Canada finally got an official food guide earlier this year that’s guided as much as possible by science, not lobbying by various factions of the food industry.

Now Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer seems determined to undo the good work that went into the latest version of Canada’s Food Guide, which Health Canada issued in January.

Scheer isn’t even being subtle about it. He went to the annual meeting of the Dairy Farmers of Canada last week and promised he would review the new food guide’s reduced emphasis on meat and — yes — dairy products if the Tories win the next election.

If there’s a more blatant example of a Canadian politician pandering to an interest group in his search for votes, we’d like to see it.

This sorry episode smacked of a man checking off an IOU box. After all, the dairy industry was key in helping Scheer win the Conservative leadership over his main competitor, Maxime Bernier, who promised to do away with dairy quotas.

More importantly, Scheer’s continued dalliance with the meat and dairy industries could come at the expense of the health of Canadians. If the Conservatives do win power and steer the food guide back to emphasizing greater consumption of animal products, it could reverse years of work toward recommending healthier eating habits.

The tangled history of Canada’s Food Guide has been marred by examples of not putting consumers first. Far too often, the interests of the food industry have been front and centre.

That was a big criticism of the 2007 edition of the guide, which influences diet policies in schools and hospitals, shapes the kind of advice doctors give their patients, and is used by industry to advertise the health benefits of its products.

But the new version took a big step forward by putting science first and keeping industry representatives at arms-length while it was being developed. It puts less emphasis on consuming meat and dairy products, and recommends a diet containing more fruits, vegetables and plant-based proteins.

The result? A guide that has been widely praised as one of the best in the world, if not the best, by health and nutrition experts.

Scheer, however, swept all that aside in his remarks to the dairy industry. The Conservative leader claimed the guide was “flawed,” riddled with “bias” and “ideologically motivated.”

In fact, it was past food guides that failed to put medical and scientific evidence at the forefront. Fully a quarter of the 12-member advisory committee that helped to shape the 2007 food guide, for example, were representatives of industry organizations and big corporations that stood to win or lose depending on what the guide recommended.

Those lobbyists were angered when the Trudeau government refused to allow them to meet directly with Health Canada officials responsible for drafting the new food guide. That was a deliberate decision to ensure the guide was driven by the best scientific evidence, not commercial considerations.

Now those same lobbyists are looking to Scheer to let them back in. That’s something he seems more than willing to do, despite the fact that 66,000 Canadians die annually from obesity-related illnesses.

If the Conservative leader wants the facts on nutrition, he need only look back at a 2016 Senate study.

It found the percentage of overweight adults has doubled since 1980 to 66 per cent and has tripled to 33 per cent for children. And it singled out the 2007 food guide as one of the culprits that was “enabling” poor eating habits.

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Scheer is flat-out wrong to politicize the debate around the food guide. If the Conservatives win in October his remarks will cast a long shadow over any future attempts by Health Canada to revise its advice on healthy eating.

If Scheer truly believes the food guide should “reflect what science tells us,” as he says, he should recant these foolish and dangerous statements.

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