Author Archives: Jodi Gillis

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Canada’s New Food Guide Part 1

Canada woke up on Tuesday January 22 2019 with a new food guide to help ease and make better food choices.

“It reflects the Canada of 2019 while keeping an eye to the Canada of the future.”

Health Canada says reconciliation with Indigenous peoples was top of their minds during the design of a revamped food guide that includes traditional foods for First Nations, Inuit, and Métis.

Health Minister Ginette Petitpas Taylor announced Tuesday morning that the new food guide is “more than just a colourful page,” calling it a “powerful” online tool that will continually be updated with the latest dietary knowledge.

The first significant change is water is now the recommended as the “beverage of choice” instead of servings of milk and fruit juice suggested in past versions of the food guide, which was last updated in 2007.

The second significant change is gone are daily recommended servings for vegetables, fruit, grains, and protein. Health officials explained that consultations showed recommended portions and sizes were “not helpful,” citing how energy levels differ from person to person. Dropping portion sizes prompted officials to take a new “modern approach” to communicate food guidance.

The new ideal healthy meal is now shown as a single plate with half of its space taken by “plenty of vegetables and fruits”; a quarter for “protein foods” such as meat, nuts, and beans; and a quarter for “whole grain foods.”

Looks something like this:

 

 

The food guide also has a larger push for people to adopt a holistic approach to healthy eating, meaning more home cooking, being mindful of consumption habits, and sharing more meals with other people.

Health officials explained “as part of reconciliation,” the development of any food guide-related policy “must support self-determination, as well as recognize the distinct nature and lived experience of First Nations, Inuit and Métis.”

Pat Vanderkooy who is a registered dietitian and spokesperson for Dietitians of Canada, said “the new food guide is a good step toward recognizing diverse communities”.

She explained “huge barriers” are sometimes faced when low income families can barely cover the high cost of food. The new food guide uses examples of canned, frozen, and dried fruits and vegetables as affordable alternatives to fresh produce when its too pricey or not readily available.

“This is especially important in Canadian communities where timely transportation of fresh food is either not possible or too expensive.”

Vanderkooy also said there’s still work to do to make the new food guide useful for diverse Indigenous communities with varying diets based on different traditional foods.

“Indigenous peoples need more ‘distinction-based’ food guides — such as resources that are specific to a geographic region and translated into the locally used Indigenous language,” she said.

Hasan Hutchinson, Health Canada director-general of nutritional policy and promotion, told reporters that officials are currently working with Indigenous Services Canada, and First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities to develop those “distinction-based” food guides.

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2019/01/22/new-canada-food-guide-indigenous-peoples_a_23649540/

 

 

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29 Homicides in Ontario Long-Term Care Homes

On January 21 2019 there was a report released by a health-care advocacy group that has stated there have been at least 29 homicides in long-term care homes in Ontario over the past six years.

The Ontario Health Coalition released a report on violence in long term care homes, with the homicide numbers coming directly from the coroner’s office, which doesn’t necessarily assign blame in a finding of homicide, but defines it as one person causing the death of another.

Natalie Mehra who is the coalition’s Executive Director, said “a resident with dementia may be aggressive toward another resident, resulting in their death, and while there is no criminal intent, it’s a tragedy for all involved”.

“The level of homicide in Ontario’s long-term care facilities is higher than virtually anywhere else in our society,” she said.

The actual total number of long-term care homicides is higher than the 29 found in the coroner’s data, Mehra said, because they don’t include the victims of nurse Elizabeth Wettlaufer, who confessed to murdering eight patients, some of whom were killed in the report’s time span.

“When considering those statistics in the context of Ontario having about 80,000 people living in long-term care homes, that’s a homicide rate four times the city of Toronto”, Mehra said.

“When we dug a little more deeply we looked at other types of violence in long-term care, we found that the violence rates all around, not just homicides, were escalating, and that homicides are the extreme end of a continuum of violence that is escalating in the homes,” she said.

There is another side to it as well, “staff in the homes are also experiencing violence”, Mehra said, pointing to government figures showing that lost time due to injury in long-term care is nearly double that of the health sector in general.

So, with this, the coalition released a report Monday, calling on the government to establish a minimum standard of care, guaranteeing at least four hours of hands-on nursing and personal support for each resident. The coalition have calculated using the government data, that current levels of staffing are at 2.71 hours per resident per day.

The coalition are also calling for an increased use of behavioural supports teams, which work to help long-term care homes manage individuals that may experience aggressive behaviour due to dementia or other conditions. It is reported that half of Ontario’s long-term care homes have no in-house behavioural supports resources.

The coalition has stated that part of what has led to the current situation is Ontario cutting chronic care and psychogeriatric care beds in hospitals and offloading the patients to long-term care homes.

“Ontario’s long-term care homes have not been resourced to increase care levels commensurate with the offloading of significantly more complex patients,” the report said. “Our research shows that long-term care beds are funded at approximately one-third the rate of chronic/complex care hospital beds.”

We have a real crisis in Ontario Long Term Care that needs immediate addressing.  Time will tell if this report will impart change where it is needed the most.  Our seniors and those who care for them do not deserve this.

 

https://www.680news.com/2019/01/21/there-were-29-homicides-in-ontario-long-term-care-homes-in-the-past-six-years-report