Evidence of meeting #54 for Health in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was kids.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Don Davies NDP Vancouver Kingsway, BC
Ms. Webb, given that Canada is the only G7 nation without a national school food program, what international best practices could we incorporate into the development of a national school food program in our country?
11:50 a.m.
Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator, Coalition for Healthy School Food
Thanks for this question.
In a way, we have an advantage because we have so many other countries to learn from. There are many countries that really involve the students in preparing and serving the food. Japan and France are great examples that really involve the kids in the whole culture of eating and teach many life skills through that. Brazil has a 30% local food procurement target that supports family farmers and creates local economies.
There are many countries that really involve students in that life skills development. There are a lot of different pieces to touch on, as well as health standards and other things. There are many different lessons that we can learn.
11:50 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Thank you, Ms. Webb.
Next we have Ms. Ferreri.
Welcome to the committee. I guess we're on the same circuit today. You have the floor for five minutes.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Ferreri Conservative Peterborough—Kawartha, ON
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to my colleague Dr. Ellis for letting me sit in today. There's a lot of overlap in what I'm studying in my other committee, the committee on the status of women—abuse in sport and mental health in children—so it's great testimony today from all of the witnesses.
I'd like to start with Dr. Warshawski.
What I find interesting about this conversation.... In your experience as a pediatrician and a doctor, do you find that obesity is a symptom for something bigger for a child who may be dealing with mental health or other issues?
11:50 a.m.
Chair, Childhood Obesity Foundation
I would characterize it as bidirectional.
Sometimes, due to genetics and the obesogenic environment, unhealthy weights develop, and then, as a result of stigma, mental health deteriorates. In other times, children who have been subject to child maltreatment—sexual abuse, physical abuse and that sort of thing—and children with biological tendencies to depression or anxiety can also use food for solace.
It's difficult to make categorical statements. You have to go individually.
11:50 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Ferreri Conservative Peterborough—Kawartha, ON
Thanks for that. I'd love to see data. I don't know if you have any to table with the committee around this aspect.
When we look at the work of Dr. Stuart Shanker, or self-regulation, and we look at overeating or using eating as a self-regulating technique, we see a big chunk there. I understand what you're saying. It is absolutely on an individual basis.
I guess where I'm going with this line of questioning is to ask if it would be valuable to look at investing in access to mental health supports for kids when we see, as we've heard in this testimony today, the deterioration in children's mental health. There was a promise of $4.5 billion from the Liberal government in a Canada mental health transfer, and we haven't seen any of that. Would that not be significantly beneficial if it were added?
We're talking about marketing, and that's important, but wouldn't it be beneficial to understand the underlying cause of what food does to our body and educating kids so that they understand it? We also have a rise in eating disorders in young girls and young men.
11:50 a.m.
Chair, Childhood Obesity Foundation
I'm going to try to unpack that.
Eating disorders have increased in prevalence, but they're still dwarfed by the incidence of unhealthy overweights and obesity. Mental health is hugely important. I would say that 80% of my practice deals with anxiety, depression, autism, and ADHD, so it's out there. It's a big cause of morbidity.
Looking at the temporal relationship between the increase in unhealthy weights in children and youth in Canada since, say, 1975, it's best explained by changes in the food environment, not in the mental health environment. That's not to say that mental health isn't extremely important. It is.
You also mentioned educating kids. We know that media literacy doesn't work. We know that kids are credulous. They tend to believe what they're told and they certainly would never guess that these colourful ads on TV are actually for foods that are unhealthy. I would disconnect those two.
The pursuit of better mental health care is vitally important, and it should begin with prenatal classes. It should begin with the parents. It's really, really important. That should proceed on a separate track and should be uncoupled from other efforts to improve the food environment.
I'm not disparaging the role of physical activity. As the speakers from Jumpstart and Participaction said, physical activity is so important for mental health and fitness, but it's not the major lever to affect unhealthy weights.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Ferreri Conservative Peterborough—Kawartha, ON
Did you say media literacy doesn't work? Is that what you said?
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Ferreri Conservative Peterborough—Kawartha, ON
Can you explain that? Why doesn't media literacy...? If you're educating people through the media.... I don't understand what you're saying there.
11:55 a.m.
Chair, Childhood Obesity Foundation
Media literacy for children has not proven to be effective at all. The media literacy messages are kind of staid, boring, brief, and they pale in comparison to the pizzazz and sizzle of advertising.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Michelle Ferreri Conservative Peterborough—Kawartha, ON
Thank you for that.
Ms. Webb, you have great programs in terms of children having access to food in school, especially for those most vulnerable.
Do you have any data or statistics on how many school food programs are championed by strictly parent groups, as opposed to an organization like yours?
11:55 a.m.
Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator, Coalition for Healthy School Food
We don't have any specific data. Because we don't have a national program, we also don't have a national databank of exactly who's running the programs. We have 240 member organizations, and most programs are run, from what I've seen, by school districts, and there are some parent communities that come together to run something like a salad bar or a hot lunch program. I think what we've seen across the country is people making do with what they can with the people who come forward with resources and time.
Yes, we do have parent communities that come together to serve food. Maybe they can only do it once a week or maybe they can just do it 20 times a year, but they will do that. Then there are kind of hot lunch programs, with people bringing food from the outside or doing catering services through the school council. I think all the models exist. I would say that it's more common to have the organizations serving solid meal programs, but yes, there are a range of models. A lot has to do with the nuances of the communities and if there are active parents or not, so yes, they do exist.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Thank you, Ms. Webb and Ms. Ferreri.
Next up is Dr. Hanley, please, for five minutes.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you very much.
Thanks to all of the witnesses for the really interesting testimony.
Dr. Warshawski, I'd like to start with you.
I think you've made it pretty clear what we could do from a policy perspective in terms of marketing without putting into force what's already in the Gazette in addition to anything that Bill C-252 may add.
Maybe expanding on or moving beyond what we should be doing in restricting marketing and maybe picking up a bit on the literacy from Ms. Ferreri's questions, this question is really about nutritional literacy. How do we get better at it?
As a physician, I don't think I was at all well educated in nutrition and what to say or what to advise. Most of what I've learned has been in the reading that I've taken on. There's health practitioner literacy and also general literacy for parents to guide children. There's such burgeoning literature and media on nutrition, yet some of the kernels of good, basic eating practices can be missed.
I wonder if you could comment on how we could, from a policy point of view, do better in nutritional literacy.
11:55 a.m.
Chair, Childhood Obesity Foundation
I like the use of the term “kernel” because I think it gets back to keeping it simple.
Like you, as a physician, I don't know much about nutrition. I think that there's more and more awareness of talking about calories, about carbohydrates and about particular components. People gloss over this, and really we're talking about whole foods—purchasing and cooking whole foods at home. That's the basis of food literacy.
We know more and more that the strongest link with ill health is consumption of ultra-processed foods, so we need to get to the Brazilian style of the whole plate. The new Canada food guide is also a good model for a healthy plate. I think we have to simplify things to some extent and focus on whole foods, foods that your grandmother or great-grandmother would recognize as a food, food that's not ultra-processed.
Cooking and eating at home together is strongly associated with good dietary habits. Those are foundational things like staying away from added simple sugars. You can have your simple sugars once or twice a week, but not every day.
You don't really want to demonize foods, but, on the other hand, what some of the dieticians call common sense around foods isn't that common. There are a lot of parents who don't cook food and their children don't know how to cook food, so we need to get back to some basics and simplify things.
Noon
Liberal
Brendan Hanley Liberal Yukon, YT
Thank you.
On a related theme, I'd like to move briefly to you, Ms. Webb.
Thanks for appearing.
On your website you talk about successful cases locally and in Canada about school-based food programs. I know that in Yukon we have some first nations initiatives that seem to be successful in linking to local food, but I wonder if you can talk about good models in our country that we can build on, particularly from a rural and northern perspective.
Noon
Knowledge Mobilization Coordinator, Coalition for Healthy School Food
Yes. Thank you.
You talked about good models. The Yukon First Nation Education Directorate has an excellent program that feeds students and also involves local caterers to provide country foods for students. It is quite an extensive program that we do reference often.
In Newfoundland and Labrador, their school lunch association has a program that uses a “pay what you can” model. Families can pay using software so that students aren't stigmatized. They pay whatever they can, from nothing to whatever they can afford. Kids are provided a hot lunch at school during the day that's produced from local caterers.
There are a number of different models in different regions. Some regions have really strong breakfast programs. For instance, to my understanding, 95% of those in Nova Scotia schools receive breakfast at school.
I think we do have a diversity of really great models that we can learn from and figure out which are the best. There are some really innovative “farm to school” models, as they're referred to, that involve local farmers or food producers or harvesters bringing food to the school and engaging with the children. They are producing the food and then serving it.
Thank you for referring to this idea. We do have some excellent models that we can grow and support and extend.
Noon
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Thank you, Ms. Webb.
Mr. Garon, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Noon
Bloc
Jean-Denis Garon Bloc Mirabel, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Di Buono, I'm very interested in how the government can fund initiatives that help children play sports. Back in the days of the Harper government, there was a non-refundable tax credit for amateur sport. Such a credit was proven to have no effect on sport. It was regressive, gave money to wealthy families who were already spending on sport and did nothing for the poor.
The Liberal approach was to significantly enhance the Canada Child Benefit to give money directly back to parents.
We at the Bloc Québécois believe that some of this should be done in the schools and that the provinces should be better funded. There is a national policy on this, in Quebec.
Do you think it is part of the federal government's tool box to transfer money to the provinces and Quebec so that they are able to fund sports initiatives?