A bit of a generic title but i grew up in BC and I can tell you that years ago there were many people in school who along with me ate a ton of junk food and pop for lunch and snacks. Well it seems that British Columbia has banned junk food in schools which is a really great start to showing young people that they need to find an alternative. The touble is that whenever there is a heavy handed method of banning something everyone wil;l want to find a way around it.

Chocolate bars, salt and vinegar chips and ice cold root beers have been expelled from B.C. schools as the government starts the new school year on a health kick.

Education Minister Shirley Bond says a healthy body really does promote a healthy mind, and B.C. schools will be the healthiest in the country.

Junk food has been banned from all public schools and students from kindergarten through to Grade 12 will be required to complete 30 minutes of physical activity a day, or the equivalent of 150 minutes of exercise a week, she said. Read the rest of this entry »

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

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Well just a couple of weeks after I lay into the Canada food guide a new Canada Food Guide is released by the health minister here in Canada. The new food guide looks at serving sizes which I like and junk food which I also like but I have not had too much of a chance to look at the nuances of the food guide which I hope to do later today.

For now go look at the Canada Food Guide, there is a guided tour as well as lots of other information on the official government website.

Tags: Canada, food, food guide, food guide looks, health minister, junk food, the Canada Food Guide

Earlier I mentioned how I like the idea of the Canada Food Guide but I really do not like the ratios of foods. Here is how I would change things if I had the choice.

8 glasses of water a day
I don’t care that water is not food. Water is still a nutrient that people need for a healthy diet and most people do not drink any water let alone a little bit. Adding water to the food guide would be a great addition

3-5 small servings of meat or fish
I know that meat and fish are not th only place to get protein but at least mentioning fish again would add to the options. Also most people think that a serving of meat is an 8 ounce steak, not a can of tuna but the can of tuna is just as good. Your body just can not metabolize a big steak.

3-5 servings of vegetables

3-5 servings of fruit
Why is it that fruits and vegetables have always been lumped together? Fruits are great for their high water content and antioxidants and Vegetables are great for minerals including iron and Calcium. I know that this is a generalization but it would be nice to see people eating more of both fruits and vegetables. Oh, and tater tots and french fries are not a vegetable no matter what my brother in law thinks.

2-3 servings of high fiber grains
The idea of lots of breads I believe is outdated as a nitritous food group, instead I beleive it would be good to have reference to high fiber foods and to have examples.

Serving sizes
Come on governments on both sides of the border, it would be nice to have a better idea, not just in print but in news papers and TV, of what a serving size really is. The biggest poblem facing most people is not the junk and misplaced nutrients but instead it is a lack of idea of what serving sizes really are. A bowl of food or cup of coffee is a great sized breakfast but a giant plate of food is not quite enough for dinner? We need to get the word out about what is a good meal morning, noon, and night.

I know that there is a lot more to a good diet than these few things but I look at this as a guide, a way to look at a days food, not the everything that we eat in a day.

Do you have better ideas? Let me know. I would love to add a few more things to this list in a follow up.

Tags: days food, food, food guide, nitritous food group, the Canada Food Guide

My six year old daughter brought home a copy of the Canada food guide from school a couple of days ago and all weekend she has been comparing our diet with the number of servings of food that the Canada Food Guide says that we should be eating. I am not impressed at the food guide itself but would like to make my own. As some Canadians would know there are always praise and criticisms every time there is a change to the Canada Food Guide and just be reading it it seems that the guidelines are created by the farmers of Canada.

What Foods are in the Canada Food Guide?

5-12 servings of Grain products
5-10 servings of Vegetables and Fruit
2-4 servings of Milk products
2-3 servings of Meat and alternatives

Let’s see where to start. The guidelines set out are very vague. What if I have 12 servings of white bread in a day and five servings of fruit? Does anyone really need 12 servings of grains a day? That would not be balanced. What about the meat? It looks like there is a very small protein component. And why is milk or cheese something that should be mandated? Isn’t the calcium in green vegetables easier for out body to metabolize?

Portion sizes in the Canada Food Guide

The other big problem is serving size. We occasionally see some kind of marketing on what a serving size is and I have dealt with that in this blog before but the fact is that no one knows what the weight of something is. A 50-100 gram serving of steak is about 4 onces and I have not seen a steak less than 8 onces in a restaurant before.

I definitely am not opposed to a food guide I truly believe that anyone that is trying to stay healthy must have some kind of benchmark for what kind of and how much food they should be eating and I am really glad that six year old kids are being taught the essence of healthy eating, I just wish this education would continue because we all know that teenagers basically forget this info and treat their stomach as some kind of science project.

Stay tuned to my version of the food guide later today.

Update – new Canada Food Guide Out

Well just a couple of weeks after I lay into the Canada food guide a new Canada Food Guide is released by the health minister here in Canada. The new food guide looks at serving sizes which I like and junk food which I also like but I have not had too much of a chance to look at the nuances of the food guide which I hope to do later today.

For now go look at the Canada Food Guide, there is a guided tour as well as lots of other information on the official government website.

Tags: Canada, food, food guide, food guide looks, health minister, junk food, the Canada Food Guide