Mary Bush, “the director general for Health Canada’s office of nutrition and planning,” visited my nutrition class yesterday. I loved her.

Recently, she’s taken a lot of flack for revising Canada’s Food Guide. For example, changing the range of fruit & vegetable servings from 5-10 to 4-9 (not to discourage people from eating fruits and vegetables, but in order to include younger children in the food guide, and to reflect where Canadians are realistically at, currently, in their consumption of fruits and vegetables, and to reflect the fact that the average activity level of Canadians is sedentary, which means most people do not depend on higher servings of any of the food groups.) Also, suggesting that Canadians eat 1/2 of their grains as whole grains, instead of suggesting eating ONLY whole grains (again, reflecting where Canadians are currently at, and that eating 1/2 whole grains would represent a MARKED improvement, but also reflecting the fact that refined grain products and white flours are enriched with folic acid [a critical B-vitamin in the development of babies' neural tubes] and the fact that the term ‘whole grains’ itself is not yet regulated and so is highly variable.)

Some of the criticisms have been downright inflammatory (like calling the new Food Guide ‘obesogenic’) and almost sound as if they’re coming from people who Ellyn Satter would describe derisively as ‘nutrition enthusiasts,’ or people with agendas.

Dr. Yoni Freedhoff is a self-described ‘bariatric physician.’ In case you didn’t know, bariatrics is the field of medicine devoted to eliminating fat people by any means possible, including (but not limited to) gastro-intestinal surgery. As you can probably tell, I’m not a big fan of this particular ‘field’ of ‘medicine,’ since I believe that most bariatricians are opportunistic fat-phobes who realize there is a lot of money to be made in the current climate of obesity hysteria (’obesysteria?’)

Dr. Freedhoff (his blog is over here) also sounds like he’s read a bit too much Fast Food Nation. I read it too, and I found it very interesting and enjoyed reading it, but I also found it somewhat biased and alarmist.

Dr. Freedhoff also has a big problem that the agricultural industries of the US and Canada are involved in developing the food guides for both countries. Now, I trust the food industry about as far as I can throw them, BUT I made the argument long ago that developing a food guide that is not based on your country’s agricultural production is just STUPID, especially if you believe in environmental sustainability.

The problem is, even with things like organic foods, a lot of our food gets shipped in from elsewhere. This not only makes nutrient loss more likely (not to mention loss of quality and yumminess), but it also REQUIRES THE USE OF FOSSIL FUELS. So. Say you decide to eat organic because you believe in leaving a light footprint on the earth…but your organic food is shipped in from, say, Chile. And has used tonnes of fuel to reach your store. In my opinion, not exactly the best way to go about leaving that light footprint. Not to mention the fact that the term ‘organic’ is also not regulated, so you can’t be sure of what you’re actually getting.

Our diets need to be based on what is available to us. Now, the agricultural industry may seem like a big-bad-scary power, and sometimes their lobbying efforts do support that view, but, shit, it’s what we GOT. It’s the food we grow, where we are. To not take that into account when planning an average national diet is just insane.

I like the idea of eating a Mediterranean diet as much as the next guy. I like reading the research on longevity and diet. The only problem with all of this is, I ain’t Mediterranean. There’s NO PROOF that the Mediterranean findings on health and longevity will apply to me. Transplanting health benefits from a certain ethno-cultural diet onto a different ethno-cultural group is not exact science, and changing people to a non-familiar way of eating is not that easy.

Several of my professors have impressed upon me the need for immigrants to Canada to continue to eat culturally, whenever possible. We are literally a country of immigrants, so our training in dealing with the public naturally focuses a lot on newcomer issues. People can actually get sick if they move to a strange place and have nothing but strange food to eat. And despite the apparent North American assumption that we don’t have our own inherent culture, including cultural foods (which is another long diatribe for another day), we DO. Those of us who were born and/or raised in North America have certain eating patterns, certain familiar foods we depend on as our major source of important nutrients (and I’m not talking about fast food here. I’m talking about general stuff like wheat, certain meats, corn, potatoes, etc.) And if, one day, in the name of health and longevity, we completely up-end that familiar pattern in order to follow the diet of a culture an ocean away, we might end up the worse for it.

Nutrition science is not black-and-white. Foods that may look bad on certain nutritional scales might actually be the best choice for the people who are accustomed to them. Because, GET THIS, our bodies deal with food differently than calculators do, and everyone’s nutrient requirements are different — sometimes radically different. Our bodies are not bomb calorimeters. This is biology, people, and we are animals, not machines.

Anyway, the article regarding Dr. Freedhoff’s criticism of the new food guide is here. I might add that this was not a peer-reviewed article, but the fact that it was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal instead of some newspaper or glossy magazine inferred a certain credibility that was then picked up by major national news outlets. Way to go, [Spin] Dr. Freedhoff.