Healthy Active Living
Food and beverage companies are enabling Canadians to lead healthy active lives by offering new and reformulated food choices, providing consumer information programs on nutrition, and promoting healthy active living.
Industry's efforts are in line with the World Health Organization's Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, which recommends collaborative efforts with food and beverage companies such as promoting healthy diets and physical activity, limiting the level of certain fats, sugars and salt in existing products, and empowering consumers with product and nutrition information.
Food and beverage companies are offering Canadians healthier food choices through new product development, reformulation of products and development of new portion and packaging options.
- Sixty-two percent of food companies introduced new healthy products in 2004.
- 41% of companies introduced products with less fat, 13% introduced products with no fat, and 19% introduced products with no trans fat.
- 22% of companies introduced new products with less sugar or 13 % introduced products with no sugar
- Other healthy choice launches include Omega-3 products; reduced salt products; fibre and fibre-added products; calcium and calcium-added products and low calorie products.
- Twenty-three percent of companies introduced portion and or packaging changes to address concerns over portion sizes.