By: Surjit Singh Flora
Sonia Sidhu, Member of Parliament for Brampton South, hosted a meeting of the All-Party Diabetes Caucus with her fellow Parliamentarians.
Across Canada, 11 million people live with diabetes or pre-diabetes. This life-changing disease can have serious health impacts and leads to strokes, heart attacks, kidney failure and amputation. The Caucus is committed to working across party lines to raise awareness and support research that will lead to a cure.
At this meeting, the all-party group received updates on the work done by Diabetes Canada and JDRF, the nation’s leading advocacy organizations for this disease. They also heard from Toronto-based dietician and author Andy De Santis about the relationship between diabetes and diet, and from Dr. Bruce Verchre from the University of British Columbia and BC Children’s Hospital.
In past years, the caucus has worked to raise awareness among parliamentarians with initiatives like the “Defeat Diabetes One Step at a Time” challenge in which members were asked to pedometers for 10 days to track their physical activity, and brought a mobile risk assessment lab to the hill. In 2019, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion introduced by Sidhu, recognizing November as Diabetes Awareness Month.
Thanks to the advocacy of this caucus, the Government of Canada has invested over $230 million in diabetes research teams since 2015, through the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. In 2019.
Before entering politics, Sidhu worked for 18 years in the healthcare sector and saw how much the system was affected by diabetes and its serious consequences. She continued to champion this issue in Ottawa and introduced the National Framework for Diabetes Act which passed last year, coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the discovery of insulin in Canada. MP Sidhu received the Sir Frederic Banting award for this work in late 2021. The government committed $35 million to this project in that year’s budget and MP Sidhu’s bill will ensure that Canada has a coordinated strategy, working across levels of government, to fight this disease. The strategy is going to be finalized later this year.
Health Canada also launched The New Food Guide, which will help Canadians to make better-informed decisions about what they eat.
The Food Guide that many of us grew up with focused on food choices. But we now know that our eating habits are just as important to our health as the foods we choose. Busy Canadians want simple guidance that they can trust to help them make healthy food choices for themselves and their families.
In launching the new Canada’s Food Guide today, the Honourable Ginette Petitpas Taylor, Minister of Health, emphasized that healthy eating is about more than the foods Canadians eat.
The new Food Guide is an online suite of resources that better meets the needs of different users, including the general public, policy makers and health professionals. This includes mobile-friendly web content to encourage Canadians to eat healthy whenever and wherever they go.
Canada’s new dietary guidance includes concrete advice for Canadians on healthy food choices and healthy eating habits. This advice includes:
eating plenty of vegetables and fruits,
eating protein foods,
choosing whole grain foods, and
making water your drink of choice.
Healthy eating is more than the foods you eat. The Food Guide encourages Canadians to:
cook more often,
enjoy food,
be mindful of eating habits, and
eat meals with others.
Canada’s Food Guide is intended for all Canadians. Health Canada is working to ensure that the revised Food Guide is inclusive of Indigenous Peoples, reflecting social, cultural and historical context. Additionally, Health Canada and Indigenous Services Canada are committed to working with First Nations, Inuit and Métis to support the development of distinctions-based healthy eating tools, as part of the revision process.
The new Food Guide is an integral part of Canada’s Healthy Eating Strategy, which aims to make the healthier choice the easier choice for all Canadians.
Diabetics should keep their blood sugar levels under control at all times. They often follow a healthy lifestyle and eating habits to keep their blood sugar levels healthy. They often adopt healthy eating habits and eating habits to keep their blood sugar levels healthy. Patients with diabetes should avoid white foods at all times as they contain high levels of sugar and carbs.
Diabetes Diet Tips
4 white things in the diet that diabetics should not eat
Pasta
Pasta is made from sauce, cream, cheese and butter. It contains a lot of calories, carbohydrates. It is made from flour. It also causes obesity. Don’t eat pasta if you have diabetes.
Potatoes
Potatoes contain calories, carbohydrates, fats, proteins and fiber. It has a high glycemic index, which is not good for diabetics. Eating potatoes raises the body’s blood sugar level, so it should be avoided.
Rice
One study found that people who ate white rice had a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes. So if you have pre-diabetes, you should not eat rice. White rice has a high glycemic index, which can raise the body’s blood sugar level.
White bread
White bread is made from ingredients rich in refined starch. These things act like sugar and are digested very quickly. This can raise the body’s blood sugar level. White bread has a high glycemic index.
