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A vegetarian since he was 12, David Jenkins turned vegan a dozen years ago. Today, he won’t even eat honey.

Jenkins, a renowned nutrition scientist, is the man behind the glycemic index, a measure of how fast and by how much foods raise blood sugar and insulin levels. It lies at the heart of a load of weight-loss diets, from Atkins to the Zone.

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Unsurprisingly, Jenkins is pleased with drum beats coming from Health Canada that the next iteration of the food guide, due out in early 2018, will steer people to chickpeas over cheddar and encourage the consumption of plant, not animal-based proteins.

“I can understand — you have people saying, ‘What about the family farm?’ Well, to be honest, if somebody says that to you, have some sympathy also for the Maritimers” and others in the East, said Jenkins, a professor in the departments of nutritional sciences and medicine at the University of Toronto. After the cod fisheries were decimated in the 1990s, “Newfoundlanders had to leave, or think of something else,” Jenkins said.