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Canada's New Food Guide

food-guide.canada.ca

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Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#81

Post by atomical »

Escolte wrote: post #39
spraak wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoid oils in general. They're mostly devoid of nutrition (i.e. no fiber, lacking vitamins and minerals compared to the food source) and only contain fat https://youtu.be/LbtwwZP4Yfs

As someone from Spain, a place that's soon gonna have the highest life expectancy in the world, yeah we're not removing olive oil from about 50% of the "core" dishes that we regularly eat. Sources: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/16/spain-to-beat-... https://www.oliveoilmarket.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/3.p...

If Spain has the best diet why did it take this long to rise up in the rankings?

Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#82

Post by maxlybbert »

benzor wrote: post #5

This is great. A no-nonsense, modern take on healthy nutrition. It's simple (no more food groups, portions, etc.), and actually healthy (e.g. not catering to the dairy industry with a daily glass of milk recommendation, pizza is not a vegetable, etc.). Compare it to this: https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/archived_proje...

> Compare it to this: ...

The USDA updates the guidelines every so often. They no longer use a pyramid, and they’ve silently backed away from recommending so many carbs. Compare Canada’s guide to https://www.choosemyplate.gov/ .

Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#83

Post by folkrav »

sridca wrote: post #70
benzor wrote: post #5

This is great. A no-nonsense, modern take on healthy nutrition. It's simple (no more food groups, portions, etc.), and actually healthy (e.g. not catering to the dairy industry with a daily glass of milk recommendation, pizza is not a vegetable, etc.). Compare it to this: https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/archived_proje...

They both look the same (except for use of pyramid vs circle). What exactly are the major differences as you see?

The new Food Guide doesn't really discriminate by food groups apart from "eat fruits and veggies" and does away with daily portions per food type. What are the similarities you see?

Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#84

Post by 131012 »

benzor wrote: post #5

This is great. A no-nonsense, modern take on healthy nutrition. It's simple (no more food groups, portions, etc.), and actually healthy (e.g. not catering to the dairy industry with a daily glass of milk recommendation, pizza is not a vegetable, etc.). Compare it to this: https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/archived_proje...

Even if I agree with the guide, one has to remember it is election year in Canada, and Canada is one of the largest grower of pulses and legumes. Nothing is devoid of political ramifications.

Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#85

Post by maxlybbert »

spraak wrote: post #36
AnthonBerg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no reason to avoid fat. Here is one instance of an easily accessible peer-reviewed-science-based list of the current knowledge on dietary fat: https://www.foundmyfitness.com/news/t/fat It does not show that oils or fat are something to blanket avoid.

I didn't say to avoid fat, I said to avoid extracted fats (oils). Whole food fats e.g. the olive instead of olive oil is fine

About a year ago, I started looking into current nutritional advice. One thing that stood out was that the average American used to get 40% of their calories from fat and 1/6 of Americans were obese. The government recommended reducing fat to less than 30% of overall calories, and, amazingly, Americans actually followed the recommendation. We now get about 30% of our calories from fat, and 1/3 of us are obese.

That doesn’t say much about what kind of fat we’re eating (e.g., if it’s oil), but the advice to reduce calories from fat was based on them being empty calories. It appears that they also help people feel full longer.

Personally, when I eat a salad for lunch, it doesn’t bother me that literally 85% of the calories come from fat (15 calories for the lettuce, 90 calories for the salad dressing). Even if I have low-fat salad dressing (30 calories), I’m getting 66% of my calories from fat.

Then again , maybe I’m reading the data wrong: it’s possible to reduce the percentage of calories coming from fat by eating the same amount of fat, and more food overall. Maybe Americans just did that.

Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#86

Post by 3pt14159 »

EForEndeavour wrote: post #76
kszxgz wrote: post #67

For comparison: Harvard Healthy Eating Plate https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-... At least among the Harvard faculty, there appears to be a consensus that healthy fats are important, which the Canadian guide doesn't seem to stress that much. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you... === Comments on the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate ( https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front…

I prefer the visualization on the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate website: it conveys more information in a smaller space than the plate graphic you first see on Canada's Food Guide. That said, the Canada Food Guide page certainly has fat covered. It doesn't mention it straight from the landing page, but if you explore the guide, you find it pretty quick. The first link in the sidebar of the Canada Food Guide, "Food Cho…

True, and I don't hate this guide from my government, but the sample recipes are eye-rolling.

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/canada-food-...

Like, guys. Why are we adding brown sugar and why are we stressing skim milk? What are we adding dried cranberries, which lack fibre?

I constantly feel like I need to write a website on how to be healthy. I'm a fit software dev with 11% body fat. I've held it for almost 5 years now, but before that I was just like everyone else. It's really simple.

1. Maximize fibre (i.e., fresh veggies, non-canned chickpeas). 2. Eliminate refined sugar / date / figs / dried fruit as much as humanly possible. 3. Maximize flavour (i.e., fat, spices, added berries) 4. Maximize protein 5. Minimize average effort 6. Minimum 15 minutes of heart pumping exercise per day. Ideally 1 hour or more.

This is easier than you expect. I make a chickpea curry or (mostly) vegetarian chilli in a huge dutch oven once a week. That's 10 meals right there. I bike to get around. Body weight exercise once a week, and that's basically it.

This whole fat vs carbs thing is a total red herring. Some carbs are great for you (resistant starch, both soluble and insoluble fibre) some are fine (lactose, glucose) some are shitty (fructose, sucrose). Some fats are great for you (omega balanced polys) some are fine (mono) some are shitty (trans), but we lump it all into fats vs carbs and no wonder the public is confused.

Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#87

Post by maxlybbert »

_up wrote: post #61
latch wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's saying to prefer the whole food (the "source") over the raw oil. Doesn't seem that wrong. Also, this health guide lists sunflower and "cheap" canola as examples of good unsaturated fats.

I wonder now if this Guide is also sponsored by the Agriculture and Health Industry. Processed food and sugar are the real things people should avoid.

It sounds like Canada’s guide followed the same path that the US’s did: the original USDA food pyramid was influenced by lobbying and recommended lots of carbohydrates and milk. It also suffered from the fact that there was no attempt to have people follow the diet to see its effects before the USDA recommended it to the whole country. Over the past twenty years, the USDA has quietly been revising the recommendations (they make a big deal when they issue new recommendations and websites to distribute them, but they don’t say much about what actually changed each time).

My favorite example is that a doctor once recommended that I follow the DASH diet to lower my blood pressure. The DASH diet was a modified version of the 1990s food pyramid. A relatively recent study compared it with diets that get fewer calories from carbohydrates, and while all the diets they tried did lower blood pressure, the original DASH diet was the worst of the bunch ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3236092/ ).

Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#88

Post by NumberWangMan »

kszxgz wrote: post #67

For comparison: Harvard Healthy Eating Plate https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-... At least among the Harvard faculty, there appears to be a consensus that healthy fats are important, which the Canadian guide doesn't seem to stress that much. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you... === Comments on the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate ( https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front…

Olive oil is not a healthy fat (as much as I'd love it to be) -- it's got a substantial amount of saturated fat, and the interviewer is correct -- it's very easy to get a lot of empty calories with oil.

Aside from that, weight is not the only issue. A high fat diet (even a vegan one) is not good for your cardiovascular system.

There's a widely quoted study by high-fat diet proponents comparing two groups eating a high-fat Mediterranean diet (one with olive oil, one with nuts) to a "low fat" control group: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303?query=re...

This study can't really be used to advocate a high fat diet, though, because all the diets (even the control group) were actually high fat. Looking at page 28 of the appendix (https://www.nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1056/NEJMoa1200303/suppl_f...) shows that the fat intake of all three groups was really very similar -- about 41% calories from fat for the olive oil and nut groups, but only...37% fat from the control group. 37% calories from fat is not "low fat".

On the other hand, a true low fat diet, with fewer than 10% of calories from fat, has been shown to actually reverse the progression of heart disease: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7500065 (this was one of the first studies to demonstrate this, but they've repeated this with larger groups and gotten the same results)

Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#89

Post by [deleted] »

cknoxrun wrote: post #74
sonnyblarney wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This is great. A no-nonsense, modern take on healthy nutrition. " Even though it's technically 'no nonsense' - it actually is effectively 'nonsense' from a communications perspective. It's almost meaningless, and un-actionable, and I don't think it will have any effect, on any group. I wonder if this should simply be a single page of points urging us to 'eat healthy' and that should be it. Consider the main takeaway…

It’s important to note that this is taught in schools starting from as early as grade 1. I do believe that teaching children about the joys of eating food and sharing meals could have a positive impact. Consider France, arguably one of the healthiest nations when it comes to food, where this is culturally ingrained from an early age.

[deleted]

Re: Canada's New Food Guide

#90

Post by sonnyblarney »

decasteve wrote: post #78
cknoxrun wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s important to note that this is taught in schools starting from as early as grade 1. I do believe that teaching children about the joys of eating food and sharing meals could have a positive impact. Consider France, arguably one of the healthiest nations when it comes to food, where this is culturally ingrained from an early age.

> It’s important to note that this is taught in schools starting from as early as grade 1. My kids come home with hungry with half-eaten lunches complaining how they didn’t have enough time to eat. They get rushed to finish within 10-15 minutes and go outside. This is a universal complaint among parents. We’re culturally ingraining eating as something you rush through on the way to something else.

You know what would be better is longer lunches and a little less class time anyhow.

2 hours max a day of 'guided learning' a day, the rest somewhere between 'self learning' and 'fooling around' is fine.

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