Canada’s New Food Guide 

(and why does it look like that?!) 

As you may have already seen in the news or elsewhere, Health Canada has updated the Canada Food Guide for the first time since 2007. A lot has changed since then, visually we’ve gone from a rainbow-esque picture seen here, to a simple, divided plate of mostly vegetables, and no dairy at all, find it here.  

The old Canada Food Guide suggested that we focus on servings depending on our age and gender. They also advised that we include all four ‘food groups’ in a meal; these include: vegetables and fruit, grains, milk & alternatives, and meat & alternatives. They even measured out how much one specific serving is really specifically and as much as it was just a guideline, we shouldn’t really be doing that anyway.  

The new Canada Food Guide gives us more recommendations than serving sizes and measurements. The picture is more practical since it shows sort of what a balanced plate would look like. With water as the drink of choice, the plate is split with ½ vegetables and fruit, ¼ proteins like nuts, seeds, beans. The change here, is that they’ve made the amount of beans etc, equal with the amount of meat and fish we eat. For the ¼ plate of grains they include quinoa, rice, a small piece of bread, and whole grain pasta, not bad! I love a good mac and cheese recipe (here’s my favourite!) but we shouldn’t be having a whole plate full of pasta as a meal especially since white pasta is most people’s choice.  

A big change they’ve made is that they now encourage us to eat food with friends, cook more often, enjoy our food, and more. Food choices are investments, as Bethenny Frankel said; and that has a lot to do with investing your time too, because if you’re not willing to put time into meals you’ll end up unsatisfied. Eating food with friends, cooking more, avoiding fast foods and food marketing encourages us to put down our phones and spend time with real people which I think is really important in our society as we are often so consumed by technology a lot of us are starting to lack those social skills.  

I think these changes are beneficial because in today’s world everyone is busy, all the time. We work absurd hours and going through a McDonald’s drive thru often sounds more appealing than going home and cooking a meal after a long day. There are tons of ways for people to try and incorporate healthier eating choices in their busy lives and for myself, that means meal prepping and planning two weeks in advance. I schedule more complex meals on days I’m off and easier meals when I work; it’s a simple change but I never find myself scrambling for a quick (and what usually would be unhealthy) meal. So in conclusion I definitely agree with the changes to the food guide and think that it’s a good step to people eating better and also practicing good food habits. 

sources; 

Zafar, Amina. New Food Guide Unveiled Without Food Groups or Recommended Servings. January 21, 2019. https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/canada-food-guide-unveil-1.4987261