Vancouverites are known to live pretty healthy lifestyles – from running to yoga to paddle boarding, staying active is an important part of our day-to-day lives. Cultivating healthy habits helps us to function at our very best, and part of that is eating good healthy food. That’s not just reserved for us West Coasters – I think most, if not all people strive to be healthy in one way or another.
Now because not everyone is a nutrition expert, a little bit of help and guidance in this area is needed. Enter the Canada Food Guide, designed by Health Canada to help us make healthy food choices and form good eating habits.
The only issue is that it doesn't. In fact, it's downright confusing, outdated and heavily influenced by food industry lobbyists, instead of nutritionists. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I wonder why the No. 1 source of calcium according to the food guide is dairy, ignoring the fact that there are many other food sources that are high in calcium, as well as proteins.
The Canadian Senate recently brought forth a demand for changes, stating hard facts that holistic nutritionists and other health practitioners have been preaching for years.
One of the big motivators for the analysis and demand for change to occur is the rise of obesity in Canadians, but really, it has been a long time coming and it has been almost 10 years since it was last updated.
I think it’s safe to say that times have changed, and so should the guide.
Many Canadians use the food guide as a map to help feed themselves and their families, and one major flaw is that it emphasises quantity and caloric intake of foods rather than the quality. It does not encourage the intake of whole foods; instead you see cereals and canned milk and canned veggies. Although it does state to limit processed foods (which should be avoided entirely, in my humble opinion), I was horrified to read that two to three tablespoons of salad dressing, margarine or mayo is considered a good source of your daily healthy fat intake.
Seriously?
Another aspect that irks me is that it’s still promoting low-fat foods, which means by proxy promoting a high sugar diet, which causes blood sugar problems and is a major contributing factor in obesity. Fat doesn’t make you fat. In fact, recent studies have shown that saturated fats are in fact good for you and contribute to cardiovascular health.
To give you proof that I'm not just a hippy nutritionist ranting (which, granted, I am), the senators are the ones that have called for big changes to the guide. One of their suggestions is to ban trans fats all together and get actual nutrition experts to write the guide (what a concept!). In their report they stated that when it comes to sugar, “Confusing nutritional labelling doesn’t help: there are 56 different names for sugar alone and manufacturers do not have to group them together.”
This can obviously make it confusing for people to make healthy food choices. The senate also stated in their report that juice being considered a fruit serving is ludicrous when it is “little more than a soft drink without the bubbles.”
I’m not alone, folks.
So now that you are confused about what to eat because I just shot a flamethrower at your food guide, here are a few simple tips on what you can do to cultivate healthy eating habits.
• Eat whole foods and whole grains.
• Drink plenty of water.
• Choose grass-fed, ethically-sourced/treated meats, when possible.
• Choose good healthy fats, like butter and olive oil.
• Avoid processed and refined foods.
Potato salad
Ingredients:
1 bag of nugget potatoes
2 tbsp fresh chopped dill
2 tbsp fresh chopped cilantro
2 stalks of chopped green onion
1 cups of shredded carrots
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 cup organic whole milk yogurt
1 tsp olive oil
3 cloves of crushed garlic
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp chili powder
Directions:
1. Cook the potatoes and let them cool down
2. Mix cold potatoes with the rest of ingredients in a bowl
3. Let the mixture sit in fridge for at least an hour to all the flavours can mingle together
