Adam Prudhomme
Beaver Staff
A recently revised Canada Food Guide acknowledges what the Heart and Stroke Foundation has been preaching for years — to avoid sugar, processed foods and sodium.
That’s the same advice members of the Heart and Stroke Foundation have been handing out during its annual Heart and Stroke Month canvass, which kicks off Friday and runs through the month of February. For the next 28 days volunteers will be going door-to-door across the province collecting donations for the foundation while handing out literature to raise awareness about some of Canada’s deadliest diseases.
“The statistic that we’re most concerned about as an organization right now is that 80 per cent of premature heart disease and stroke is preventable through properly managing your lifestyle risk factors,” said Cory Watkins, manager of community fundraising for the Heart and Stroke Foundation. “Diet is probably the most significant of those risk factors. Four out of five could be prevented just by changing up your diet and being active and monitoring underlying conditions like high blood pressure.”
Watkins says the revised food guide better represents what their research has shown to be the optimal diet.
“There are quite a few similarities between our nutrition policy and our nutrition food guideline that we share on our website as well as the new food guide that’s come out,” said Watkins. “The new food guide is addressing limiting foods high in sodium, sugars and saturated fats and that’s something that Heart and Stroke has long been advocating for. We’ve invested a lot of our lobbying efforts towards governments specifically with restricted marketing towards kids and we see that indicated in the food guide as well.”
“Eating unprocessed foods and looking at eating whole foods, whole grains and fruits and vegetables making up the greatest portion of your plate, we think it’s a good food guide,” added Watkins.
The month long campaign will also focus on reminding people of FAST-the acronym of Face, Arms, Speech and Time to call 911 which is critical to remember when dealing with a potential stroke victim. That is to check the face for signs of drooping, see if they can raise their arms, listen for slurred speech and then call for help immediately. Watkins says unlike chest pains, which can be a symptom of a whole host of ailments, FAST can quickly identify that indeed a stroke is taking place. Getting a patient to the proper medical care in that instance becomes critical in creating the best possible outcome.
Money collected during the door-to-door canvass will go towards research, with several major breakthroughs having taken place in just the last decade with more on the horizon.
Anyone looking to get involved with the foundation, not only for Heart and Stroke Month but in any other initiative they host throughout the year, can visit heartandstroke.ca or call 613-384-2871.