Canada's Food Guide

[1] The Health Canada website states: "Food guides are basic education tools that are designed to help people follow a healthy diet.

"[2] Canada's first food guide was introduced in 1942 to provide guidance to Canadians on proper nutrition during a period of time when wartime rations were common.

The guide identified six food groups: Milk; Fruit; Vegetables; Cereals and Breads; Meat, Fish, etc.

The Meat and Fish group was expanded to include cheese and eggs, and a recommendation was added to use iodized salt.

The five food groups were kept; the reference to butter, which had been incorporated into the section on Breads and Cereals in 1944, grew to include "or fortified margarine",[2] an engineered spread which was by that date manufactured from vegetable oils due to wartime shortages of tallow and lard.

Milk needs of expectant and nursing mothers were underlined, and citrus fruit made its debut because it was available in stores for the first time as developments in highways and trucks allowed for their transport from Florida to the Canadian market.

A change in philosophy was noted too: whereas previous food guides had been based on a "foundation diet", whereby diet was identified with "minimum requirements" and those persons with "higher needs" were instructed to consume more food, the 1992 guide identified a "total diet" approach, under which the range of "different ages, body sizes, activity levels, genders and conditions such as pregnancy and nursing" theoretically were accommodated, and with the caveat "that energy needs vary".

A "Food Guide Facts - Background for Educators and Communicators" booklet was intended to help teachers plan their classes.

The guide expanded to six pages in a fold-out pamphlet, with new content addressing the multicultural population of Canada.

Instead of the cod-liver oil of days gone by, Canadians over 50 years of age were now invited to consume vitamin D dietary supplements.

The Dietary Reference Intake (DRI) tool from the American Institute of Medicine was introduced to the Canadian taxpayer.