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.).
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/ .
"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 points:
'Enjoy your food'
'Eat protein'
'Eat lots of vegetables'
'Chose whole grain foods'
Seriously?
This is essentially very traditional approach to food, with noticeably less focus on carbs (we don't work on farms anymore), and also the absence milk, cheese and almost absence of meat which I believe is likely a shade ideological as opposed to nutritional.
It surely is good advice, but it's not specific at all, and essentially boils down to 'eat healthy, don't each junk food'.
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.
> almost absence of meat which I believe is likely a shade ideological as opposed to nutritional.
Finally someone here notice it. Have you also noticed how Canada's New Food Guide looks eerily similar to the much-criticized EAT-Lancet recommendation (reportedly fueled by Vegan propaganda): https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...
Basically, many of their healthy fat oils are actually highly processed (which are not recommended), while the non-processed unsaturated fats (such as olive oil) are not suitable for (high-temperature) cooking.
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
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?
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.
While it is not completely impossible, if political ramifications were the prime drivers, meat, dairy and grain would have a lot more space and would have suffered when comparing to previous version of the guide.
The guide as likely little effect outside the country, its effect is more on small institutional kitchens (daycares, schools, clinics etc.), its content is unlikely to affect international sales. Its political effect is more likely to be felt internally, through perception of people in the affected industries rather than the effect the guide may have on their sales.
Some of the not so favoured are powerful industries what occupy a lot of land across several provinces (wheat), have suffered recently and are getting more politically active (dairy) or are in areas where the party currently in power needs to keep its support for the next election (meat).
In the Pork and apple skillet dinner[1], they recommend using canola oil, a recommendation one doesn't see all that often. With canola oil having been engineered in Canada, is it an oil of choice for Canadians?
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.
INTERVIEWER: Some nutritionists have criticized your pyramid as "floating on a lake of olive oil."
WILLETT: The formal studies that had compared a more moderate fat intake as we've suggested, with low-fat diets, have actually consistently shown that people did as well or better controlling their weight on a moderate-fat diet compared to a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet.
INTERVIEWER: Even good fats are more fattening than good carbs. So they think you're contributing to the obesity epidemic, or there's a risk of that. A tablespoon of olive oil is 14 grams of fat.
WILLETT: There are all kinds of beliefs about the amount of fat in a diet, tremendously strong opinions. What we really need is sound data, and the studies that have been done show that people actually end up controlling their weight at least as well, and usually better, on moderate-fat diets compared to low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets.
INTERVIEWER: Is it okay to get more than 30 percent of your calories from fat?
WILLETT: The evidence is quite clear that it's perfectly fine to get more than 30 percent of your calories from fat, and probably, in fact, it's even better to be getting more than 30 percent of calories from fat, if it's the healthy form of fat. ...
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 Choices," takes you to
which provides about the same amount of detail about healthy versus saturated fats. It also mentions that "the type of fat you eat over time is more important for health than the total amount of fat you eat."
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.
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.
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)
Where's the proof of your assertion that olive oil is not a healthy fat due to the saturated fat content? I'm under the impression saturated fat is a bogeyman similar to cholesterol.
"In conclusion, in this primary prevention trial, we observed that an energy-unrestricted Mediterranean diet, supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts, resulted in a substantial reduction in the risk of major cardiovascular events among high-risk persons. The results support the benefits of the Mediterranean diet for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease."
Another random snippet from same link: "Thus, extra-virgin olive oil and nuts were probably responsible for most of the observed benefits of the Mediterranean diets."
"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"
I know almost nothing about health studies, but I read the abstract you link to and there's no mention of randomized control group or other mechanism to prevent bias.
Tried a quick search and came up with this Wikipedia article:
I read somewhere that a mix of 50% olive oil and 50% butter very closely approximates the lipid profile of human fat. If saturated fat is bad for you, why does the body choose to store "bad" fats? Wouldn't evolution have weeded out saturated fat storage since it's "bad" for your cardiovascular system?
> What we really need is sound data, and the studies that have been done show that people actually end up controlling their weight at least as well, and usually better, on moderate-fat diets compared to low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets.
In my experience, and what I've read, relatively higher fat food satiates better. If you're relatively less hungry, you have a better chance to resist overeating and boredom eating.
Canada.ca is a recipe website now and it's what HN always wanted: a recipe with no weird preface personal stories about grandmother's or something drinking tea.
The reason for the stories, I think, comes to a matter of US copyright law. For the most part, recipes themselves (ingredients and basic steps) are not protected under copyright. Any extraneous fluff added to the article is, though.
That, and the longer you sit on a site, and the more you have to scroll, the more likely you are to click on an advertisement and earn them some revenue.
The stories are there because you have to be Don Draper to convince people to eat some of the recipes people put on the internet.
I’ve seen macaroni and cheese recipes that should have been called mayonnaise w/ pasta. One recipe for Spanish rice, wish I’d saved the url just to prove it existed, called for ketchup and soy sauce. I’m not sure if that was a prison recipe or if someone actually thought it was good and served it to their family.
IMO there is a huge need for curation and review on the recipe sites, not just the mindless screen scraping that’s been the norm for so long. And you might not know it from watching the food network but there are other genres of food besides Italian and “tacos”.
I reckon this is influenced by the pioneering Brazilian food guide [1] released in 2014, which was created in partnership with the Universiy of Montreal[2].
New guide, same as the old guide, minus dairy as its own category, and carbs are de-emphasized.
This seems pretty non-controversial.
The old food pyramid suggested having as many carbs as you could handle, and made it seem like milk and meat were absolutely vital.
The new take just lumps those into protein and suggests proteins as a whole should be about 25% of your diet.
While no guide could possibly please everyone (there's a diet trend for every possible food combo out there), this seems like a reasonable baseline to me.
> Great Job, Canada. They've shot down many of the lobbying companies when publishing this.
They only shot down diary, meat and juice industry[1], while conveniently ignoring mentioning of lobbying from others (plant-based foods).
Canada actually produces over 50% of the world's supply of lentils and they also grow a large amounts of various grains, legumes that they may be looking to push and make a profit for[2].
The whole food guide is extremely biased and hardly anyone here in HN seems to get it, lol.
My food guide is to learn from examples: How average people of my age and older look like in different parts of the world? Are they healthy? What do they eat? What their habits? etc.
A people's traditional diet does not necessarily correlate to their longevity, there are many other factors one needs to take into account (way of life, access to healthcare, access to food, etc)
Yeah. That recipe looks pretty rough. I hate it when people try to transform unhealthy dishes into healthy "treats".
Just serve pasta with olive oil, some sort of acid (lemon juice, rotating cast of vinegars, tomatoes), and maybe a little grated sharp cheese if you really need that.
Honestly, I'd rather just eat barley, farro, or bulgur in a bowl than try to force whole grains into crumbly pasta. But I guess that's a matter of taste.
The big problem with this dish is the relative lack of umami. Sauteed mushrooms (shitake, portabella) really help here if you don't want to use meat. Or nutritional yeast really does the trick here. Depending on your palette, various fish sauces also help, though most Canadians probably aren't adding fermented fish products on everything.
I was even more concerned about the margarine. I think it’s pretty established by now that cholesterol and saturated fat is a myth. Might as well eat butter then.
Readit News
Compare it to this: https://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/archived_proje...
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/ .
It seems to stick to more traditional lines of avoid saturated fats (butter, ghee,coconut oil) and favour olive oil, canola oil etc.
And reduce fat in general
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 points:
'Enjoy your food' 'Eat protein' 'Eat lots of vegetables' 'Chose whole grain foods'
Seriously?
This is essentially very traditional approach to food, with noticeably less focus on carbs (we don't work on farms anymore), and also the absence milk, cheese and almost absence of meat which I believe is likely a shade ideological as opposed to nutritional.
It surely is good advice, but it's not specific at all, and essentially boils down to 'eat healthy, don't each junk food'.
Seriously consider this:
https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/healthy-eating-recommendatio...
It's the page on 'how to enjoy your food'.
"tasting the flavours" "being open to trying new foods" "developing a healthy attitude about food"
Seriously - a page devoted to instructing us to 'taste the flavours' of food.
Here the section on your 'eating environment':
Influences on eating and drinking. These can include:
distractions where you eat who you eat with what you are doing while you are eating
Eating environments can affect:
what you eat and drink the amount you eat and drink ow much you enjoy eating
It's really an eerie thing to read.
I should add: the recipes look really good however.
Finally someone here notice it. Have you also noticed how Canada's New Food Guide looks eerily similar to the much-criticized EAT-Lancet recommendation (reportedly fueled by Vegan propaganda): https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/diagnosis-diet/20190...
Would like more clarification on the saturated fats front, though (compare coconut oil, butter, palm oil, trans fats).
The guide as likely little effect outside the country, its effect is more on small institutional kitchens (daycares, schools, clinics etc.), its content is unlikely to affect international sales. Its political effect is more likely to be felt internally, through perception of people in the affected industries rather than the effect the guide may have on their sales.
Some of the not so favoured are powerful industries what occupy a lot of land across several provinces (wheat), have suffered recently and are getting more politically active (dairy) or are in areas where the party currently in power needs to keep its support for the next election (meat).
https://www.choosemyplate.gov/
Both use a pretty similar graphic and both dedicate 50% of the plate for fruit and vegetable.
I'm Canadian and the milk industry seems like a much bigger political issues (and it was already one after the USMCA).
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/canada-food-...
[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/canada-food-...
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/frontline/shows/diet/intervie...):
INTERVIEWER: Some nutritionists have criticized your pyramid as "floating on a lake of olive oil."
WILLETT: The formal studies that had compared a more moderate fat intake as we've suggested, with low-fat diets, have actually consistently shown that people did as well or better controlling their weight on a moderate-fat diet compared to a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet.
INTERVIEWER: Even good fats are more fattening than good carbs. So they think you're contributing to the obesity epidemic, or there's a risk of that. A tablespoon of olive oil is 14 grams of fat.
WILLETT: There are all kinds of beliefs about the amount of fat in a diet, tremendously strong opinions. What we really need is sound data, and the studies that have been done show that people actually end up controlling their weight at least as well, and usually better, on moderate-fat diets compared to low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets.
INTERVIEWER: Is it okay to get more than 30 percent of your calories from fat?
WILLETT: The evidence is quite clear that it's perfectly fine to get more than 30 percent of your calories from fat, and probably, in fact, it's even better to be getting more than 30 percent of calories from fat, if it's the healthy form of fat. ...
===
EDIT: formatting
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 Choices," takes you to
https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/healthy-food-choices/
which states in the second line of text "Choose foods with healthy fats instead of saturated fat." That text is (non-obviously) a link to
https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/healthy-eating-recommendatio...
which provides about the same amount of detail about healthy versus saturated fats. It also mentions that "the type of fat you eat over time is more important for health than the total amount of fat you eat."
Finally, the "Further Reading" section links to
https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/nutrients/fa...
which goes into much more detail, and even provides links intended for industry and health professionals for anyone looking for yet more information.
While the Canadian guide's layout is different from the Harvard Healthy Eating Plate, I'd say the Canadian guide has fat covered pretty well!
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.
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)
It seems to disagree with your statements.
"In conclusion, in this primary prevention trial, we observed that an energy-unrestricted Mediterranean diet, supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or nuts, resulted in a substantial reduction in the risk of major cardiovascular events among high-risk persons. The results support the benefits of the Mediterranean diet for the primary prevention of cardiovascular disease."
Another random snippet from same link: "Thus, extra-virgin olive oil and nuts were probably responsible for most of the observed benefits of the Mediterranean diets."
I know almost nothing about health studies, but I read the abstract you link to and there's no mention of randomized control group or other mechanism to prevent bias.
Tried a quick search and came up with this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascul...
In my experience, and what I've read, relatively higher fat food satiates better. If you're relatively less hungry, you have a better chance to resist overeating and boredom eating.
That, and the longer you sit on a site, and the more you have to scroll, the more likely you are to click on an advertisement and earn them some revenue.
I’ve seen macaroni and cheese recipes that should have been called mayonnaise w/ pasta. One recipe for Spanish rice, wish I’d saved the url just to prove it existed, called for ketchup and soy sauce. I’m not sure if that was a prison recipe or if someone actually thought it was good and served it to their family.
IMO there is a huge need for curation and review on the recipe sites, not just the mindless screen scraping that’s been the norm for so long. And you might not know it from watching the food network but there are other genres of food besides Italian and “tacos”.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/2/20/8076961/brazil-food-guide
[2] https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/brazils-revolutio...
This seems pretty non-controversial.
The old food pyramid suggested having as many carbs as you could handle, and made it seem like milk and meat were absolutely vital.
The new take just lumps those into protein and suggests proteins as a whole should be about 25% of your diet.
While no guide could possibly please everyone (there's a diet trend for every possible food combo out there), this seems like a reasonable baseline to me.
As for the recipes they list... omg no.
It's not perfect, but it's a good start.
They only shot down diary, meat and juice industry[1], while conveniently ignoring mentioning of lobbying from others (plant-based foods).
Canada actually produces over 50% of the world's supply of lentils and they also grow a large amounts of various grains, legumes that they may be looking to push and make a profit for[2].
The whole food guide is extremely biased and hardly anyone here in HN seems to get it, lol.
--
[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-new-food-guid...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3uewoEocYY
Mac and cheese with a veggie twist
* 375 mL (1 ½ cups) whole grain macaroni or fusilli * 10 mL (2 tsp) soft non-hydrogenated margarine
Just serve pasta with olive oil, some sort of acid (lemon juice, rotating cast of vinegars, tomatoes), and maybe a little grated sharp cheese if you really need that.
Honestly, I'd rather just eat barley, farro, or bulgur in a bowl than try to force whole grains into crumbly pasta. But I guess that's a matter of taste.
The big problem with this dish is the relative lack of umami. Sauteed mushrooms (shitake, portabella) really help here if you don't want to use meat. Or nutritional yeast really does the trick here. Depending on your palette, various fish sauces also help, though most Canadians probably aren't adding fermented fish products on everything.
Hah, am (a very white) Canadian, and fish sauces are the only non-Vegetarian thing I'm still stocking in my house.
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