction, and that speaks to the nature of having a realistic timeline to accomplish this task. I'm sorry I don't have the actual numbers for the dollars, but any process of product reformulation or product development within a company obviously costs money.

The labels currently restrict labelling of salt reduction to anything that is 25% or more. A one-time 25% reduction is a huge reduction in a product, and doing that presents a challenge for the company. Consequently, you don't end up with anything on the label that says they're working on it and they have made a reduction at this time but it's not the 25%.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Right. Certainly--

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

I think a comment is needed or wants to be made by our video-conference people.

Was it Mr. Jeffery? Sorry, Mr. Jeffery.

[Bill Jeffery]

I just wanted to make a contribution from a public health perspective on the cost and the burden of modifying products.

The burdens on industry must always be measured against the public health impact. This is the sole motivation for changing these foods—to reduce these 10,000 to 16,000 deaths a year. That's not inconsequential.

I would invite members of the committee to be at least as skeptical about what they hear from industry groups as what they hear from health groups. I will tell you that when I looked at the European platform for sodium reduction strategy, it sounded like big numbers—getting rid of 800 tonnes of salt over a certain period of time. But if you do the math, that works out to a 3,000- to 5,000-year trajectory for meeting public health goals.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Mr. Jeffery. I'm sorry we're out of time.

We'll now go to Dr. Sellah and Dr. Morin. They're going to be sharing their time.

We'll have Dr. Sellah first.

[Djaouida Sellah, NDP, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

As my colleagues already know, I am a doctor by training, and therefore I am very concerned by the issue of sodium. We know that an adequate amount of sodium is 1,200 mg to 1,500 mg per day, or half a teaspoonful per day, and that the maximum allowable is about 2,300 mg per day, or about one teaspoonful. Furthermore, most of the sodium that Canadians consume, that is 77%, comes from prepackaged foods which are bought in grocery stores.

My question is about labelling. I know that we will have to do a lot of work on the labelling of foods sold in grocery stores. This question is open to all. Has any thought been given to labelling? When shoppers go to the grocery store, they buy all sorts of things. Unfortunately, the labelling applies to the item they buy as a whole, with no reference to human needs or healthy limits. Have consumers been educated, are they aware?

Labels invariably say that the percentage of sodium is low compared to the daily recommended allowance for our bodies. The question is whether anything has been done to educate consumers on sodium.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Ms. Tanaka.

[Phyllis Tanaka]

I'll just make a couple of comments.

The sodium working group did recognize the need to educate the consumer, and in actual fact that's one of the prongs of the sodium reduction strategy. One of the recommendations was for the federal government to have a very broad social marketing campaign to help consumers understand what it's all about. So I concur that consumer education is important.

With the percentage daily value campaign that's going on, one of the plans under way is to look for a way to also introduce messaging around sodium.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you.

Dr. Jeffery.

[Bill Jeffery]

It's Mr. Jeffery, but thank you, Madam Chair.

One important goal to ensure that consumers understand what they're reading on the label is to make the meaning of the label as self-evident as possible. Current regulations permit manufacturers to play around with the serving size, so they can make a product seem like it's very low in sodium simply by using a smaller serving size. That is very problematic.

As you say, the dietary requirement--what the Institute of Medicine calls the adequate intake--is on average 1,500 milligrams, but the daily value is based on 2,400 milligrams. That's problematic and has to be changed. It persistently misleads every single person who reads a label.

The sodium working group also considered looking into front-of-pack nutritional labelling, so you could scan a supermarket shelf and be able to hone in on the lowest sodium one immediately, without have to pick up 40 cans of soup, turn them around, and look for the fine print.

There are many changes that can be made. It's not just about conducting expensive education campaigns.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you.

Dr. Morin, you've got one minute.

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you.

I love doing my groceries. I love spending the time--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Dany Morin, NDP, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

It's true. I spend the time to carefully read the labels, and I try to make healthy, conscious choices. However, when I take the same brand and want to choose the low-fat product, there is always more sodium in it.

My question is directed to Mr. Jeffery. Can we escape the spiral of bad choices? If we decrease the fat amount, to give it a good taste we have to increase the sodium. Once we reduce sodium, how are we going to put the flavour in it?

[Bill Jeffery]

That's not always the case. In fact, sometimes the reverse of that is true. It's really on a case-by-case basis.

One thing I can say is that the Finnish government did a study looking at sodium levels in food. They found that when a diet consisted mostly of fresh fruits and vegetables and homemade foods, in some cases it was difficult to get enough sodium in the diet to hit that kind of adequate intake—which a lot of scientists think is too high anyway.

It's really the processed food that presents the problem, and part of that problem is created by our palates adjusting to salty food. We like the taste of salty food because that's what we eat.

They are noticing in the United Kingdom that as the salt levels are coming down, when people taste salty food they don't like the taste of it; it is repulsive to them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joy Smith]

Thank you, Mr. Jeffery, but you sound like Dr. Jeffery. Thank you so much. I want to say I'm very happy that we had you here at committee this morning. Your input has been very insightful.

We're now going to go in camera to a business meeting. I'm going to suspend for three minutes only. I would ask that everyone leave the room before this committee meeting starts. That's three minutes.

Thank you.

[Proceedings continue in camera]