Pick Pork

Health Check Program
Author: Carol Dombrow, RD
Nutrition Consultant,
Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, Fall 1999

Promoting Healthy Eating
Healthy eating is very important for good health. For more than a decade, the Heart and Stroke Foundation has been committed to providing Canadians with materials and programs that help make healthy eating a part of their daily routine.

Many Canadians are keen to adopt healthy eating patterns and acknowledge their current eating practices could use improvement. For example:

One in five consumers have made a recent change in their eating habits in response to nutritional concerns.
59% of consumers believe their diet could be somewhat or much healthier.
87% of consumers consider nutrition to be important in choosing the food they eat.
90% agree that healthy eating involves choosing some foods more often than others.

Best intentions aside, the baby-boom generation has not been putting the messages about healthy eating into practice.

Health Check ... tells you it's a healthy choice
In 1999, the Heart and Stroke Foundation launched Health Check, a new food information program that can help Canadians make wise food choices at the grocery store. Canada Pork is an inaugural partner in this nutrition education program.

The Health Check program promotes healthy eating in general, not just heart healthy eating. While no particular food is healthy in and of itself, The Health Check logo guides you to foods that you should eat more often as part of a healthy diet.

Health Check Criteria
The Health Check program is based on Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating. Foods that qualify for the Health Check program must meet specific nutrient criteria established by the Heart and Stroke Foundation and are consistent with Health Canada's nutrient content claims.

There are different criteria for different food categories. For example, criteria for bread focus on fat and fibre, while the criteria for milk products focus on fat and calcium. Fresh meats have to meet the criteria as listed:

Criteria		Examples
Lean 10% fat or less		all trimmed fresh pork cuts (excluding ribs) such as pork chops, roasts, schnitzels, kabobs, cutlets, cubes and strips
Extra Lean 7.5% fat or less		pork tenderloin and cuts from pork leg inside round
Lean Ground 17% fat or less		lean ground pork

Health Check Label
Every food product participating in the program may display the Health Check logo, nutrition information panel and an explanatory message describing how the food is part of healthy eating.

Benefits to the Consumer
Health Check simplifies grocery shopping. Consumers can be confident that the Heart and Stroke Foundation has reviewed any food admitted into the program, and that it is in keeping with public health policy goals, such as decreasing fat and increasing fibre in the diet.

Currently nutrition labeling is voluntary in Canada, however any products participating in this program are required by the foundation to provide the nutrition panel.

Canadians place importance on nutrition information being available with almost 80% rating the availability very or somewhat important. The Foundation is confident that a broader array of healthy choices will be presented in grocery stores. Food manufacturers want to rise to the Health Check challenge and some will offer products that they have reformulated to fit the program's nutrient criteria.

Whereas the program is voluntary, over 30 food commodities and companies offering over 100 qualifying food items have joined the Health Check program since its inception ... and we look forward to welcoming many more! For more information about Health Check, visit their website at www.healthcheck.org

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