Health Canada to ban "lowcarb" labels
 

Today's Province (Vancouver) has the article.

see www.theprovince.com and look for the headline.

I had read a post a week or so ago, about someone being afraid that with the surge of "low carb" products flooding the market, people would think they were low carbing just because they bought everything that says "low carb".

Maybe this step by Health Canada is a good thing for the wrong reason?

SheilaC

This has nothing to do with protecting us poor low carb people. This all about powerful lobby groups influencing government decisions. You can't tell me that bread industry and other hi carb food industries have not lobbied hard for this. They are scarred, because they know Low Carb works. When you reduce sugars and other carbs, it's hard to keep people addicted to your foods.

If Health Canada thinks I should be eating between 200-300G of carbs a day. Then they had better redefine there weight classifications and say a 300 pound person is not overweight. And I can?t see that happening, nor would I expect it.

In the end this is will be a failed attempt to stop people from eating healthy. It is not about health, is it all about $$'s, and as more studies come out, we will be proven right.

I saw this on the news yesterday and think it might be a good idea to have limits on stuff. I have seen so called low carb recipes have 20 or more grams. HUH?
I think it will stop all the companies coming out and saying it is low carb becauseit is 2 carbs lower then regular whatever. Though as any good consumer we must read labels. Then unfortunatly read the small print to see if the sugar alchols were added as well.

What the government should be doing is the same as the FDA in the States is....and that is deciding on what lo carb is. Setting standards. And then allowing only those people to advertise on their foods.
I can't walk through a grocery store without seeing
lo-fat advertised on everything. So what the h:::(pardon) is the diff? I agree it is the Canadian Agriculture board wanting to see us eat all their flour and grains. Soo I think the Canadian public should lobby Ottawa nad Health Canada. At least send letters.

I was reading about this in another thread
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=173556

The first thing I thought was about all the low fat items advertised out there...like cookies, candy, etc. Those so called "low fat" items are filled with sugar and not one bit nutricious...yet they're still everywhere you turn. It's all about $$$$.

I think that all of us who know what we're doing, know how to tell if something is really LC or not. We all know that the best LC is fresh or homemade so we know exactly what we're eating. I think that it is probably best that there isn't the big surge of "low carb" like there was with "low fat", but it upsets me that Health Canada is threatening a ban because they say the WOE is not healthy.
There, I agree its big $$$$$ trying to keep themselves above water.

SheilaC

Ok maybe we do need some restrictions placed on the labelling. The big problem I see is that the people doing the resticting do not believe in this way of life. They are from health canada who push the food pyramid.

But after reading this article that I found on Lowcarbiz.com, we low carb cosummers do need some protection. please read the article because it has some scary facts, and was posted on a Low Carb buisness site. Especially the one for Florida where 65 % of the low carb food claims were found to be false with many of the products having 6 to 7 times more carbs then advertised. Or look at Russel stovers. Which I picked up on myself, where there SF peanut butter cups, are the exact same as the LC peanut butter cups, but they charge $1us more per bag for LC. Also I recently bought some SF chocolate covered Almonds from the US. The bag had approx 20-25 Almonds in the bag, and according to the label it had 0 carbs. How does coating an almond in SF chocolate erase all the carbs. Lastly I seen a bottle of Steels Peanut sauce at low Carb solutions, and it has negative carbs (maybe this was an error, but makes you question the other Steel products). In Steels case they posted the Suger alchol for subtractive reasons, but didn't put it in total carbs, which resulted in negative carbs.

http://www.lowcarbiz.com/press_room...104MSNMoney.htm

Very informative article Blueowl. Thanks for posting it. I do like having LC options available but this article reminds you that this WOE is about real foods. Yes, we do need some protecting...especially those who haven't read Atkins book. Only problem with restricting these LC labels, means it makes things more difficult for those companies who have legitimate LC claims. Hopefully that doesn't make it more difficult for us to find these items.