Health Canada is jumping on the sugar bandwagon…kind of

July 25, 2014

For the first time since they were made mandatory in 2007, the Nutrition Facts labels are getting an overhaul, and sugar is (finally!) receiving the attention it should. A few other long-needed improvements are on the list as well in an overall effort to make the labels more useful and easier to read. This is probably one of the most significant undertakings I’ve seen from Health Canada in a while!

Nutrition factsHere are some of the highlights:

Standardized serving sizes

Proposed is to make serving sizes standard across similar foods to make different brands easier to compare. For example, right now you’ll find yogurts sold in tubs with suggested serving sizes of anywhere from 1/2 cup to 1 cup, meaning you have to do a bunch of mental math to see how they compare, bite for bite. Once the changes are implemented, all yogurts sold in tubs will have a serving size of 3/4 cup on the label.

For some other examples, all breads will use 2 slices as the standard, crackers will be the number that closest approaches a 20g serving and so on.

This change gets a double thumbs up from me!

Added sugars to be itemized separately

Just like we now have sub-categories for saturated fats and trans fats on the Nutrition Facts label, added sugars will be given its own line. This means buying healthy foods like muesli or a fruit and yogurt parfait won’t set off the sugar alarm the way they do now; milk sugar and fruit sugar will not be part of the “added sugar” line, only the extra sweeteners will. (The one exception is fruit concentrate because, really, that’s just sugar.)

This is a huge improvement and I hope this will make it easier for those of us who wish to reduce our intake of added sugars to make it significantly easier to do.

The one disappointment I have is that while Health Canada is now including a %DV (daily value) for sugar, they have chosen to use the value of 100g of total sugar (20% of calories) as their daily limit, rather than the 24g (6 tsp, or 5% of calories) of added sugar recommended by both the WHO (World Health Organization) and AHA (American Heart Association). In my opinion, this is a huge copout by Health Canada in favour of the food industry; the evidence against added sugar is mounting, but without some guidance on specifically how much added sugar we should allow, the lines are blurred between added sugar and natural sugar and it’s much more difficult to know what you’re getting. I think it’s important that consumers see that their can of regular soda pop, at 39g of sugar, contains 140% of their DV for added sugar, or that a medium iced cappuccino from Tim Hortons (46g sugar) contains 184% of their DV. As it is proposed the numbers won’t look so bad. We’ll see the pop as 39% of our total sugar, not thinking about the sugar contained in the fruit and dairy products we are consuming each day.

Added sugars to be grouped together in ingredient list

As you’re probably aware, ingredients are listed on the package in order of weight, from highest to lowest; however, sugar has so many forms that, up to now, manufacturers could disguise how much is in a product by listing each form separately. Glucose, sucrose, dextrose, high fructose corn syrup, rice syrup, agave nectar, cane sugar, beet sugar, glucose/fructose, and more are all different names for sugar. Many products are primarily sugar by weight, but when listed separately they don’t appear so bad. The new proposals recommend that added sugars all be grouped together as in the example below.

ingredient list Notice how in the above example fancy molasses is the second ingredient, after wheat flour? After the changes take place, fancy molasses, brown sugar, and sugar all get lumped together so it is blatantly obvious that sugar is the primary ingredient in the food. Just wait to be surprised at how many foods are going to be affected…

There are several other changes, all of which are well thought out and should serve their intended purpose of making the Nutrition Facts more useful. If you’re interested in learning more, you can check out this website. Better still, Health Canada is seeking public input on the changes until Sept 11, 2014, so click on “Participate now!” and you share your opinion. I did. Maybe if enough of us say something, they’ll use the %DV for added sugar instead…now’s our chance to make a difference!

 

 

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