Canada's food guide
Evidence Review Cycle for dietary guidance
Health Canada uses a systematic approach to ensure that Canada’s dietary guidance remains up to date and credible. It is known as the Evidence Review Cycle (ERC) for dietary guidance.
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Canada’s dietary guidance
Dietary guidance is evidence-based information and advice for healthy eating that is designed to help people in Canada meet their nutrition needs, promote health and prevent chronic diseases.
Health Canada provides dietary guidance to:
- promote consistent messaging about healthy eating
- support improvements to the Canadian food environment
- inform nutrition and health education, policies, and programs
- provide a standard for assessing dietary intakes of people in Canada
Health Canada’s dietary guidance is communicated through Canada’s food guide and Nutrition for Healthy Term Infants.
What is the Evidence Review Cycle for dietary guidance
The ERC was developed by Health Canada to formalize the process of reviewing evidence that contributes to dietary guidance and to ensure dietary guidance remains scientifically sound, relevant, and useful. The ERC has three key input areas that frame the scope of the evidence review.
The input areas are:
1. The scientific basis, which includes:
- nutrient standards for adequacy and excess
- evidence on the relationships between food and health
2. The Canadian context, which takes into account evidence such as:
- characteristics of the population
- for example, nutritional and health status and population demographics
- current patterns of food consumption
- for example, dietary intakes and patterns of consumption
- factors that influence the environments in which food choices are made
- for example, information and food environments, as well as policy, regulatory, and economic environments
- food literacy
- for example food skills, eating practices, behaviours, attitudes and beliefs
3. Use of Health Canada’s dietary guidance, tools and resources, which provides information on:
- confidence and acceptance
- awareness and understanding
- integration, especially by target audiences