How do parents feel about the changes to Canada’s Food Guide?
How do parents feel about the changes to Canada’s Food Guide?
This study compared parents’ awareness, knowledge, use, and opinions of the 2007 and 2019 Canada’s Food Guides to understand how families with young children perceive changes in healthy eating recommendations.
What We Did and Why We Did It
We conducted a study with 504 parents of young children (18 months to 5 years old) who participated in the Guelph Family Health Study. Parents completed online surveys about their awareness, use, knowledge, and opinions of either the 2007 Canada’s Food Guide, the 2019 Canada’s Food Guide, or both. Researchers compared parents’ understanding of the food guide recommendations, how they used the guides, and their opinions on factors such as trust, ease of following recommendations, and cultural representation.
Canada’s Food Guide is an important resource designed to support healthy eating across Canada. In 2019, Health Canada released a new version of the Food Guide with major changes, including replacing the rainbow food group model with a plate model and simplifying recommendations. Since parents play an important role in shaping their children’s eating habits, understanding their perceptions of these changes can help improve nutrition education and support families in making healthy food choices.
What We Found
What We Can Learn From This
Parents were highly aware of both the 2007 and 2019 Canada’s Food Guides, but their knowledge of the 2019 recommendations was higher. Most parents were able to correctly identify the plate proportions in the 2019 Food Guide, while fewer parents remembered the serving recommendations from the 2007 Food Guide. Parents also had more positive opinions of the 2019 Food Guide, describing it as more helpful, trustworthy, easier to understand, easier to follow, and more representative of their culture and traditional foods. Many parents appreciated the simpler plate model and felt it was more practical for everyday life. However, some parents expressed uncertainty about where certain foods, such as dairy products, fit within the new Protein Foods category.
Simplifying nutrition messages and providing practical resources may help families better understand and apply healthy eating recommendations. The 2019 Canada’s Food Guide’s plate model and supporting resources may make healthy eating guidance easier for parents to use in daily life. Continuing to provide clear, culturally relevant information can help families feel confident when making food choices for themselves and their children.
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