Canada has released its updated “Food Guide” for 2019.  Later this year, Health Canada will release Part II of the Guide, which will include descriptions of healthy eating habits with recommendations on amounts and types of foods in a balanced diet.  While the changes as a whole shift the focus of the guide to a more plant-based diet, the most notable change is that the guide no longer recommends dairy as a separate category in its recommended diet.

Canada’s Food Guide is similar to the USDA “MyPlate” program, which replaced the Food Guide Pyramid program in 2011.  The two countries’ suggestions are similar, except that now the upper right of the US Guide includes a cup labeled “dairy,” whereas the Canadian guide states over an analogous cup’s image “Make water your drink of choice.”

Health Canada had previously been criticized for allowing the meat and dairy industries to have too much sway over the Food Guide.  According to the BBC, the Director General of Health Canada’s Office of Nutrition Policy and Promotion, Dr. Hasan Hutchinson, stated just before the guide was released, “We were very clear that when we were looking at the evidence base that we were not going to be using reports that have been funded by industry as well.”  Canada’s meat and dairy industries are now bracing for the impact of these new recommendations on Canadians’ eating habits.