What are Canada’s Dietary Guidelines?

Canada’s Dietary Guidelines set out Health Canada’s guidelines and considerations on healthy eating.

Related tools and resources

Canada’s Healthy Eating Pattern¹ is a resource that builds on and complements the contents of this report.

• The objective of the healthy eating pattern is to provide more specific guidance on the recommended amounts and types of foods as well as life stage guidance (such as recommendations for young children and seniors).
• The intended audience is also health professionals and policy makers.
• The healthy eating pattern can be used as an additional resource for developing procurement policies in institutions, such as long term care facilities and hospital settings.

The Healthy eating recommendations in Appendix A translate Canada’s Dietary Guidelines into simple, relevant, and evidence-informed messages. The recommendations form the basis of a mobile-responsive web application that is modern and easy to use. This web application houses tools and resources that will help Canadians apply the guidelines in their daily lives. Examples of tools and resources include:

• An interactive tool² that provides custom information for teens, adults, parents, and older adults in a variety of settings including at home, at work, at school, on the go, grocery shopping, and eating out.
• Web resources, such as factsheets, videos and recipes, to help Canadians apply Canada’s Dietary Guidelines.

Overview of this report

This report is based on the best available scientific evidence. It contains healthy eating guidelines and considerations that are relevant and applicable to the Canadian context.

The report is presented in four sections:

Section 1  focuses on nutritious foods and beverages that are the foundation for healthy eating.

Section 2  describes the types of foods and beverages that can have a negative impact on health when consumed on a regular basis.

Section 3  highlights the importance of food skills as a practical way to support healthy eating.

Section 4  describes the importance of creating supportive environments for healthy eating.

The considerations provide complementary guidance on issues of public health importance, while recognizing the context within which Canadians live, learn, work, and play. This includes considering that the food supply—and people’s ability to access the food supply—varies across regions. Some considerations take into account Canada’s diversity, while others are based on Canadian health statistics and consumption data. Some considerations also reflect factors and conditions that influence food choices and eating behaviours, including the determinants of health.

A full list of the guidelines and considerations is in Appendix B.

How this report was developed

Health Canada developed a multi-step decision making process to establish these guidelines, which is described briefly in Appendix C.

The considerations as well as Section 4 of this report help support the implementation of the guidelines by health professionals and policy makers. They also reflect Health Canada’s population health approach to developing dietary guidance. This approach considers the broad range of factors and conditions that have a strong influence on health.

Throughout the development of this report, Health Canada’s scientists, as well as population health and nutrition experts, collaborated with other Government of Canada departments and agencies. Input was sought from academics, members of provincial and territorial governments, health professional regulatory bodies/organizations, health charities, and National Indigenous Organizations.

In addition, Health Canada considered the results of two rounds of public consultation on the revision of the Food Guide which were held in the fall of 2016 and summer of 2017. This helped to develop dietary guidance that is relevant and clear to the general Canadian population.

Further, Health Canada considered dietary guidelines from other countries to gain a broad perspective on the communication of guidelines, such as how they are developed, their content, and their use in education and health promotion.⁶

What we eat influences our health.

In Canada, dietary risks are one of the three leading risk factors for disease burden, as measured by death and disability combined.⁷ Tobacco use and high body mass index (BMI) are the other two. Chronic diseases impacted by diet—namely ischemic heart disease, stroke, colorectal cancer, diabetes, and breast cancer—are among the leading causes of premature death in Canada.^7,8

In Canada, chronic diseases account for approximately one third of direct health care costs.¹⁶ The Canadian population is aging,¹⁷ faces high rates of obesity,^18,19 and engages in sedentary lifestyle behaviours.^20,21 Thus the impact of chronic diseases is likely to continue to increase, unless we take action to address the many factors that influence what we eat.

The food environment influences what we eat.

The food environment influences our food and beverage choices.²²  For example, the foods and beverages available in homes, retail food outlets, and restaurants can have a big impact on what and how we eat and drink. Moreover, for Indigenous Peoples, food intakes can be negatively influenced by the limited availability of food acquired in traditional ways (such as hunting, fishing, trapping, and gathering), and the numerous barriers to traditional food access.^23-29

In addition to what is available around us, we receive a constant stream of changing (and often conflicting) messages on healthy eating. Food marketing is evolving rapidly, and now includes channels such as social media. This complex and crowded information environment can make it hard for Canadians to make healthy eating choices.

Supporting healthy eating is a shared responsibility.

Canada’s Dietary Guidelines can make an important contribution to nutritional health. Health professionals and policy makers in all sectors and at all government levels can use these guidelines as a resource to support program and policy decisions. For example, policies that reflect these guidelines can improve the food environment in settings such as schools, workplaces, recreation centres, and health care facilities.^{30, 31} Creating supportive environments across settings can help increase the positive influence that dietary guidelines can have on individuals, families and communities. This is further described in Section 4.

Table 1: Scientific reports that included convincing findings^* from extensive systematic reviews of the literature on the relationship between food and health