If you’ve ever tried to figure out the black and white nutrition labels that are required on packaged food products in Canada, then you’ll know they are difficult to understand. It’s resulted in the love/hate relationship that most Canadians have with the labels. It’s easy to like the fact that they are mandatory and give us some kind of information about what is actually in the foods we eat, at least nutritionally speaking. But their long list of frustrating flaws also makes them easy to dismiss.
The inability of the labels to properly convey the nutritional value of the food in a particular package gives process food manufacturers a way to avoid exposing just how nutritionally lacking many of their products are.
To help address some of the concerns and obvious flaws, and following consultations and feedback from over 10,000 Canadian individuals and organizations, Health Canada has proposed changes to nutrition label guidelines that will come into effect on August 26th, 2015.
The following are among the proposed changes:
- Standardized Serving Sizes – Depending on the type of food in a package, differing brands and varieties will have to quote the food’s nutrition values based on the same serving size which will allow consumers to more easily compare one product to another.
- A Daily Value for Sugar – As the result of some high-powered lobbying by the sugar industry in the U.S., from where Canada took its first cues for nutritional labelling, there has never been a requirement to quote the recommended daily consumption value for sugar. Until now. The previous guidelines allowed products like carbonated soft drinks to carry four times the recommended daily consumption of sugar in a single can without having to admit it.
- Bolder, Easier to Understand Label – Always a good thing.
What’s been left out:
- No Differentiation Between Added Sugar and Natural Sugar – We eat way too much added sugar in our diets. There’s still no way to tell how much. Or which products will help us eat less added sugar.
- Percent Daily Values are Still Confusing and Often Misleading – Even if sizes are standardized between similar products, it will still be difficult to calculate your consumption levels across different products. As one example of how the percent daily figure can be misleading, Health Canada recommends a daily intake of 1,000 to 1,500 mg of sodium (salt) each day. They also say that we should not exceed 2,300 mg a day. Most nutrition labels quote the daily recommended value for salt as a percentage of the upper limit outlined by Health Canada, not the recommended daily intake.
The changes are at least at step in the right direction towards giving us a better understanding what we eat. But they are not all good news. In addition to the remaining flaws in the labelling system, there is the concern that the new guidelines will instill a false sense of security in Canadians that the labels are an absolutely reliable source of information.
If you want to make sure you eat a balanced diet full of all the nutrition you need for a healthier lifestyle and to manage your weight, talk to one of the nutritional consultants at your local Herbal One Centre today.