For far too long, what Canadians have been told to eat has been influenced more by political and industry interest than what the science says is good for us.

It’s a dirty game that has gambled with the lives of millions of Canadians, and it needs to be called out. It’s time to separate food from politics.

This year, Health Canada made a huge step in this direction by overhauling the food guide based on what hundreds of peer-reviewed studies say about what foods are good for us. The new guide even acknowledged the links between animal-based foods and major illnesses, such as cancer and heart disease. It’s the first time since its inception that it could be called an evidence-based food guide.

Sadly, before it was even out the door, the pressure was on to downplay the science to protect the animal agriculture industries. Secret memos surfaced in the Globe and Mail exposing Agri-Food Canada’s attempts to make the language more “neutral,” arguing that “messages that encourage a shift toward plant-based sources of protein would have negative implications for the meat and dairy industries.”

You read that right. Our own government was suggesting the profits of food companies take precedence over the health of Canadians in dictating the substance of our national eating recommendations. This, despite cancer and heart disease being the leading causes of death in Canada, claiming more than 100,000 lives a year.

The scariest part is that these lobbying efforts could have worked; we know they have in the past. Our political climate has allowed food to be a political issue, and that’s the problem.

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Now that the new guide has been released, the dirty politics have continued with Conservative leader Andrew Scheer threatening to revisit the guide, calling it “the result of a flawed and biased process.”

We know Scheer owes his leadership to dairy industry lobbyists. Earlier this year at the Conservative convention, a dairy lobby briefing binder was found on the floor and made public. In it, Scheer was described as dairy’s “safety net.”

Telling people to drink milk, when the science says not to, for political gain — this is the kind of stuff politicians have been able to get away with for years. But auctioning off the health of millions of Canadians to protect a dying industry shouldn’t be a move any politician is allowed to make.

It’s time to remove politics from our debates about food. The issue of what we put into our bodies should be unobstructed by politics. Food is life, after all.

Our national food recommendations should be based on science and science alone, with the interest of promoting the health of Canadians. Allowing political and industry interests to take precedent, while hundreds of thousands of Canadians are dying of cancer and heart disease, is the ultimate betrayal of a government against its citizens.

Jenny Henry is the founder of Nation Rising, a non-partisan political advocacy group lobbying for the end of animal agriculture subsidies.

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