Monday, August 26, 2013

What's a More Pressing Public Health Concern? Vitamin D Deficiency or Sugar Overconsumption?

Sure seems like it's a pretty clear cut answer to me.

But apparently it's not so clear cut for Health Canada.

You see Health Canada has recently approved the discretionary fortification of cereals with vitamin D. Their thinking is that because many Canadians aren't getting sufficient vitamin D, rather than encourage the consumption of terrifically inexpensive vitamin D supplements, that it'd be wiser to allow the food industry to, at their discretion, fortify cereals with it - and sell cereals with it too as its inclusion will undoubtedly lead to front-of-package and commercial marketing of those fortified cereals as good for you (just like you see on the top of that box featured up above).

And while you might think, hey, what's the harm in that, Health Canada, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to allow Kellogg to fortify Krave, Froot Loops, Frosted Flakes and Corn Pops with vitamin D.

Brilliance there - let's give kids and parents more reason to serve themselves big bowls of sugar for breakfast. Oops, pardon me, big bowls of vitamin D fortified sugar, leading me to quote for the Toronto Star on the matter, "Putting nutritional lipstick on a nutritional pig does not make that pig pretty".