Health committee  There is interest in the impact of food labelling in restaurants, and there is the issue of unintended consequences. Some groups, like teenage boys, respond totally differently from others to nutrient labelling, so thought needs to be given to special segments of the population.

Health committee  There is.

Health committee  Research is under way to understand why teenagers look at things differently. For food labelling, it was teenage boys we looked at.

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. CIHR has helped foster obesity research, turning an expert but very small research community into a large pan-Canadian and internationally recognized research funding group. Indeed, a bibliometric study of CIHR-funded obesity researchers has found that C

Health committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'd like to thank the Standing Committee on Health for this opportunity to speak about the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's contributions toward health promotion and disease prevention. CIHR proudly supports basic biomedical and patient

Health committee  I'm sorry, what was your question?

Health committee  So the question was whether we have anybody on our board who is a member of the food industry. The answer is that we have lots of interactions. We have an institute advisory board of 16 members, and it has a pharmaceutical representative but not a food industry representative. I

Health committee  When you're looking to make change, one other part is to make sure it has a health economic benefit. So there is the concept that if you reduce salt and you reduce the burden of illness, that could really help to sustain our health care system by reducing costs. So there is a hea

Health committee  Very much so. Research is definitely an international enterprise, and the one thing about our research is that it's not reinventing the wheel. We try to be at the cutting edge of what's going on, and Canadians can provide a niche expertise. That's what we do in all areas of resea

Health committee  I guess the first thing to say about those population studies is that those kinds of studies don't prove cause and effect. They are associative studies. So you instituted a lower salt diet in a certain country and you see a reduction in cardiovascular disease. Many other things h

Health committee  That's a very important question and one we are asking ourselves as a research community. That is the focus of the workshop in January, so I don't want to prejudge. We're going to have a group of Canadian experts as well as some selected international experts speak on this, becau

Health committee  I'm the director of the Institute of Nutrition. Nutrition encompasses lots of healthy foods, and it's clear that sodium is one major player, in that altering sodium content could have an impact on the health of Canadians. I think that's why it's been targeted among a series of po

Health committee  I will try to answer that. One of the points is that when you do make a change in the salt content of foods, it's very important to measure the outcomes—the anticipated as well as the unanticipated outcomes. The Institute of Medicine report—I see the book there, if you want t

Health committee  Our plans for monitoring and evaluation of a change had been under way in advance of The Globe and Mail articles. But you're absolutely right; it certainly did raise awareness. Again, I would say that if there is any change in salt in the diet, we need to monitor its outcome an

Health committee  I'll take the liberty of going first, since that's how we've made the arrangements. Thank you for inviting us. I'm a practising pediatric gastroenterologist at the Hospital for Sick Children, University of Toronto. My colleague Dr. Liu is an adult cardiologist at the University