Both the United States government and the Canadian government have issued guidelines for healthy eating. In 2011, the United States issued new guidelines. Canada last issued its dietary guidelines in 2007. Both guides seek to advise people on making the right choices for healthy foods, but they have some significant differences.
Servings
The Canadian Food Guide makes specific recommendations of how many servings in each food category you need. The serving recommendations are based on your age and sex. So, for example, the guide says a woman 19 to 50 years old needs seven to eight servings of vegetables and fruits daily, while a man this age needs eight to ten servings. The Canadian Food Guide makes recommendations for Vegetables and Fruits, Grain Products, Milk and Alternatives and Meat and Alternatives. The United States Food Guide makes more general recommendations, using a picture of a plate as a guide. The Guide recommends 1/2 your plate be filled with fruits and vegetables, 1/4 with grains and 1/4 with protein, plus a serving a low-fat dairy with each meal.
Personalization
One feature of the U.S. Food Guide is the option to build a personalized eating plan. You enter your age, height, weight and activity level and the computer program produces a list of how many servings of each group of foods you should consume daily, along with tips, such as eating seafood twice a week, and making half your grains whole grains. Canada also allows you to create a personalized "My Food Guide." With this food guide, you choose foods from various categories and the guide puts them together into a sample meal list for you.
Extras
Canada's Food Guide includes a section on meal ideas, one on shopping tips and a guide to reading food labels. The U.S. Food guide has one sample menu, and has a section on food safety. Both guides recommend staying active and offer tips for making exercise a part of your daily routine. Both guides are available in print forms, but also as highly interactive websites.
Considerations
The U.S. Food Guide tries to make things as simple as possible, with its colorful representation of a plate divided into servings. This might be a simpler concept for people to grasp than trying to remember what constitutes a serving size. Note that the recommendations in both guides are substantially the same: More vegetables and fruits, lean protein, whole grains and more exercise.
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