“Chocolate milk saved my son’s life,” Andrew Scheer said. So he has promised to rewrite the dietary guidelines if elected this fall.
After years of dairy featuring prominently in the Canada Food Guide, the newest version does not use the word ‘dairy’ anywhere in its main text, merely urging Canadians to make water their drink of choice and to ’eat protein foods’, which a picture of what looks like yogurt in the midst of a pile of nuts, pulses, meats, fish, and tofu. Scheer continued:
What’s ironic is that the newest guide has been lauded globally for its refusal to bow to industry pressure. Its authors did not use any industry-backed studies and relied only on the top nutritional studies to formulate their suggestions, which are simple, straightforward, and focused on proportions, rather than portion sizes.
Health Canada/Promo image
He said he “truly believes” his own son’s life was saved by chocolate milk, as he was such a picky eater between ages 2 and 6, subsisting on toast and bacon, that Scheer and his wife turned to chocolate milk as a solution. “Where was he gonna get his calcium and other vitamins? And he loved chocolate milk and he would drink chocolate milk by the tumbler-full.”
I have difficulty taking anyone seriously who raises a young child on chocolate milk and talks like it’s a health food. Nor do I feel particularly compelled to entrust the running of my country to someone who can’t even get a preschooler to eat a balanced diet – or, worse yet, thinks they’re doing it but is very clearly not. This isn’t rocket science.
Doctors have called the comments “intensely stupid and uninformed.” Federal health minister, Ginette Petitpas Taylor, is similarly unimpressed, telling the CBC,
Scheer also wants to abolish the plan to put bold labels on food products warning against high levels of saturated fat, sugar, and sodium. He said such a measure would have a “very negative effect” on the dairy industry, nor does he like the top-down interference: “I don’t need the government to come along and put a big red sticker on something just because somebody in an office thought that I shouldn’t be eating that. I think it’s not based on sound science.”
The problem is that science doesn’t always back up one’s personal preferences, which apparently Scheer has yet to learn. This is just one more reason why I won’t be voting Conservative in the fall.
