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Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the King’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness

Sherry Romanado

  • Member of Parliament
  • Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the King’s Privy Council for Canada and Minister of Emergency Preparedness
  • Liberal
  • Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne
  • Quebec
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $117,520.90

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 66 - May/6/22
Mrs. Sherry Romanado (Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, Lib.)
Madam Speaker, I first would like to thank my colleague, the member for Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, for her bill, which I fully support. I am really pleased that she has introduced it because, as we heard today, it is a very serious issue. I also want to commend Quebec for taking the initiative to address this issue. As another member mentioned, this has resulted in a 13% reduction in obesity. This is the first time I am getting up in the House to give a speech since Easter, when I became a grandmother for the very first time. I would be remiss if I did not specify that I am a “glamma”, a glamorous grandma. I just wanted to get that on the record and in the Hansard. In all seriousness, when I was growing up in the late seventies and early eighties, I remember the Saturday morning cartoons. We would take our big bowl of Fruit Loops or Count Chocula and we would watch the cartoons. What is funny is that, in preparing for this debate, I actually recalled the song from Honeycomb, “Honeycomb's big. Yeah, yeah, yeah”. We are talking about it 30 years later, and I still remember the song. That is what this bill is about. I cannot remember last week because I am so busy, but I can remember the Honeycomb song, so obviously advertising toward children works. We need to stop it, because we know for a fact that children nowadays are watching a lot more TV. They are online. They are constantly plugged in. Let us be real. When my children were growing up, I made a point of wanting to make homemade baby food to make sure they did not have a lot of sodium in their food. We have always had a little vegetable garden in our yard to grow cherry tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, and so on. I always wanted my kids to know that good, healthy food was available. They would want to go to McDonald's and have chicken nuggets, but it was very rare they were allowed to. As a new grandmother, I want that for my grandson, as well. I want him to grow up healthy, and I do not want him to be bombarded with advertising, whether it be online, in print or on TV, that is going to expose him to bad habits for the future. As my colleagues have already said in the House, when we look at a lot of the diets now that children are exposed to, 49% of children between the ages of one and four, and 72% of children between the ages of four and 13, have diets that exceed the recommended limits of sodium. For sugar, which is probably the worst factor with respect to health, 78% of children aged one to eight and 86% of children aged nine to 13 exceed the WHO recommendations. When we look at the magnitude of unhealthy diets among children as a public health concern, the good news is that we are going to do something to address the issue. That is what this bill is about: making sure that this next generation of children is not exposed to all of this advertising to influence them into wanting sugary, high-calorie, high-fat and high-sodium treats. To understand the magnitude of the problem, we can look at a study done in 2019. It found that children aged two to 11 were exposed to an average of 1,733 food advertisements per year on TV: the equivalent of 33 food ads per week, which is close to five food ads per day for the average child. What do we do about it? When looking at this, we are very reactive. We have people who are being exposed to the sugar, high fat and high sodium that lead to disease. We have heard about it today in the debate, whether it be diabetes, obesity or eating disorders because children who are bullied in school because of their weight take extreme measures to try to lose weight. I know for a fact that when I was in high school, I would restrict eating because I wanted to lose those last pounds, not realizing it was the sugar or the soda I was drinking that was actually impacting that. This is about prevention, and the billions of dollars that we spend every year in health care to treat diabetes, to treat cancers related to obesity and to treat heart disease. What if we were to flip it on its head? What if we were to prevent it? Prevention is key. Good habits formed early in life tend to stick. If a five-year-old child watching YouTube, television or an online program sees a lot of ads featuring TV personalities, games and songs, they do not understand. They want the same things. At school, when they see their friend's Twinkie at lunch and then they look at their apple, they want the Twinkie and the song they heard online. This bill would, in the long term, actually reduce health care costs, because more and more people will be making wiser choices and being educated about the foods they are ingesting. I remember the Kool-Aid Man. He would run through the wall and crash through. What is in Kool-Aid? It is basically water and sugar. It tastes great, but there is nothing in it other than water and sugar. However, I still remember the Kool-Aid Man running through that wall, and I wanted Kool-Aid. As a kid, I had a Kool-Aid stand and I was selling Kool-Aid, because that was what we drank. There were those little plastic drinks with the aluminum on top, and we would poke a hole and squirt, to see how far we could go with the squirting. That was basically sugar water. The advertising to children sticks with us. We remember that. The importance of this bill cannot be expressed enough. We need to prevent health care problems in children. We need to support children, and I fully support this bill.
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