The Show
Does the health check logo hype health or sell food?
You've seen the Health Check logo. It's the friendly red checkmark that appears on nearly 1,500 packaged food products in this country, representing the approval of the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
If a product bears the logo, that means Heart and Stroke has evaluated it and concluded it complies with their criteria, which is based on the recommendations of Canada's Food Guide to Healthy Eating.
So. Does the logo mean it's the healthiest choice? The answer is a little complicated. As Wendy Mesley reports, it turns out that some of Heart and Stroke's Health Check products don't get top marks in other food-rating systems.
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More detail about the Health Check program
The Heart and Stroke Foundation's Health Check program operates a large website offering information on the program itself, along with lists of the food products that currently bear the Health Check seal. Here are some links.
- Detailed nutritional criteria food products must meet to qualify. (This version of the list was updated on Jan. 16)
- Lists of participating products, broken down by food categories.
- A backgrounder on what the symbol means. ("You can trust that the food or menu item has been reviewed by the Foundation's dietitians and is a healthy choice.")
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Guiding Stars
Hannaford Bros. is a supermarket chain based in the U.S. northeast. Its "Guiding Stars" program rates products the chain sells (except for a few categories such as spices and bottled water). The idea is that foods with good nutritional value get a star, ones with better nutritional value get two stars, and the best ones get three. For a full explanation of the program and its criteria, see the Hannaford website.
We asked Hannaford to apply its rating scheme to a collection of products that all carry the Health Check logo. Many of them earned no stars at all. Here's a chart of the results.
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ONQI
The Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI) is a new program that aims to rate food products so that when you walk into a store each item will have a score between 1 and 100. Its goal is a comprehensive analysis of each food according to a variety of nutritional criteria, including such factors as fibre, vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, protein quality and fat quality. In the end, each food gets a number, and the idea is that the higher the number the healthier the food choice. More information about the program is available on the ONQI website.
We had the ONQI team analyze a selection of Canadian packaged food products, some of which carry the Health Check, and some comparable products which do not. In some cases, the product without the Health Check scored higher on the ONQI scale. Here are the the results.
A list of other common foods and their scores is available on the ONQI website. The site also offers an entertaining quiz you can use to test your food knowledge. (PDF)
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Government and package labeling
On February 21, 2007, as part of its research into childhood obesity, the House of Commons health committee discussed health claim labels and front-of-package labeling on food products. Sally Brown of the Heart & Stroke Foundation spoke before the committee and discussed Health Check.
In March 2007, the health committee released its report on childhood obesity, called "Healthy Weights for Healthy Kids."One of its recommendations called on the federal government to "Implement a mandatory, standardized, simple, front of package labeling requirement on pre-packaged foods for easy identification of nutritional value."
At present, Health Canada is studying the issue.
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Hyping Health Credits
"Hyping Health"
Producer
Virginia Smart
Associate Producer
Jasmin Tuffaha
Senior Researcher
Marlene McArdle
Editor
Don Chung
Cameras
Neith MacDonald
Ed Middleton
Dean Heywood
Sound
Dave Fox
Karndeep Jassal
George Odell
Keith Bonnell
Graphics
Ron Sloan
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