Farmscape for May 29, 2015

The Vice President Research with the Canadian Nutrition Society suggests, by better utilizing food to promote health, tax dollars currently used to treat chronic disease can be diverted to other uses.
The Canadian Nutrition Society's 2015 annual conference kicked off yesterday in Winnipeg and wraps up tomorrow.
Dr. David Ma, an associate professor Human Health and Nutritional Sciences with the University of Guelph and the Vice President Research with the Canadian Nutrition Society, told those on hand for a "Food for Health" Workshop, the evolution of food and health and nutrition has changed dramatically over the last 10 to 20 years.

Clip-Dr. David Ma-University of Guelph:
In previous times we were really worried about just getting enough food on our plate.
Now we're really focusing on how we can better improve food to meet our optimal requirements for health and to prevent and manage chronic diseases all the way from obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Most recently, just yesterday, there was a major announcement from the Canadian Cancer Society recognizing that up to 50 percent of cancers can be prevented through lifestyle modification, which includes diet as an important component, so that means that food and nutrition play a huge role in terms of impacting our quality of life.
We know that, in terms of lifestyle approaches through diet and exercise, these are low hanging fruits, pardon the pun, that can have a huge impact on our economies.
We spend probably half our tax dollars on the health care system right now and, if we can prevent even a small fraction of people from getting sick, that would have a huge impact in diverting resources to fixing roads, to supporting other programs instead of a large chunk of our tax dollars on just our health.

Dr. Ma says we need to be looking at food all the way from the early years to our older age and recognize that healthy diets need to start early in life.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork Council