As a media dietitian and nutrition expert, I’m frequently asked to weigh in on new diet books and trends. Yesterday I appeared on CTV National News to respond to claims by an American journalist who suggested that Canada’s Food Guide and U.S. dietary guidelines are largely responsible for the obesity epidemic.
The headline used by some outlets—“Canada’s Food Guide is Killing You”—is sensational. The journalist in question, bestselling author Nina Teicholz, knows how to generate attention with provocative statements. She tied her arguments to her book, The Big Fat Surprise, and argued that the obesity epidemic in North America began with our dietary guidelines.
Teicholz points out that despite apparent improvements in some behaviors—more vegetable consumption, reduced intake of sugary sodas—obesity rates remain high, and she interprets this as evidence that food guides are to blame. That interpretation ignores important context: while more people may be choosing vegetables and drinking fewer sugary beverages, many Canadians still fall far short of the recommended daily servings of fruits and vegetables.
There is some truth to criticisms of past “heart healthy” guidelines that promoted low-fat diets in the 1990s. The issue wasn’t reducing fat itself but what replaced it. The food industry responded by producing low-fat versions of treats like ice cream and cookies that were often higher in refined carbohydrates and added sugars. Replacing fat with processed, sugary foods contributed to poor health outcomes—an avoidable consequence of focusing on a single nutrient rather than overall food quality.
If every single food group is presented as harmful, people understandably end up confused about what to eat. That’s why practical, evidence-based guidance matters.
Canada’s Food Guide has positive elements: it encourages plenty of vegetables and fruit, recommends limiting foods high in salt and sugar, and promotes water as the preferred beverage. Health Canada is currently reviewing recent nutrition science and international dietary guidelines to update the guide. This is an opportunity to improve clarity and usefulness for Canadians.
Is the guide perfect? Not at all. Several areas need refinement.
For example, recommending 6–8 servings of grains per day can be excessive, especially when many of those servings come from starchy sources like potatoes, which impact blood sugar and contribute calories differently than non-starchy vegetables. It makes more nutritional sense to distinguish between non-starchy vegetables (leafy greens, cruciferous vegetables, peppers, etc.) and starchy vegetables and grains. Non-starchy vegetables should form the bulk of the plate.
The guide’s advice to consume 1–2 tablespoons of unsaturated fats daily is useful but too vague. Not all unsaturated fats are equal for health. The typical North American ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids is closer to 17:1, far from the ideal balance, and that imbalance promotes inflammation linked to chronic diseases such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and obesity. Much of the excess omega-6 comes from cheap seed oils—sunflower, corn, soybean—used in processed foods. These oils are not equivalent to omega-3 sources like oily fish or to nutrient-dense foods like nuts and seeds.
Monounsaturated fats—olive oil and avocado, for example—have heart-health benefits and a neutral effect on inflammation. They are central to the Mediterranean dietary pattern, one of the healthiest eating styles studied. The Food Guide should provide clearer, actionable guidance about the types of fats to prioritize and which processed oils to limit.
My central critique is that the guide does not emphasize food quality strongly enough. Taking a cue from Brazil’s food guide, we should make it explicit that heavily processed foods should be limited, whole minimally processed foods are the healthiest choices, and cooking at home supports better dietary patterns.
Updating the guide does not mean swinging to extremes. We don’t need to eliminate grains entirely, nor should we broadly encourage increased consumption of red meat and butter. Nutrition advice too often oscillates between extremes. My approach, and what I emphasize with clients, is practical: focus on what people can include regularly rather than presenting a long forbidding list of off-limits foods.
In the CTV interview I stressed that we must consider the overall dietary pattern rather than vilifying specific foods or macronutrients. Evidence supports eating a mostly plant-focused, fiber-rich diet that includes reasonable portions of whole grains, lean proteins or legumes, healthy fats from nuts, seeds and olive oil, and plenty of vegetables.
Some popular authors and commentators without clinical nutrition experience use alarmist messages that may generate headlines but also increase public confusion. Those scare tactics can impede progress by obscuring balanced, evidence-based advice.
For balance, CTV asked cardiologist Dr. William Davis—author of Wheat Belly—to debate the Food Guide. Dr. Davis presented anecdotes and assertions from his book, claiming dramatic improvements in various conditions after removing wheat. Anecdotes don’t equal evidence: when people remove refined wheat and replace it with more vegetables and whole foods, weight loss and improved health markers often follow because of reduced calories and better nutrient density, not because a single ingredient is inherently evil.
Whole grains offer valuable nutrients and protective compounds. Lumping all grains together as “bad” is poor science. Responsible experts have criticized extreme claims, and many nutrition professionals emphasize that whole, minimally processed foods are the foundation of a healthy diet.
Canada’s Food Guide should continue to evolve, prioritizing food quality, clear guidance on healthy fats, and practical advice that helps people build balanced, sustainable eating patterns that support long-term health.