What Are We Eating?
The nutrition facts label found on packaged foods at grocery stores is a familiar sight to most Canadians. This information helps us keep tabs on what we're about to eat -- or to make an informed decision not to eat it.
However, we know very little about the nutritional content of the food we eat in restaurants or fast food outlets. Typically, this type of information is hard to find, perhaps in a pamphlet tucked underneath a counter or on a restaurant’s website, or is simply unavailable.
New prevention research funding from the Canadian Cancer Society will make it easier for Canadians to make healthier food choices when they are eating outside of the home.
With new prevention research funding from the Canadian Cancer Society, Dr David Hammond hopes to make it easier for Canadians to make healthier food choices when they are eating outside of the home. His team will be studying whether including nutrition and calorie information on restaurant menus impacts people’s food decisions.
“We consume an increasing amount of fat, salt and calories outside the home, and consumers have little or no idea about the nutritional content of what they’re eating,” says Dr Hammond, a researcher at the Propel Centre for Population Health Impact and faculty member at the University of Waterloo. “They may be shocked at what they find out.”
Being overweight or obese is an important risk factor for cancer and more Canadians are becoming obese every year. Research shows that healthy diets, being active and maintaining a healthy body weight may reduce the incidence of cancer by up to 35%. Poor diet, and being overweight or obese are thought to contribute to a large number of cancers, including cancers of the breast, colon, kidney, stomach, lung and uterus. Dr Hammond and his research team will carry out the study in two distinct parts:
Testing whether adding calorie information to restaurant menus and display menus at fast food outlets affects the food choices of student and faculty on the University of Waterloo campus.
An experimental study in which more than 600 adults from the Kitchener-Waterloo area will order from menus with different types of calorie and nutrition information to examine what type of information is most effective at influencing food choice and consumption.
“There is no magic bullet, but even small adjustments on a daily basis add up to huge changes over a lifetime,” Dr Hammond says. “Including nutritional information on menus has the potential to influence food decisions millions of Canadians make when they eat out. Whatever we can do to help them make healthier choices and reduce the increasing rates of obesity will also help reduce cancer risk.”
Even small changes to what you eat and how active you are can make a difference to your risk of cancer. Learn more about living well.
