Health committee  Maybe Dr. Provencher will be able to complete what I'm going to say, but as we stated earlier, the major problem with food labelling is that it's not consistent from one product to another, so it makes comparisons very difficult. Just having a standard portion size would make com

Health committee  Definitely, water is important for healthy living. The important thing to remember is that when we look at the Canadian diet per se, there are probably too many calories coming from liquids. We're forgetting about water. You're right in saying that. We should promote calories co

Health committee  I would say in a healthy diet there's a place for everything. To be able to say that, you have to have the other products first.

Health committee  Thank you for giving me back the opportunity to talk about this. What we're saying in the position statement that came out and in the current issue that we published, which we made available to the members, is that taxation can be a tool used to make foods more equally priced in

Health committee  I would like to be precise about that: I didn't say it would be easy; I said there was a precedent out there. Canada's Food Guide suggests portion sizes, and we have tools for diabetics that suggest portion sizes as well, so there are some precedents out there.

Health committee  Yes, indeed.

Health committee  I would hope so. It builds trust between the consumers and the food offered. If we want to be able to work to have a healthier Canada, we need to build on trust. Having simple tools, simple things like those, helps to build trust.

Health committee  As it now stands, our biggest problem is not that there are several healthy standardization and promotion systems for nutrition, such as the Heart and Stroke Foundation program, but those initiatives are often drowned in a sea of similar ones, which is very confusing for consumer

Health committee  I don't have any data on that.

Health committee  There's another problem that we're not addressing enough, which is that a substantial number of Canadian people are not able to read and understand that basic information. Approximately 40% of the Canadian population do not have sufficient reading skills to understand the labels.

Health committee  Please allow me not to jump in on that. As I said earlier, the problem right now is that we're focusing too much on nutrients and forgetting the ball park figure. Right now Canadians are not consuming certain types of foods, mainly fruits and vegetables and milk products. Talking

Health committee  I would say milk would be the first choice because of all the other nutrients that come with that food. Should we exclude the other ones? I would not say to exclude the other ones.

Health committee  The conversation we're having right now is quite symptomatic of what you're explaining. People talk a lot about nutrients and not exactly about nutrition. Talking about nutrients is one thing; talking about nutrition is another. When we're focusing very much on sodium, on fat, an

Health committee  Exactly. There are precedents. When Health Canada decided six years ago to change nutritional labelling, the government gave two years. Certainly some preliminary work took a little time, but, in less than three years, it was done. So we are not talking about something outside th

Health committee  I have a few on my iPhone, but unfortunately they don't work in Canada. They only work in the U.S.