CMAJ • April 22, 2008; 178 (9). doi:10.1503/cmaj.1080025.
© 2008 Canadian Medical Association or its licensors
All editorial matter in CMAJ represents the opinions of the authors and not necessarily those of the Canadian Medical Association.
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Letters

Health Check program

Bretta Maloff, RD MEd

Director, Healthy Living, Calgary Health Region, Calgary, Alta.

As volunteer chair of the Health Check Technical Advisory Committee, I am very proud of the work done by the program to improve the Canadian food supply and guide consumers to products that can be part of a healthy overall diet — a diet that should obviously consist primarily of fresh, whole foods but that can also include other foods. Processed and convenience foods are a fact of life in our society and are not going to go away. Ignoring this reality does not serve the health of Canadians.

Over the last 10 years, we have worked with companies to remove substantial amounts of salt and harmful fats from foods. Products submitted to Health Check are evaluated against 9 criteria: total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, protein, fibre, sugar, sodium, vitamins (vitamin A, vitamin C and folacin) and minerals (calcium and iron). Our criteria are based on Eating Well with Canada's Food Guide.1 We continually update the program's criteria to reflect changes to evidence-based nutrition recommendations.

We know that consumers are confused by the myriad of choices and messages in the grocery store, so we welcome the growing discussion on programs to provide nutrition information on the front of product packaging. That is why the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada agrees with the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health's recommendation to adopt a national front-of-pack program in Canada that is science-based and transparent and that uses objective criteria, the same principles on which Health Check is based. We believe Health Check is a good model worthy of consideration, but not the only model. The most important point is that with one national standard, consumers could compare products and make healthier choices more easily.

Footnotes

Competing interests: None declared.


REFERENCE

  1. Health Canada. Eating well with Canada's food guide. Ottawa (ON): Health Canada; 2007. Available: www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/food-guide-aliment/index_e.html (accessed 2008 Feb 11).




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