The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
The Ottawa-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) applauds the release of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity, and Health. The report identifies diet and physical inactivity as leading causes of illness and death and recommends that governments adopt policies to combat obesity, heart disease, and other diet-related health problems. The report recommends that governments limit unhealthful foods in schools, promote that infants be exclusively breastfed for at least six months, address the issue of marketing food to children, and encourage manufacturers to reduce sodium, saturated and trans fats, or sugars in certain foods. It also recommends that food pricing policies, like agricultural subsidies and taxes, should be used to promote the consumption of more healthful foods. "The WHO report points the way toward preventing obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other diet-related diseases, despite strong opposition from the sugar and soft drink industries," said CSPI National Coordinator, Bill Jeffery. "While the federal and provincial governments have given lip service to developing a so-called 'Integrated Pan-Canadian Healthy Living Strategy' to curb the toll of disease related to diet and inactivity, so far they have failed to demonstrate a real commitment to implementing comprehensive policies and making strategic investments," he added. The WHO report will be reviewed by the Canadian government and counterparts from other WHO-member countries. The report is scheduled to be approved in final form in May 2004 by the World Health Assembly. In Canada, poor diets and physical inactivity together are responsible for $6 billion to $10 billion in health care costs and lost productivity due to premature death and disability annually. Cardiovascular disease, certain forms of cancer and diabetes prematurely claim the lives of 20,000 to 45,000 Canadians who could have been saved by physical activity and healthy diets. Consistent with the report's recommendations for health promoting policies, CSPI advocates that healthy restaurant foods (such as low fat milk, fruit juice, most salads and vegetable-based dishes) be exempt from sales tax, and that GST/PST be applied to prepackaged foods like high saturated-fat regular ground beef and sugary cereals sold in retail stores. CSPI is also recommending a comprehensive reform program for tackling disease caused by poor diet and inactivity that is endorsed by two dozen Canadian health and citizens groups. That program urges federal and provincial governments to: prohibit ads for junk food, video games, etc. directed at children (similar to a 20-year-old Qubec ban on all ads to kids found to be Charter-compliant by the Supreme Court of Canada); conduct an intensive, mass media campaign to promote nutrition and physical activity; include preventative nutrition counselling services under provincial medicare programs; require weight loss and fitness programs and products to disclose reliable evidence of their long-term effectiveness and safety; ensure students receive bi-weekly nutrition and food preparation classes for at least two years, and daily physical education classes every year; require medium and large workplaces to ensure that cafeterias offer healthy menu items, and to enable workers in sedentary desk jobs to get more physical activity; restrict the advertising and promotion of breast milk substitutes (in accord with yet-to-be-implemented international commitments the Government of Canada made in 1981); require chain restaurants to disclose basic nutrition facts, like calories, on fast food menus, and the disclosure of sodium, as well as trans and saturated fat content on full service chain restaurant menus; and improve labelling of packaged foods by requiring nutrition information on fresh meat, poultry and seafood, and requiring that processed foods containing fruits, vegetables, whole grains, or added sugars show the percentage, by weight, of those ingredients in ingredient lists. A federal bill introduced by Liberal MP Tom Wappel, Bill C-398, advocating better nutrition information disclosure on prepackaged food labels and restaurant menus is expected to come to a vote in the House of Commons shortly after Parliament resumes sitting in January 2004. "Many restaurant industry opponents of Bill C-398 have exaggerated the scarcity of menu space and the costs of implementing its nutrition disclosure provisions in the hopes of convincing MPs to kill the bill," said Jeffery. In the April 2003 House of Commons debates, the PC, NDP and Bloc Qubcois party health critics pledged to support Bill C-398. If the Bill passes, it will be referred to the Health Committee for clause-by-clause study.
