Fixing the Problems on Canada's Food Guide

Some of you may remember the blog post I wrote for the NCVA blog a little while ago, on teaching kids about healthy vegan nutrition. In that post, I mentioned how the dietary recommendations of Canada's Food Guide were influenced by the dairy, meat, and egg industries, according to this CBC article. For example, the 2003 version of the Food Guide was revised by a panel that included food industry lobby groups. More shockingly, when the 1992 revision of Canada’s Food Guide was released, the meat, dairy, and egg industries successfully lobbied the government to increase the recommended number of servings of these products, according to the CBC article. You can see the effect that these lobby groups had on the government-endorsed dietary recommendations in the article "Canada's Food Guides from 1942 to 1992" on the Government of Canada's website-- in 1982, the Food Guide had 2 servings of "Meat and Alternatives" and 2 servings of "Milk"; but in 1992, these numbers increased to 2-3 servings of "Meat and alternatives" and 2-4 servings of "Milk". These new, increased recommendations continue to exist on the most recent Food Guide to date.

Canada's current Food Guide consists of four food groups: Vegetables and Fruit, Grain Products, Milk and Alternatives, and Meat and Alternatives. In school, children are taught that the recommendations on the Food Guide comprise the fundamentals of a healthy diet. Growing up, I, too, assumed that the Food Guide was based upon scientific fact. More recently, however, science has been finding something different: meat, dairy, and eggs actually increase the risk of many chronic diseases, while a vegan diet is a very healthy way to eat and can prevent certain diseases.

Although many vegan activists are already spreading the message about the healthfulness of veganism, it isn't just activists who are willing to point out the health benefits of an animal-free diet. Here are some statements on veganism and plant-based diets from just a few high-profile organizations around the world:

• Dietitians of Canada: "A healthy vegan diet has many health benefits including lower rates of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer."
• American Dietetic Association: "It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases."
• World Health Organization:
• "Specific recommendations for a healthy diet include: eating more fruit, vegetables, legumes, nuts and grains; cutting down on salt, sugar and fats. It is also advisable to choose unsaturated fats, instead of saturated fats and towards the elimination of trans-fatty acids."
• The WHO has declared some types of meats to be Group 1 carcinogens (right up there with cigarette smoking) and Group 2 carcinogens.
• According to a study conducted by students at the University of Oxford, if the world went vegan, millions of human lives would also be saved due to dramatic reduction in the incidence of chronic disease: "A global switch to diets that rely less on meat and more on fruit and vegetables could save up to 8 million lives by 2050, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by two thirds, and lead to healthcare-related savings and avoided climate damages of $1.5 trillion (US)... ...They found that adopting diets in line with global dietary guidelines could avoid 5.1 million deaths per year by 2050. Even greater benefits could come from vegetarian diets (avoiding 7.3 million deaths) and vegan diets (avoiding 8.1 million deaths)."
• British Dietetic Associaton: "Well planned vegetarian diets [including vegan diets, which they mentioned as a form of vegetarianism] can be nutritious and healthy. They are associated with lower risks of heart disease, high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, certain cancers and lower cholesterol levels."
• United Nations Environment Programme: "A substantial reduction of impacts would only be possible with a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products." (Found on page 82 of this document, or page 84 of the PDF)

Based in the United States, an organization of medical professionals called the Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine more actively promotes a vegan diet as a way to prevent and reverse chronic disease. They've devised a new food guide made up of "The New Four Food Groups", which include Fruit, Vegetables, Legumes, and Whole Grains.

Click on the image to see it in full-size!

When one combines the health, environmental, humanitarian, and, of course, animal-related reasons to live vegan, it becomes obvious that the government ought to start supporting it, too!

So, why am I telling you all this? Well, Health Canada is now working on its next revision of Canada's Food Guide. From October 24, 2016 to December 8, 2016, Health Canada is holding an online public consultation on the Food Guide to get the public's input; all Canadians are welcome to submit their opinions through the Government of Canada's website.

In Mid-2017, the government will present a revised version of the Food Guide to the public, at which time Canadians will have another opportunity to provide their feedback on the revisions. After that, the new materials will be published.

I've already completed the questionnaire. On one page of the questionnaire, I was asked whether I find the current four food groupings in the Canada Food Guide helpful. I clicked "no", and then a box came up asking, "Why do you say that?"

Here was my response:

"I don't bother using the Food Guide, because the current recommendations simply doesn't apply to vegans like myself. The Food Guides' current food groupings are actually promoting ill health among Canadians. Furthermore, the current Four Food Groups are not at all accommodating for vegans and others who follow a dairy-free diet.
Dairy is not essential to the human diet. Although it is the perfect food for baby cows, it simply was not designed for human consumption. Some may claim that dairy is healthful because it contains calcium and protein, but the fact is, there are plenty of healthier plant-based sources of protein and calcium available. According to the Dieticians of Canada, calcium can be found in abundance in leafy green vegetables, fortified soy products, tahini (sesame seed butter), and many more vegan foods; protein can be obtained from soy products, beans, grains, nuts, and nut butters, to name a few.
According to the Dieticians of Canada, “A healthy vegan diet has many health benefits including lower rates of obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and certain types of cancer.” (Source: http://www.dietitians.ca/Your-Health/Nutrition-A-Z/Vegetarian-Diets/Eating-Guidelines-for-Vegans.aspx)
I would like to propose 4 new food groups: Fruits, Vegetables, Grains, and Legumes/Nuts. The latter category combines the current two food groups of “Dairy and Alternatives” and “Meat and Alternatives” into an overall “Plant-based Protein” food group. The Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, an organization of medical doctors in the United States, also promotes this idea (Source: http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vsk/vegetarian-starter-kit-new-four-food-groups).

I hope that Health Canada can start promoting healthy eating in the ways I’ve mentioned above. I also hope that Health Canada can specifically mention the word “veganism” as a healthy diet on the Food Guide itself."

I also gave more information, such as statistics on the environmental benefits of veganism, in response to another one of their questions.

In addition, one thing that Health Canada seems to be focusing on in this revision of the Food Guide is reducing sugar consumption. If you are going to be filling out this survey, you may wish to point out that dairy products are actually quite high in sugar-- for example, there are 13g of sugar in one cup of 1% M.F. cow's milk.

That being said, we must not hesitate to voice our ethical views about veganism-- if Health Canada is aware that people are vegan for ethical reasons, they may be more likely to accommodate vegans in their next version of the food guide.

If you believe that veganism should be better represented and promoted on the Food Guide, please consider taking a few minutes out of your day to fill out the questionnaire. Feel free to copy and paste the quotations from the organizations I've listed above in your responses.

Thank you for caring!

Opinion Article: "Canada's Food Guide Should Recommend a Vegan Diet"

An opinion essay I wrote, titled "Health Canada Should Recommend a Vegan Diet", was published on the Epoch Times website on November 2-- you can find it on the Epoch Times website here.

Although the Epoch Times website makes it look like I wrote this Op-Ed on behalf of the NCVA, please note that I only wrote it as a representation of my own opinions.

A longer blog post on Canada's Food Guide is coming soon!

Logo of the Epoch Times

Bringing Education on Plant-Based Nutrition into Schools

I have recently written a blog post for the National Capital Vegetarian Association's blog (I'm currently a member of the NCVA's Board of Directors) that discusses and shares some resources for bringing education on plant-based nutrition into schools. The resources that I linked to in the post are in English, and in the comments section, I've also linked to some that are in French. You can find my post at https://ncva.ca/2016/09/04/giving-kids-a-plant-based-education/
Have a great day!

Environmental and Animal rights Issues go Hand-in-Hand: Part 1

Hello!
Wow, it's been a long time since I last posted anything on this blog. However, I still am an animal rights activist, as I have been doing some offline activism over the past few months. Now I'm starting to think that perhaps it's time to get back to blogging... Hmm... Well, I'll finish writing this post first, and then decide. :)

(Just a side note: Guess how many pageviews my blog has gotten over "all time" by now? 35869! I'm so lucky to have the opportunity to help raise awareness in this way.) Now, onto today's topic...

Environmentalism and animal rights go hand-in-hand. If you are an environmentalist, you should be concerned about issues related to animals, and if you're an animal rights activist, it's important that you also care about the environment. Let me elaborate on both of these points, okay?

In part 1 of this two-part series, I'm going to talk about why environmentalists should care about animals, and why they should lead a vegan lifestyle.

Reasoning:

• Wild animals: Wild animals are essential contributors to ecosystems all over the globe. If one wild species goes extinct, this could have a huge, cascading effect on the entire ecosystem. In order to preserve balance in Nature, animal species and populations must be protected from human exploitation.
• Domesticated animals: The farming of animals is very inefficient, using up a lot of energy, land, and resources. Here are some shocking facts:
• More than one third of all raw materials and fossil fuels used in the United States are used in animal farming.¹
• It takes more than 10 times the amount of fossil fuels to produce one calorie of animal protein than it does to produce one calorie of plant protein. What's more, "The world’s cattle alone consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people—more than the entire human population on Earth". ¹
• 30% of Earth's land mass is now used to produce animal-derived "foods" (this includes the land that is used to grow feed for the animals, and grazing land).¹ According to another source, 45% of Earth's total land is used for livestock.²
• The amount of water it takes to produce a day's worth of food for a meat-eater is over 4000 gallons; for a lacto-ovo vegetarian, it takes 1200 gallons; and for a vegan, it takes only 300 gallons. ¹
• According to Vegan Outreach, "Expansion of livestock production is a key factor in deforestation, especially in Latin America where the greatest amount of deforestation is occurring – 70 percent of previous forested land in the Amazon is occupied by pastures, and feedcrops cover a large part of the remainder."³
• Livestock farming accounts for 27% of the U.S.'s total methane emissions.⁴

These are merely a few of the facts. I found one website called "Truth or Drought" that provides an in-depth look at why plant-based diets are essential to fight water scarcity. Please check out the website at http://www.truthordrought.com/-- it looks very interesting!

And, according to a 2010 United Nations report, "Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production", only "a substantial worldwide diet change, away from animal products" would be able to significantly reduce impacts of agriculture worldwide. You can read the document itself, or you can see it reported in the Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/jun/02/un-report-meat-free-diet.

Here's an infographic from Cowspiracy that provides even more information:

To those environmentalists who think, "Oh well, I'll just eat less meat in order to reduce my environmental impact, but not go vegan", please remember that animal agriculture is not only environmentally damaging, but it is also cruel beyond what most people can imagine, as well as inherently unethical because the animals' rights are being violated through exploitation. The only ethical solution is to go completely vegan. Veganism is easier than most people realize! There are lots of good sources of information on how to go vegan. You can download a free vegan started kit PDF from Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine at http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/vsk (the "Download" link is on the right-hand side of the page). Some other sources would include http://vegankit.com/be, http://veganoutreach.org/, or chooseveg.ca.

As you can see, becoming vegan is an important part of being an environmentalist. In part 2 of this series, I'm going to discuss why people who care about animal rights should also be concerned about the environment!


Sources of facts:
1. http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/facts-on-animal-farming-and-the-environment/
2. http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts/
3. http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/environment.html
4. http://extension.psu.edu/animals/dairy/nutrition/nutrition-and-feeding/diet-formulation-and-evaluation/carbon-methane-emissions-and-the-dairy-cow

Animal-Rights-Friendly Presents to Give and Recieve

Hi!
Every time Christmas and my birthday approach, I make a wishlist of what presents I'd like to get, since my family asks for ideas of what to get for me. I love the idea of giving and receiving gifts that do good in the world, so I'm planning to ask for some animal-rights-related things on my own next wishlist. If you are making a wishlist for your birthday, Christmas, or another holiday, why not consider asking for a gift that helps the animals, or at least something related to animal rights?
On the other side of things, if you don't know what to get someone else for their birthday or a holiday, you could also consider giving them a gift that "keeps on giving" instead of giving them something that they may never use. (Of course, if you're the one giving the gift and you know the recipient is really never going to use a vegan cookbook or activist material, you might not want to give it to them. That being said, many non-vegans can still use, learn from, and enjoy a vegan cookbook, so whether or not each gift is suitable for a person really depends on the situation and the person.)
Here are some ideas of gifts that you could give or ask for:

• A donation to a charity, such as the Vegan Society.
• A membership to an animal rights or vegan organization, such as your local vegetarian/vegan association, The Vegan Society, or Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine. (Bonus: you may get some cool free stuff when you become a member of some of these organizations.)
• A subscription to a vegan magazine, like VegNews magazine, or one of the other vegan magazines.
• Leaflets, buttons, posters, booklets, pamphlets, brochures, stickers, and other activist material!
• Clothes, lunchbags, mugs, stationery, and bags that have animal rights slogans on them.
• Books/movies to educate yourself or others more in-depth about veganism and animal rights issues.
• A vegan cookbook!
• Other things that will help you with your animal rights activism!

 

If you have any other ideas, feel free to post them below!

Cat

P.S. Have you heard about the Worldwide Vegan Bake Sale in April/May? I may write more about that another time, but either way, here is the link to the website: http://www.veganbakesale.org/veganbakesale/index.html.

Clearing Some of the Confusion Surrounding Vegan Diets!

A lot of people nowadays seem to be afraid of carbohydrates. Once, when I was taking a "Philosophy and Animal Rights" weeklong mini-course, a fellow student told me that she wouldn't go vegan because "Carbs make you fat."
Other people are less focused on carbs and more focused on "getting enough protein"... They say, "Oh, if you're a vegan, you have to be extra, extra careful to get enough protein!" and "You have to combine your proteins!"
I think that these people are really just mis-educated on nutrition. Here are some facts:

• In reality, carbohydrates from unprocessed, whole-food sources are very healthy! Whole grains, beans, fruits, nuts, seeds, and vegetables all contain a combination of carbohydrates, fat, and protein. According to Becoming Vegan by Brenda Davis, R.D., and Vesanto Melina, M.S., R.D.,
     "Populations consuming animal-centered diets, rich in fat and protein and low in carbohydrates, have high rates of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity, and other chronic diseases. By contrast, those consuming plant-based diets, rich in carbohydrates, have significantly lower rates of disease." (page 77)
  Of course, whether or not you're a vegan, junk foods such as chips and pop aren't good for you, so it's important to opt for plant-based whole foods such as veggies, fruits, whole grains, etc. instead!
• Most people eating a standard North American diet get about twice as much protein as they need per day! Consuming excess protein, especially from animal sources, can actually lead to health problems.
• As a vegan, it is quite easy to meet and even exceed your daily protein requirements. It is recommended that people get about 10 to 15% of their calories from protein, according to No Meat Athlete. Studies of vegans in the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia over the past 60 years or so have found that vegans get around 11.3-12.2% of their calories from protein. (Source: Becoming Vegan by Brenda Davis, R.D., and Vesanto Melina, M.S., R.D.) If you're still worried about getting enough protein, you can consider using a plant-based protein powder, although this shouldn't be necessary for most people.
• As for the protein-combining theory, it's actually not true. As long as you eat a variety of foods throughout the day, you'll be getting a good combination of amino acids-- you don't have to worry about combining your proteins to form a "complete protein" at every meal. (Source: Becoming Vegan)

You can read more about protein in the vegan diet in the book Becoming Vegan or on websites such as VeganHealth.org and Vegetarian Resource Group.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine points out some of the risks of low-carb diets on their website here:
http://www.pcrm.org/health/diets/ffl/newsletter/no-carbs-no-way
And, if you're interested in reading "Five Protein Myths" on PCRM's website, you can read this here: http://www.pcrm.org/health/reports/five-protein-myths

If you haven't gone vegan yet, please do so today! Veganism is a compassionate, non-violent choice. It promotes non-violence towards animals, the environment, and your health. You can find information on going vegan at https://www.vegansociety.com/try-vegan/how-go-vegan. You can also read Mercy for Animals' trendy and colourful Vegetarian Starter Guide (if you live in the US, you can order one at http://www.mercyforanimals.org/vegan-starter-kit.aspx, or, if you live outside the US, you can see the PDF online for free at http://www.mercyforanimals.org/VSG.pdf).
And, if you're already a vegan, I hope you can use this information to help others become vegan, too!
Have a nice day, and thanks for reading!

Picture from http://veganfoodpyramid.com/

Tell Quaker Oats To Say No To Dairy!

Hi again,
I know this is the third post I'm doing in a relatively short amount of time, but I've just received an e-mail from the Physician's Committee for Responsible Medicine (which happens to be one of my favourite organizations!) announcing that Quaker Oats is planning on doing a campaign this October promoting dairy consumption. According to PCRM, "MilkPEP, a milk promotion program funded by the dairy industry, is behind the promotion."

As PCRM points out,
"Milk is one of the top sources of saturated fat in the American diet, exacerbating America's No. 1 killer: heart disease. It also increases the risk of certain cancers. Just two and a half servings of milk per day increase the risk of prostate cancer by 34 percent. And research from the Iowa Women's Health Study shows that women who consume more than one glass of milk per day have a 73 percent greater chance of developing ovarian cancer, compared with women who drank less than one glass per day."

This is shocking news in itself-- but when you consider the very big fact that the dairy industry is cruel and unfair for the animals, it becomes even more horrifying that Quaker Oats would promote the consumption of milk at all.

Why is the dairy industry cruel? Here's a very brief list of some of the reasons:

• Mother cows are taken away from their babies.
• Cows are usually kept in cramped, confined conditions.
• Female cows are artificially inseminated, and must be repeatedly impregnated in order to keep producing milk.
• Male calves are often sold to spend the rest of their lives in veal crates, while female calves are either cycled back into the dairy system or slaughtered. Veal calves are purposely given low-iron diets so that they become anemic, therefore having pale flesh. They are not allowed to run around, because exercise would toughen their muscles and make their meat tougher.
• Cows are often fed corn and other "foods" that are unhealthy for cows to eat.
• Animals have the right to be free. They are not "tools" for ours to use. Cows should not be our milk-producing machines. If dogs, for example, were treated the way cows are on dairy farms and "milked" to provide a product for human consumption (after all, all mammals produce milk), there would be public outrage (rightfully so!). Cows are curious, sentient creatures, just like dogs are. It is cruel to treat cows the way they are routinely treated, and it is wrong for them to be "owned" at all.
• Many more reasons!

You can see a video showing some of the horrific things that happen to dairy cows here: http://milkiscruel.com/ The website Milk is Cruel is put together by Mercy For Animals. If you'd rather see less graphic pictures and read up on factory farming, you can go to http://www.think-differently-about-sheep.com/Animal_Rights%20factory%20Farming%20.htm. Think Differently About Sheep is a REALLY cool website.

PCRM has a petition that you can sign to tell Quaker Oats that promoting dairy is not acceptable. You can sign the petition by following this link!