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We have read the opinion article titled “Health Canada’s new Food Guide is on the right track” (Calgary Herald, Nov. 27) with interest. We represent a growing number of Canadian physicians and health professionals, called the Canadian Clinicians for Therapeutic Nutrition, who use whole-food nutritional strategies, which often include meat, eggs and dairy, to prevent and often put into remission the burden of chronic non-communicable disease in our patients. This usually involves lower levels of carbohydrates and higher levels of natural fats than is currently recommended, a therapeutic nutritional strategy well supported in the literature.

We wholeheartedly agree with ensuring the food industry is not involved in creating new guidelines, but we do not believe the evidence supports a global, population-level switch to a plant-based diet. In fact, a comprehensive review of the scientific evidence for a plant-based diet published this year concluded that the current evidence is insufficient to conclude that a plant-based diet is generally healthy, and expressed concerns related to specific subgroups of the population. We believe that Canadians should be encouraged to maintain nutritious, whole food animal-based products such as meat and cardio-protective full-fat dairy in their diet if they choose, not because of any impact on the meat industry’s profits, but because animal products have always been a cornerstone of a healthy diet for humans. To our knowledge, there is no record of a population eating a “plant-based diet” in the history of human evolution; humans evolved eating meat and eggs and eventually, dairy.