News: Heart and Stroke Foundation ends Health Check program

Over the next few months, Canadians will start to see fewer and fewer Health Check-approved products in grocery stores. That’s because, after 15 years, the Heart and Stroke Foundation has decided to wind down their Health Check program.

"When the program launched in 1999, Health Check was a leader in its field by identifying healthy choices with the red check mark logo on pack and by requiring those items to include nutrition information before this was mandated by the government. Much has changed in the past 15 years in the world of food and nutrition. There are more nutrition labelling programs both in grocery stores and restaurants and Canadian consumers are inundated with nutrition information at the point of purchase, in the media, and online. Because of this changing landscape, Health Check is no longer the right program for the time." reads a statement of the Health Check website.

Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, founder of the Bariatric Medical Institute and author of The Diet Fix, has been critical of the program over the last few years. Addressing the end of the Health Check program on his blog, Weighty Matters, he wrote: "I am hopeful that doing so will allow the Foundation to become a far more vocal proponent of produce over products, and in doing so help to steer Canadians out of restaurants and supermarkets’ middle aisles and back into the loving embrace of their own kitchen."

What do you think of this news? Was it time for the Health Check program to end?

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