What Should We Eat?

Sometimes good advice can be hard to swallow

by ALICIA PRIEST

Nothing says more about us—our tastes, our values, and our politics—than what we put in our mouths. People in nations like ours select food from a massive global smorgasbord, loading their plates not just for survival but for pleasure, status, and good health. Food has become our social and personal signature and that phenomenon is a historical first. More than ever, we believe what my mother did as she urged me to gulp down one more spoonful of mashed turnips: “You are what you eat.”

Into this backdrop falls the new Canada Food Guide, last updated almost 15 years ago. Given what it was, the new guide is great. For the first time, vegetables and fruits are at the top, followed by grain products, then milk and alternatives, and, finally, meat and alternatives. Also welcome is the recognition that nutritional supplements such as multivitamins play a role in disease prevention.

The new guide is a big step forward, and we could all benefit from its advice. Still, it is only a step. Tellingly, it was formed after consultations with “stakeholders,” many from the food industry, including pork, egg, dairy, and cereal producers. Thus, there’s the advice to drink two to four servings of milk or alternatives a day and to eat two to three servings of meat or alternatives per day. Although nutritional science is a social, political, and economic quagmire, the latest news indicates that that much protein, especially from animal sources, does no good.

A guide is only as good as the will of its followers. And while this guide has a considerable following—it is the second-most-requested government publication in the country, behind income-tax forms—what do followers actually eat? Our intentions are good. A 2001 National Institute of Nutrition survey reported that most Canadians cite “health maintenance” as the key consideration when choosing food. Many respondents said they selected or avoided foods based on concerns about heart disease, osteoporosis, diabetes, and cancer. And 80 per cent rated their eating habits as excellent, very good, or good.

Unfortunately, self-reporting is notoriously unreliable. We can get a glimpse into some Canadians’ eating habits by spending 20 minutes at a food court. It’s not a pretty sight. Other than at the Golden Wok, there’s not a broccoli stalk to be seen.

That leaves us with probably the most reliable way to know what Canadians eat—by looking at what flies off grocery store shelves. That’s how Statistics Canada comes up with its “food consumption” data. Here’s what Stats Canada reports about what Canadians ate in 2005: More than half of all vegetables consumed were potatoes and almost half of those were chips or fries; one-fifth of fresh fruit was apples; in the dead-animal area, we overwhelmingly favour beef, chicken, and pork over fish; we consume prodigious amounts of sugar—more than 24 kilograms per person each year. Our three top drinks, by far, are pop, coffee, and beer, with tea, milk and juice trailing behind.

Evidently, our diets don’t come close to measuring up. But even if we followed the food guide, we’d be far from where we should be, according to what some now consider the best eating information. Ironically, the information comes not from any nutritionist or public health body but from American food journalist Michael Pollan. Pollan is the author of A Botany of Desire and the 2006 bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

In a recent, far-ranging essay in the New York Times titled “Unhappy Meals,” Pollan turns conventional nutritional science on its head. He concludes that, when it comes to food, science is more harmful than beneficial. Humans, he notes, have done quite well deciding what to eat, without experts, for a long, long time. Today, eating is the focus of “nutritionism,” an ideology intent on breaking whole foods down into nutrient parts and then selling them in combined and processed forms. In a nutshell, Pollan says to stay away from products bearing health claims. Why?

“Because a health claim on a food product is a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat,” he writes. In the end—and cleverly occupying the first sentence of his essay—Pollan’s recommendation is unlike anything any government food guide would ever utter: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Good advice. Hard to swallow.

Alicia Priest is a Victoria writer who is trying to eat more plants and fewer animals.

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