SUDBURY -- This past week the official opposition critic for healthcare and Nickel Belt MPP France Gelinas tabled a bill to discourage the promotion of high fat, sugar, and sodium food.
It's based on an initiative started in the United Kingdom to help people make healthy choices.
The bill is called the Temptation Be Gone Act and allows the government to make regulations that restrict the sales and marketing of high fat, high sugar treats.
"The bill is quite simple. They will not be able to put fat, sugar, and salt at the entrance to the store, the exit of the store and the line up to the cashier," said France Gelinas, Nickel Belt MPP (NDP).
Gelinas said the bill would also restrict volume sale of this kind of food.
"Think of the two for one, the buy two get one free, if it's the high fat, sugar, and salt food no more. And no more free refill of the, you know, you go for the huge pop and you can refill it as many times as you want, no more," said Gelinas.
Last fall, Gelinas said she was approached by pharmacist Rachelle Rocha who read about a similar initiative regulating the sale of junk food in the UK.
"As our culture has shifted to eating more of those convenience foods, we have noticed diabetes is on the rise, obesity is on the rise, mental health is on the rise, cancer is on the rise. They are not in isolation of each other, these are things that go together," said Rocha.
Rocha has a strong focus on healthy fresh foods as medicine at the Seasons Pharmacy and Culinaria she operates in Sudbury.
"When you highly process something, you remove the fibre and the more ingredients on that package are chemicals that don't resemble anything your great grandmother would know as food, all of those things impact your body in ways that we might not really understand.
The first reading of the bill "The Temptation Be Gone Act" was passed with unanimous support recently.
The Canadian Cancer Society and Heart & Stroke Ontario also fully support the move.
