Development and Evaluation of a Food Choices Assessment Score (FCAS) Measuring the Healthfulness of Dietary Choices According to 2019 Canada's Food Guide/Canada's Dietary Guidelines, using the Canadian Health Measures Survey Food Frequency Questionnaire.

The objective of this study was to develop and evaluate a Food Choices Assessment Score (FCAS) measuring alignment with 2019 Canada's Food Guide (CFG) and Canada's Dietary Guidelines (CDG) using a non-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) data. Cross-sectional data from the Canadian Health Measures Survey (CHMS) (2016 to 2019), including 6,459 participants (≥19 years) and a non-quantitative FFQ (~100 food items) were used. Content and construct validity and assessing reliability were used to evaluate the FCAS, including a comparison of mean FCAS among Canadian subgroups, calculating the FCAS for high quality diet menus, investigating the consistency of the FCAS with the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), as a healthy diet linked with lower cardiometabolic risks, and estimating Cronbach's alpha for reliability.

The healthfulness of major food brands according to Health Canada's nutrient profile model for proposed restrictions on food marketing to children.

Objective: To examine the proportion of products offered by leading food brands in Canada that are 'unhealthy' according to Health Canada's (HC) nutrient profile model for proposed restrictions on food marketing to children (M2K-NPM).

Design: Nutritional information for products offered by top brands was sourced from the University of Toronto FLIP and Menu-FLIP 2020 databases, respectively. HC's M2K-NPM, which includes thresholds for sodium, total sugars and saturated fat, was applied to products.

Examining changes in the sodium content of Canadian prepackaged foods: 2013 to 2017.

Canadians consume excessive amounts of sodium, a leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease. In 2012, Health Canada released guidance outlining voluntary sodium reduction benchmarks for pre-packaged foods to be met by manufacturers by 2016. Using the University of Toronto's Food Label Information Program(FLIP), the aim of this study was to evaluate changes in average sodium content of Canadian pre-packaged foods from 2013 to 2017 and manufacturers' progress in meeting final phase III sodium reduction benchmark targets.

Canada-wide survey of school food programs.

Canada remains one of few Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries without a well-established nationally harmonized and funded school food program (SFP); however, the Canadian federal government recently announced the development and implementation of a national SFP that might supersede the uncoordinated patchwork of SFPs currently delivered across Canada. We designed and conducted novel survey research to systematically identify the characteristics of organization-led SFPs, building on previous research that focused on the characteristics of provincial and territorial government involvement in school food programming. An electronic survey was developed to include items deemed most relevant based on applicable literature and expert content validation, and distributed to organizations involved in the purchasing, planning, and/or preparation of school foods.