The interior of the Metro grocery store in Liberty Village on Feb. 3, 2020.Fred Lum/the Globe and Mail
Over the past four decades, the average Canadian has gained a lot of weight.
Among people aged 35 to 64, almost one-third are obese – a figure that’s up threefold since the mid-1980s. What’s more, close to 40 per cent are overweight. Among rich countries, Canada is near the top of the list of the most out of shape.
All this has a price. Being overweight can come with personal struggles and with a higher risk of everything from heart disease to diabetes. It is estimated that diseases related to diet cost $26-billion a year and kill 36,000 people.
Some of the blame goes to a sedentary modern life – too much sitting, too much driving, too little exercise. But there’s also what 21st century Canadians eat: food that’s often highly processed and laden with a brain-pleasing, body-harming trifecta of saturated fats, sugar, and salt. These “three Ss” are satisfying in the moment – but when consumed to excess, they’re harmful.
To get Canadians thinking a little more about what they eat, five years ago Ottawa took a modest step to enhance mandatory food labelling.
Remember that dense chart of info that has long appeared on the back of most foods? It’s slightly clearer now. The number of calories is in a larger, bolded font. And a new footnote explains the percentages of nutritional (and not so nutritional) components. A food that contains less than 5 per cent of the daily allowance of something has only a little. More than 15 per cent is a lot.
Breaking news: Lots of packaged and processed foods have more than 15 per cent of one, two or all three of the three Ss.
That’s why Health Canada will soon introduce far more explicit food labelling, to appear on the front of packaging. The target is saturated fats, sugar, and sodium, precisely because they put people at heightened risk of obesity, heart disease, and high blood pressure.
Front-of-package labels aim to force Canadians to more carefully consider the food they’re buying. Foodmakers won’t be able to bury the reality of their products. Labels will clearly highlight – not unlike the warnings on cigarettes – that a product is “high in” one or more of these three problematic ingredients.
These changes are welcome, and overdue.
Encouraging Canadians to eat a healthier diet, through more prominent information labelling, makes sense. People have a right to choose to eat what they want; they also have a right to know what they’re eating, and the consequences of their choices.
The new labelling plans have, however, run into a recent snag. Various foods, such as some dairy and whole meats, will get an exemption under the new rules, and should. But ground beef, which is considered partially processed, may not be exempt.
As a result, opposition from the industry, Alberta and conservatives got fired up this month.
Right now, ground beef has a front-of-package label, in the standard tricky-to-discern form of calories, fats and the like. It’s also labelled as regular, lean or extra lean. In the small print, it says that 100 grams of regular ground beef is 300 calories, and that serving includes half a person’s recommended daily limit of saturated and trans fats. An extra lean 100 grams is 180 calories, and 20 per cent of the daily limit of saturated-trans fats.
At first blush, ground beef appears to qualify to be hit with the proposed warning label, since it is high in fat. However, the vast universe of processed fatty, salted and over-sweetened foods is what the labelling initiative is supposed to target. And Health Canada’s years-long exercise to make these new labels a reality risks derailing because of this kerfuffle. If getting things back on track requires an exemption for ground beef, so be it. It’s not even a concession, since beef was never meant to be in the crosshairs.
The new labels matter because health care is not just doctors, nurses and hospitals. It should be about all the things that can help prevent you from needing their services. Lifelong healthy eating and exercise are part of health care.
These new, clearer labels on the many foods that are too high in fat, sugar and salt will help Canadians to better know what they are eating. What each of us chooses to do with that information is up to us.
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