Canada is making solid progress with its sugar labeling regulations. On June 12, Health Canada released its latest changes on food packaging that will hopefully help consumers decide which food is best for them.
However, one lament of food analysts is the possibility that legislation might take too long. After getting the public's input on the proposed laws, there is no deadline for the agency to publish the final draft.
Previous changes to labels were fully implemented with by companies in three years. Smaller companies were given five years. The current five year plan may result in more lifestyle diseases which could have been avoided.
The rationale is that companies must be given time to exhaust their packaging inventory before any new ones are printed.
According to Abby Langer Nutrition, the changes are welcome and are "definitely an improvement." She is happy with the progress of standardizing serving sizes for similar products. All cans of soda, for example, could show the nutritional value of three-quarters of a can.
For other kinds of food which are difficult to measure, the number of pieces of said food can be the basis of nutrient information. For example, two cookies have this much sugar in them.
Information across different brands can be standardized by showing nutritional content of their products totaling the same weight.
These new labels will also group all kinds of sugar into one category and will not distinguish between natural sugars and the so-called "added sugars". This means that honey, glucose, fructose, molasses, and malted barley are all clumped under the label "sugar" and will not have multiple entries.
The reason for this is that the body does not distinguish between intrinsic and added sugars and deals with both in the same way.
The Canadian public has until August 27 to comment on the latest iteration of the labeling law.
