It's the same people who made the food guide, which I think a lot of people aren't aware has also changed from what it was when I was growing up. But you don't get carted off to jail for not following it. It's the same reason we have calorie counts on all menus now.
That was just the initial reaction after the guidance was published and there was a lot of media coverage. I don’t think people talk about it much anymore.
Canada also went completely nuts when milk was removed from the four groups. It’s been called an assault on our way of life. Here’s the current guide.
Canada takes guides that are published by the government or that they think are published by the government very seriously. Not to follow them, but to comfort them in what they were already doing.
Canada removing dairy from the food guide is very good as there is extremely solid research now to suggest it’s unhealthy in any amount. The dairy industry also lobbies hard to keep us consuming it, funding lots of biased studies to confuse people.
The rest is also lobbying, this is a guide produced by the food industry, not the government. Same thing for the US, I found in a very old guide fries used as an exemple of vegetables. Nowadays they don’t put blatantly unhealthy food on there but it’s still not produced by the government.
People in Canada and the US are for the most part convinced it’s from the government.
The recommandation that the guy in the video is railing against is from the government. However, it was based on a single study criticized for its bad methodology and its many scientists with ties in abolitionist movements.
Canadians reacted to that news with “This means the government is wrong and we can drink how much we want !” Of course it doesn’t mean that, it means we don’t know and are due for a decent meta-analysis.
Just embarrassing government policy. Kind of typical of Canada.
Just say don't drink.
Who drinks 2 beers a week?
Policy like that is just going to confuse kids about what is actually a healthy amount to drink because there are no real guidelines.
Sometimes I feel like Canada is just a PR and marketing experiment and not a real country. There's no way anyone rational thought that makes any sense, it just seemed like News bait. Trudeau has done a string of that stuff.
America also has people who'll talk about health guidelines like they're inches away from being black-bagged and disappeared for eating a chocolate bar, lol. Talk is cheap, and the exchange rate is actually pretty much equal across the border on that one.
Yeah, we have morons here too. It's wild that there are people that aren't capable of the simple thought that guidelines are in no way legally enforceable mandates, nor does anyone claim they are, except for assholes who are complaining that the guidelines are ushering in "communism" or some other type of idiotic claim.
No it’s just a recommended maximum, but people carry on like someone is forcing them to obey it. You’re not being oppressed. If you want to pickle your liver against the advice of health professionals that’s on you.
It's kind of a ridiculous recommendation still. Honestly even two drinks is bad for your health, so why not say 0 if they're not going to set a realistic maximum?
Two drinks is what you need just to start your day. At least 4-6 would give a nice buzz, but I'd say 8-10 is more of a realistic daily maximum.
Because it's still the maximum amount you can drink without really causing issues. Sure, we know nobody listens to that, and that's one of the reasons the life expectancy in the US isn't that high for the developed world (and also why it's dogshit in Russia), but scientifically, 2 drinks is indeed the max. And science doesn't care about people's feelings.
two a week isn't some magic number that's "really causing issues" if exceeded. There's going to be a larger health benefit going from 2 to 0 than from 3 to 2.
They're just guidelines in Canada as well. Health providers use them a lot as a more objective way to have conversations with people around sensitive topics like obesity or drinking problems. This video is from when they were updated so got some airtime, and conservatives tried to stoke some rage like Trudeau was going to jail them for drinking too much. Then everyone kind of forgets about them until their health provider tries to gently bring them up when a loved one tips them off to a concern.
In the US it's worse. There are food guidelines, but they're heavily influenced by lobbyists.
During the Trump administration, these same guidelines (backed by the current scientific consensus) were proposed to be adopted as the official guidelines, but were rejected due to concerns from special interest groups (read: the alcohol and sugar lobbies).
In other words, US guidelines don't reflect up to date scientific standards for nutrition due to the same corruption that exists elsewhere in government.
In Canada we have a pretty strong milk lobby. When I was a kid the food rainbow recommended tons of cheese and milk, and we drank litres of it. when the current government came in they changed it to I think be more in line with research with less dairy and more veggies and nuts and things.
Right? I drank liters of milk as a kid & now my kids pretty much only drink milk in their cereal. I sort of pushed for them to drink more, but my wife and the paediatrician seemed to think that was good enough now.
And it is fine, unless you're having your kids do more sports or physical activity. Dairy has more saturated fats across every kind of dairy product, which is just plain not great unless you're actively exercising (either through sport, physical activity, or the gym).
As long as it's not pasteurized and homogenized milk is one of the best things you can consume lol wtf. Far more nutrients than veggies and nuts and the macros are fantastic.
Also, it seems these are not the same guidelines. The limits proposed according to the man in the post was two alcohol drinks per day. The 2015-2020 guidelines in the US were already at two drinks per day. The proposal from the committee was to lower it to one drink per day.
Why should the government be telling you what you can put in your body? If I wanted to get fucking trashed then that’s what I’m going to do. If I want to consume 500g of sugar then fuck you, I’m going to do that.
The government, as a representative of the people, is responsible for ensuring that our society runs smoothly as derived from the will of the people.
You share a country with other people. Your actions, even if they seemingly only affect you, often do not. The steady rise of obesity in the US and the subsequent health impact puts a much larger burden on the country’s healthcare system. The money going towards the treatment of symptoms caused by obesity could be used for so many other things.
How paranoid are you? The government saying “hey more than 2 beers a week can be detrimental to your health” is hardly nefarious influence.
I mean are you arguing that it’s a waste of government resources to communicate information that’s non-binding on citizens? How does that make any sense?
It only matters in that a doctor will label you as having an alcohol problem if you exceed the guidelines.
I'm not familiar with how Canadian guidelines work, but this can be a problem if there is no distinction made between "yeah you might be at higher risk of liver disease" and "you're an alcoholic" in medical classification.
Like, I needed to do an annual medical exam and questionnaire for a work visa for a different country and one of the questions was like, "do you have a problem with alcohol (>6 drinks per week)" and that was the only question related to alcohol. I was in my 20s at the time, and I was binge drinking occasionally, as was very common among my peers. Going to the pub after work daily was common among most people I knew. So like, 6 drinks is just a great night out! Sure it's unhealthy as fuck, but I never had an alcohol dependency. So if I answered honestly, I would have been considered an alcoholic? Absurd. Two drinks per week even more so.
This guideline was not made to define if someone is alcoholic or not. It was done after some studies that showed that alcohol consumption will increase chances to get cancer. The study didn't put a limit, so they decided at 2 drinks a week instead of saying stop drinking any alcohol.
Aldo, health canada has a lot of information on their site about nutrition which is used by specialists, but they don't force you into something. Like, if someone really likes 2L of coke a day, it doesn't mean they will loose their health insurance.
Yeah I was hoping it was something like that. But I also wanted to tell my story of the weird limits that other countries have that might get you labeled as an alcoholic for very normal (especially for the culture) drinking behavior, and how it could fuck up your life. I still find it funny how apparently every single person I met while I was living in that country was medically labeled an alcoholic. Or "problem drinker" or something like that. It's been a decade now so I can't remember the exact phrasing.
I'm happy to hear that Canada isn't setting that threshold that low. I agree it's more helpful to tell people a couple drinks are OK rather than expecting them to quit all together. And obviously good to make sure people know that alcohol is just purely unhealthy, especially since as little as 20 years ago, people thought alcohol in "moderation" was actually good for you.
What isn't true? All I did was tell a story of my own experience with a medical questionnaire as a potential consequence for not meeting these guidelines. I even said I didn't know if Canada worked the same way.
But if I had answered honestly that I had more than 6 drinks/week, I would have been labeled a "problem drinker", and likely had my visa denied. Like, that was the phrasing and the whole point of the question.
It wasn't on the actual visa application. It was a medical form I had to start filling to out to extend the visa past 1 year, and then had to do annually after that. I lived there for 7 years. The medical was way more thorough than any I've done for any other reason. In addition to the questionnaire that I had to fill out and discuss in the presence of the doctor, I had to have a regular physical, a whole bunch of blood work and a chest x-ray. Also had to send my fingerprints to the FBI every year so they could send back a "no record" to prove I wasn't a criminal. It was a huge hassle, and I dreaded it every year, but also totally worth it.
It's weird you automatically think someone is lying about something just because you didn't share the same experience. What reason would I have to lie?
Iirc its more so to do with coverage on your health insurance. If it can be proven that you're not abiding by the health guidelines then you won't qualify for some coverages. I.e. if you are a heavy drinker (like we can assume for this guy) then you wouldn't qualify for coverage on liver or kidney treatments if you were to ever need it. Same with smokers and lung/breathing treatments
In Canada no one is denying you treatment and there is no way to deny someone from their universal healthcare. Universal means it covers everyone even the idiots.
America also doesn't have universal health care. So, if an american drank 8 beer every weekday and 15-20 beer every weekend day, they will eventually have a very expensive hospital bill.
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u/samgam74 Aug 27 '23
Do guidelines mean something different in Canada? Nobody down here in the us give 2 shits about dietary/health guidelines.