“Eat your fruits and veggies!”…Every mother’s mantra.

Health Canada has just released the newest version of Canada’s Food Guide in an attempt to re-educate Canadians and update guidelines on how to eat a balanced diet and maintain healthy lifestyles.

Though Health Canada seems to have made a concerted attempt at updating the guide to include different cultural foods, as well as shift the focus from a predominantly grain based diet to the promotion of fruits and vegetables, the finished product still looks like a colourful jumble of animated carrots, bread and eggs.

I sometimes wonder what the goal of the Food Guide is. I thought it was to educate Canadians on how to improve their diet. Though the guide separates foods into four different categories to promote balanced carbohydrate, fat and protein intake, it does little to explain actual nutrition basics.

At the end of the day though, how much education can Health Canada put into a 6 page document that is supposedly intended to be simple and easy to understand? This version of the food guide has already expanded from 2 to 6 pages!

There is a fine line between providing enough clear and understandable information for people to make informed decisions and trying to provide too much convoluted information. I’m wondering whether Health Canada has tipped the scale towards the latter.

I’m the last person to say that understanding nutrition is a simple and straight-forward process (this coming from someone who spent 4 years doing an undergraduate degree in nutritional sciences…). But any topic can become as simple or complicated as you choose to make it.

Keeping with the four food groups of the Canadian Food Guide, my version of the food guide would simply state the following (in order from largest to smallest quantity of your overall diet):

1. 1. Eat fresh brightly coloured fruits and vegetables
   2. Eat brown breads and grain products
   3. Eat skim or low-fat dairy products
   4. Eat chicken, fish and a limited amount of beef
   5. Try to stay away from pre-processed foods (If they’re in a sealed package, they’re probably processed!)

Remember that the key to a balanced diet is variety. Another thing to remember is that if you don’t manage to eat something from all four food groups at every meal of everyday, it doesn’t mean that you are not eating well. You will still get all of your necessary nutrients by maintaining variety throughout the week.

I would like to think that people know what a normal sized portion is. But alas, I’m not even sure that I could tell you. What I can tell you is that Health Canada should know by now that people don’t carry measuring spoons or weights around with them to measure each teaspoon or gram of food they put into their mouths.

Health Canada has also included a last ditch attempt at engaging people to learn about nutrition by including an online “My Food Guide” component. This component could have been used as a great interactive learning tool. However, it didn’t quite work out that way.

Maintaining a healthy diet should not be a daunting task for anyone to take on. Just remember the five simple steps outlined above.

Barring that, remember your mother’s mantra: “Eat your fruits and veggies!”