New Canada food guide calls for plant-based diet, pushes salt and saturated fat to the side

The latest iteration of Health Canada’s advice on what to eat has taken those two former dietary staples almost entirely off our plates and replaced them mainly with leafier vegetables, alternative proteins, such as tofu and beans, and whole grains, such as quinoa.

Finally released Tuesday after a long delay, the 2019 guide advises Canadians to limit sugar, salt and saturated fat and, in a departure from previous guides, embrace a plant-based diet.

A dinner plate that is half-full of brightly coloured veggies and fruit has replaced the rainbow and pyramid as the guide’s new image. Small cubes of beef and thin slices of poultry are almost hidden on the plate beside chickpeas and walnuts.

Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor helped unveil the new guide at Tuesday’s Montreal launch by saying that food is about family and tradition and “eating should be a pleasure.” Canada’s Food Guide helps, she says, by providing “clear, concise advice” about diet that’s also easy to use.

Now that the guide has stepped into 2019 with an interactive, mobile-friendly website, she says, it is a “powerful resource” that “reflects Canada 2019 with an eye to the future.”

The Ontario Public Health Association applauded the new guide, calling it “relevant and evidence based” in a press release, saying it will be critical in helping Canadians make healthy food choices.

The guide has its critics.

A group of doctors from across the country has been crusading against some of the expected guidelines since 2016. Barbra Allen Bradshaw, a British Columbia pathologist and Carol Loffelmann, a Toronto anesthesiologist, co-founders of Canadian Clinicians for Therapeutic Nutrition, a national non-profit, say that Canadians should be eating fewer carbohydrates while continuing to eat fat from sources such as steak and cheese.

At Canada Beef, a marketing organization run by cattle producers, Joyce Parslow supports the guide’s emphasis on eating with others while limiting processed foods. But she worries the guide undervalues the protein in red meat. At 184 calories, a palm-sized piece of steak has 26 grams of protein, and to get the same amount of protein from almonds one would need to eat more than a cup, which could add up to 728 calories, Parslow said. Getting 26 grams of protein from beans would mean eating an entire can at 420 calories, she added. “For people who are concerned about their weight — and since obesity is an issue here in Canada — that’s not a great protein substitute.”

Dr. Andrew Samis, a critical care surgeon in Kingston, Ont., calls the food guide “vegan” and flatly rejects the notion that every Canadian needs to eat less meat and dairy, as the new food guide recommends.

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Chronic illness, including diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular disease, are, in part, brought about by eating refined carbohydrates, including the pasta and toast on the food guide’s plate, Samis says, and for some people, “the pathway to health is by eating more eggs, meat and dairy.”

People need choice, he says, not a one-size-fits-all diet. “Will this diet make some people healthier? I think so,” he says. “Will it make some more unhealthy? Yes.”

Dr. Gigi Osler, president of the Canadian Medical Association, praised the guide’s overall direction and applauded the process used to ensure the guide’s advice was based on “unbiased research.”

The CMA said it was an active participant in the food guide’s consultation process, Osler said in an email to the Star. She said that the CMA encourages the federal government to “move ahead with front-of-package labelling” that will prohibit food and drink marketing directed at children, two initiatives that are before Parliament.

The new website accompanying the food guide will offer Canadians quick food tips they can use in a hurry, says Kate Comeau of the Dietitians of Canada, such as what to do with frozen spinach — throw a handful in soup, for instance — and how to navigate the supermarket’s produce aisle.

The guide focuses more on proportions of food on a plate rather than on precise daily intake amounts. Instead of weighing your stew or couscous to find the correct amount to eat, think about it as a quarter-portion of that dinner plate. “Even that one little shift is quite significant,” Comeau says.

Here are five of the biggest changes to Health Canada’s Food Guide:

• Canadians should envision their dinner plate half-full of veggies and fruit.

• Canadians should eat mostly plants, choosing alternative proteins, such as tofu, over food from animal sources, such as steak.

• More than ever before, there’s a focus on eating behaviours, such as “enjoy your food” and eating with others.

• The guide takes aim at alcohol, saying it’s loaded with calories and, mixed with syrups in a cocktail, can be a significant source of salt, sugar and saturated fat.

• Canadians should avoid fast and processed foods, including deep-fried take-out, sugary breakfast cereals and sports drinks.

An unhealthy diet is a risk factor for developing chronic diseases, such as ischemic heart disease, stroke, diabetes and breast cancer, and it places a burden on the health care system, the guide says. “The impact of chronic diseases is likely to continue to increase unless we take action.”

While past food guides have mentioned Indigenous people, the new guide goes further than its predecessors, recognizing the disproportionate rates of diabetes and other chronic illnesses in their communities as the result of unique challenges. Residential schools hindered the transfer of food skills and knowledge from generation to generation. The guide also mentions access to safe drinking water in often-remote Indigenous communities, as well as the scarcity and high cost of fresh food.

The guide says that the traditional diet of the Indigenous people, including moose, elk, grouse, fiddleheads and wild plants — as well as the way they trap, fish, hunt, harvest and cultivate that food — is “intrinsically linked to cultural identity, way of life and thus overall health.”

Unlike earlier versions, this guide isn’t simply about what to eat. It places greater emphasis on how to eat and think about food.

With its new slogan “Eat well. Live well,” the guide devotes some of its nine guidelines to food skills, such as cooking, and creating a supportive “food environment” where “cultural food practices should be celebrated.”

Intended to inform policy and influence menus in day cares and senior’s homes, the guide helps regular Canadians figure out what to eat — and tells them to be aware of food marketing.

Awash in a constant stream of changing and often conflicting messages about food, the guide says, we live in a “complex and crowded information environment (that) can make it hard for Canadians to make healthy eating choices.”

Cooking meals at home is the best way to stay healthy, the guide says. Canadian households are spending more and more of their budget on fast and processed foods laden with calories, sugar, salt and saturated fat, the guide says. If we’re not preparing our own food, the guide advises, we are missing out on an essential skill that is key to a healthy lifestyle.

Something else that undermines healthy eating, the guide says, is sugar.

Sugary drinks, including sports and energy drinks and fruit juices, were the main source of sugar in our diets in 2015, according to the food guide, and it urges us to cut back. Water should be our drink of choice.

Foods that are high in sugar, like candy bars and fruit leather, such as Fruit Roll-Ups, have “little to no” nutritional value and should be limited, the guide says.

In terms of what to eat, the guide trumpets vegetables and legumes, nuts, seeds, tofu, fish and shellfish. If we must have our meat, the guide encourages us to choose lean cuts. Milk, yogurt and cheeses should be “lower fat,” the guide says.

Allen Bradshaw and Loffelmann, the two doctors who launched their fight in 2016, said that Health Canada continues to cite saturated fat evidence that’s outdated and incomplete. They said new research shows that the debate about saturated fat’s influence on health isn’t settled, but the food guide doesn’t reflect that.

Osler, CMA president, said she knows some physicians oppose certain recommendations, but overall the guide’s advice is a “bold step forward” and aligns with what some believe is an eating plan that’s better for the environment. “Is this going to be a diet that’s better for us and better for our planet?” she said. “That’s the big question.”

Correction — Jan. 22, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that misspelled the names of Joyce Parslow and Carol Loffelmann.