INDEPTH: FOOD
Food FAQ
CBC News Online | January 20, 2004
1. What is our meat supply eating? (Lorraine Taylor, Quebec)
Reporter: Heather Hiscox
Cattle spend their day in near constant mandibular motion, grabbing, grinding, gulping down some 50 kilograms of feed every day. Their diet is as carefully balanced and monitored as a high performance athlete's.
David Loweth runs one of Ontario's largest dairy farms. On his and most cattle operations, the bucolic image of old Bessy munching in a pasture is a distant memory.
A cow's size hasn't changed. What has is the business of farming, the pressure to produce more milk or more meat faster and cheaper, so food costs for the consumer stay low and profits for the producer as high as possible.
"It [milk production] certainly is economically driven," Loweth says. "From 4,000 to 5,000 litres [before factory farming], we're now looking at cows that average 13 to 15,000 litres per cow per year.
"As long as the cow remains healthy, and that's certainly our number 1 priority, the health of the cow and the longevity of the cow, then we do try things to push for higher production."
One of the things farmers do is add concentrated supplements to cattle feed. The bulk of a cow's diet, 60 per cent, is hay and grass, alfalfa and corn silage. Forages, they're called. Grains make up about 20 per cent: high energy corn, barley, sometimes bakery products like cereal and cookies. Ten per cent is vitamins and minerals, and the final 10 per cent is protein. That protein is derived primarily from plant sources, soybean meal is the most popular. David Loweth's animals get only plant protein.
So does the herd on Bruce Bamford's Alberta ranch.
"I guess we're all products of our environment and how we're raised. I was raised by a father that said that, you know, cattle eat plants. That's what cattle are. They're herbivores," Bamford says.
Not entirely. Cattle, dairy cattle especially, are also fed protein supplements from a source linked to controversy and concern: animals, fish, poultry, pigs and blood – the remnants of butchered animals, cleaned, dried, ground into meal and added to cattle feed.
Sergio Taluso is the feed program co-ordinator for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. He says it's been a long-standing practice to feed small amounts of animal protein, in part because it's high quality and low cost.
"We're not turning herbivores into carnivores," Taluso says. "Part of the other rationale is because there is a large meat processing industry in North America and these materials, until recently in the advent of BSE [bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the proper name for mad cow disease], have been safe sources of ingredients to be used in animal feeds."
RELATED: BSE & Mad Cow
It used to be considered safe to feed meat and bone meal from sheep, cattle and other ruminant animals that chew their cud, but that ended with the mad cow crisis in England. Thousands of cows contracted BSE by eating feed made from sheep infected with a similar disease. Then, some people who ate contaminated meat from those cows developed the human variant and died. It took years, but Canada finally responded in 1997 with a feed ban that prohibits the use of ruminant meat and bone meal in cattle feed. The CFIA now does annual inspections in all commission feed mills.
American author John Stauber has been writing about BSE for more than a decade. He's critical of the feed ban, thinks there are too many loopholes to stop mad cow from spreading. Under the ban, cattle parts can be used in feed for pigs and chickens. They, in turn, may wind up being ground up and fed back to cattle. And cattle blood can still be used in cattle feed and in milk replacement products for weaning calves.
"We're completely out of step with what we know are the proven scientific means of addressing this problem," Stauber says.
"We really don't have any evidence that those particular practices pose a risk of transmitting the disease back to ruminants," the CFIA's Taluso says.
But John Stauber says there is evidence, so better to err on the side of protecting animal and human health.
"The feed policy should be this: animals that are consumed by people should be vegetarians. It's really that simple. No livestock should be fed slaughterhouse waste. That's the policy that's worked in Britain and Europe," Stauber says.
It's a policy that at least one branch of the Canadian government was contemplating as far back as 1998. Minutes of a Health Canada conference call obtained in 2001 under access to information cite a scientific study that found, "...blood cells can carry the agent that causes BSE. This has implications insofar as the current exemption of blood in the prohibition of ruminant tissues in ruminant feeds." Nothing changed then, but there are strong indications things are about to change soon.
"It seems that the spread of the disease is largely linked to the continued feeding of contaminated feed, that we need to possibly take additional measures to change our feed ban to prevent, you know, future infections of other animals," Taluso says.
David Loweth believes the feed ban will be tightened, but for the wrong reasons.
"We're consumer driven. The marketplace is all powerful," he says. "It may not be based on good science, but if that's what they want, that's the product they'll end up with. And it may cost more at the end of the day, but they'll be willing to pay that."
And where there was reluctance in the past, now the industry seems willing to comply to regain the trust of trading partners abroad and consumers who've discovered "you are what you eat" isn't enough anymore. It's what what you eat ate that counts.
Melodie Yong, a dietician and nutritionist with the Healthy Heart Program at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver joined Peter Mansbridge to answer viewers' questions.
2. Organic food
Quite a few viewers had things to say and questions to ask about organic food.
Reporter: Kelly Crowe
For $45 a week, Front Door Organics will drop off enough organic produce to feed an average family. It's vegetables on wheels.
But what are consumers getting when they buy organic? There is no mandatory standard in Canada, but under the voluntary national standard, organic food has no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers and no genetically modified plants. But add that all up and the question remains, is organic food more nutritious?
The experts say no. Dr. Venket Rao, a professor of nutrition at the University of Toronto, says, "As a nutritionist I can tell you that the nutritional quality of organic foods and conventional foods is pretty much the same."
So far, studies comparing organic vegetables with conventional vegetables have shown no difference in the vitamin and mineral contents. But if organic foods are not healthier, are they at least safer? Experts say not necessarily because conventional food is already safe.
"So these pesticides go through a fairly good rigorous process of testing before they're approved to be used," Rao says.
But for consumers who want to avoid them as much as possible, organic foods do have lower pesticide residues.
"There are several ways to reduce pesticides, and organic agriculture simply says, let's try to get rid of them altogether," says Ralph Martin of the Organic Agriculture Centre of Canada.
When it comes to livestock, organic farmers avoid antibiotics and cattle are fed only grasses, so there are no concerns about mad cow disease. Still, scientists who study organic agriculture say it's not food safety that is the big question; it's environmental sustainability. So when someone buys organic, they're really buying a philosophy.
"Some of the research that has been done has shown that there is more biodiversity on organic farms, there tend to be more birds, more species of birds, and more numbers of birds. There are more micro-organisms in the soil," Martin says.
Even the organic industry agrees that organic food costs more than conventional food, and although organic choices seem to be growing in the supermarket, they still account for just two per cent of all retail food sales in Canada.
3. Vegetarians
My partner's been a vegetarian for the past 10 years and I've always wondered how safe and healthy his choice is. He eats dairy products and free-running eggs, but absolutely no meat or fish. What does one have to do to make sure that their vegetarian diet is safe or healthy, and is it safe for children to be vegetarians? Rachel Kastoryano (Thornhill, Ont.)
Peter Mansbridge:
Some good questions there. Why don't we break it in two, first of all, the children angle. Is it a good thing to have a strict vegetarian diet for a child?
Melodie Yong (Dietician, St. Paul's Hospital):
I think first of all we have to clarify what vegetarian means. There are different types of vegetarianism.
- If you're a vegan, you completely eat no animal products whatsoever.
- If you're lacto-oval, then you would include milk and eggs.
- If you're lacto-vegetarian, you'd include dairy.
- If you're semi-vegetarian, you would still include some animal products like chicken and fish.
With children, the more restrictive you are with diets, the more carefully you have to plan out the meals. [That's] not to say that vegetarianism isn't good for children, it depends on the restrictions there are and what types of foods. It's just a matter of planning out those meals and making sure you're getting vital nutrients that are important for growth, like calcium and iron, vitamin D and especially protein.
Peter Mansbridge:
What about for adults, do you have to be as careful as an adult?
Melodie Yong:
That's right. Adults definitely have to be careful; people become vegetarian for different reasons and you want to make sure that you're not taking something out, the meat products, and not replacing it. So what I mentioned before, like protein, would be the biggest one. I often see clients and they come in and all they're eating is cheese and lots of carbohydrate foods, so breads and grains, and they wonder why they're not feeling that great, and they're still missing some vital nutrients.
It's really important, especially if you don't include dairy products, to make sure you get high calcium plant foods which would be in things like almonds or sesame seeds and dark green vegetables like broccoli or kale. So it just takes planning, and I would definitely recommend people talk to a registered dietician to make sure they're covering all their bases.
4. Soy Products
I keep hearing that taking soy products is useful for everything from high cholesterol to menopause symptoms and I would like to find out more about this. How do you get more soy into your diet and how do you know you have enough to achieve the desired benefits? (Sharon Fortin, Batawa, Ont.)
Melodie Yong:
Another excellent question. Soy, we hear so much about it, you think, soy this, soy that. Actually, soy is an excellent food to have. It's a plant-based food, so it's going to be naturally lower in fat and no cholesterol. It's not an animal food. So having diets high in soy has been shown to reduce your risk of heart disease, osteoporosis, may reduce your risk of some cancers. There's definitely a lot of health benefits, but you want to make sure you're getting the right amount.
In terms of health benefits for heart disease, the recommended amount is about 25 grams of soy protein. So when you look at foods, what does that mean? To get about 10 grams of soy protein would be about a cup of soy milk, or about a half a cup of tofu, or three tablespoons of soy nuts, about two to three servings a day of those foods. It's just not a matter of soy milk today and not for another two to three weeks. It seems to be the plant compounds, phytoestrogens, that give the benefit for the soy.
Peter Mansbridge:
What about what they should be aware of if they're on soy?
Melodie Yong:
Right. So in terms of eating soy, there are some groups of people that need to be more careful. So women that have been diagnosed with breast cancer or at a higher risk of breast cancer or on the drug Tamoxifen, there seems to be evidence showing that with the phytoestrogens, they basically mimic estrogen, it's a very weak estrogen, this and can stimulate cell growth, which is something you don't want in cancer, obviously. So in those groups, I would definitely recommend being cautious with the amount of soy that you're eating. There's no definitive answers to how much or if it actually is a real threat, but it's better to be on the cautious side.
5. Diet and illness
Peter Mansbridge:
Several people wrote in to say they noticed connections between diet and illness. They wondered if a diet change could help with serious conditions such as autism.
Reporter: Maureen Taylor
Joshua Kelly is 12 years old and he's already tried 13 different medications for his two disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity (ADHD) and autism. The medications calm him sometimes, but he still has angry outbursts, and the drugs are making him gain weight. His mother Elizabeth has reached her limit.
"At this point in time in my life, I'm tired of poisoning Joshua with medications and that's the way I see it. If it's peace and comfort I'm looking for, I'm going to have to get it in another alternative," Elizabeth Kelly says.
In her desperation, Elizabeth Kelly is ready to try anything, and like many parents of kids with behavioural disorders, she's looking at Joshua's diet.
"We really do have to escape the junk food generation if we want to be well," says Dr. Michael Lyon, who researches ADHD.
Because no one knows what causes disorders like autism and ADHD, many parents, like these attending a Vancouver seminar, have looked to diet. For ADHD's, some try eliminating sugar and food dyes. Parents of autistic children sometimes eliminate wheat and milk. Anecdotally, some say it helps, but large studies have never borne that out.
Doctors agree children need good nutrition for proper brain development and there are some kids with real food allergies that can affect irritability, but that doesn't address the majority of kids with these problems. One area that needs further research: doctors know about a third of kids with autism also suffer from bowel disorders. That leads some to wonder if there's a connection between the gut and the brain.
However, experts like Dr. Wendy Roberts, a developmental pediatrician, say it's too early to say stomach problems cause autism.
"We're following about 200 babies," she says. "We have no evidence that a disturbance in the gut has actually caused the brain to become autistic, there's none at all, but there's some evidence that some of the early genes, genes acting in-utero before the baby is born, may have an effect on both gut and brain."
"Literally, our brain is crying for nutrition," Lyon says.
Dr. Michael Lyon is convinced diet plays a role in many behavioural disorders. Today he helps parents use diet and supplements to treat their children, something he began researching when his own son was diagnosed with ADHD.
"I started applying dietary changes to my son's life and bit by bit, his situation turned around over a period of about three years," Lyon says.
But some doctors worry that if parents are too stringent about what their kids eat, they'll have a bigger problem on their hands.
"We've had some kids shut down and stop eating altogether as a result of going on the diet," Dr. Roberts says.
Elizabeth Kelly realizes that for Joshua, there's no quick fix.
"I don't believe that there is a 100 per cent cure rate out there for children that are ADHD and autistic. I believe that a lot of the time, you're just winging it," she says.
Joshua isn't ready to give up all his bad eating habits. In fact, the hardest task may be removing the unhealthy foods from the kitchen cupboards
6. Obesity
I was wondering if certain socio-economic groups in society are more vulnerable or less vulnerable to becoming obese? Yeganeh Nassirinejad. (Scarborough, Ont.)
Melodie Yong:
First off, to clear up that everyone is vulnerable to obesity, no matter what sort of area you're from. In the right environment, anyone can be at a higher risk, but we have found that there is a higher prevalence of obesity in lower socio-economic status, and part of that is going to be access to health services, access to education of making the right choices and just having the tools to make the informed decisions.
7. Milk
I'm curious whether or not milk is good to drink. As the mother of a young family, I'm purchasing a lot more of it than I have before. Information suggests that we don't need it after a certain stage in our development, so how healthy is milk? (Jessica Albers, Calgary, Alta.)
Melodie Yong:
I think it's good for everyone. Milk is an excellent healthy food. I think we have to be careful where we get health information from these days. With the span of the internet, anyone can go and put a subject in and get a whole bunch of information. You want to make sure that the health information you're getting is from credible sources using scientific studies and based on science.
With milk, I think the biggest thing, one of the big advantages, is having a high source of calcium from dairy products. Oftentimes people think having dairy isn't healthy and some of that comes from the fact that dairy has higher sources of saturated fat, but if you're looking at the lower fat choices, one per cent milk, skim milk, low-fat yogurt, they offer excellent sources of calcium.
You don't have to drink milk to get calcium. You can get it from non-dairy sources, but you just have to plan again a little bit more carefully. Soy milk is fortified with calcium, so that would give you a good source, but you tend not to absorb as much of the calcium from soy milk as you would cows' milk. As I mentioned before, with plant-based foods, the calcium in tahini or broccoli, sesame seeds and that would also be good sources, but again, you have to plan it out. Four cups of broccoli would equal the amount of calcium in one cup of milk. So just things to keep in mind.
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Guidelines for Healthy Eating
1. Enjoy a variety of foods.
2. Emphasize cereals, breads, other grain products, vegetables and fruit.
3. Choose lower-fat dairy products, leaner meats and food prepared with little or no fat.
4. Achieve and maintain a healthy body weight by enjoying regular physical activity and healthy eating.
5. Limit salt, alcohol and caffeine.
Source: Health Canada
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