N.L. Health Services has banned the sale of sugary foods like doughnuts at its Eastern health facilities, including the Health Sciences Centre in St. John's, but mental health advocate Jamie Ruby says the policy hurts people with eating disorders. (Paul Daly/CBC)
A mental health advocate says a new N.L. Health Services food policy is dangerous and archaic — and could have real-world implications for the recoveries of people with eating disorders.
Jamie Ruby of St. John's said he was surprised to see the provincial health authority enact a policy that bans the sale of sweet and sugary foods in health-care facilities in the Eastern region and will expand to fried foods, chocolate, sports drinks and more by the end of 2025.
Ruby said the policy's labelling of foods like doughnuts and muffins as "bad food" is harmful, because some of the foods targeted are necessary as part of efforts to re-normalize eating for some people with eating disorders.
"A completely expected thing to hear out of a dietitian's mouth when talking to an eating disorder patient would [be] helping them … be able to eat a cookie again or be able to eat a doughnut," he said. "It's a really poorly designed policy from that perspective."
In an email Ruby sent to Health Minister Tom Osborne and shared with CBC News, he calls for the policy to be reconsidered and evaluated by mental health professionals or health authority employees with a background in eating disorders.
"This might be a nutritious food policy, but it far from a healthy food policy. It's a dangerous food policy. It's an archaic food policy," Ruby said.
In a statement to CBC News on Tuesday, the Health Department said initiatives like the new policy are aimed at "improving the food environment" at health-care facilities, and noted that foods that can no longer be sold can still be brought into facilities.
All-or-nothing approach is harmful, says psychologist
Dr. Jacqueline Carter-Major, a clinical psychologist with a background in eating disorders and professor of psychology at Memorial University, said part of the problem with the policy is its all-or-nothing approach — labelling some foods as outright good and some as outright bad based on Canada's Food Guide.
"Thinking about food in all-or-nothing terms, like there are good foods and bad foods, healthy foods and unhealthy foods, can actually be triggering." she said.
"For example, someone with an eating disorder, whether it's undereating or overeating, may be encouraged to eat something like a doughnut as part of their treatment plan. And this is to help them overcome the all-or-nothing, black and white kind of thinking about food. So my approach, really, is that balance is the key."
Dr. Jacqueline Carter-Major, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Memorial University, says the policy's all-or-nothing approach is the wrong way to think about food. (Submitted by Jacqueline Carter-Major)
Carter-Major said the labelling of foods can also be harmful in different ways during recovery.
"If you think of, you know, doughnuts, chips and burgers and fries as bad, and you know fruits and vegetables as good, what tends to happen is if someone kind of … 'gives in' and eats one of their sort of forbidden foods, that can trigger them to lose control over their eating," she said.
"That can trigger guilt and kind of shame about eating."
Carter-Major said she understands that food and policy-making are complex issues but banning the sale of certain foods isn't the answer.
Instead, she'd like to see the health authority make more of an effort to "improve the food market," she said, with more affordable, nutritious foods at its institutions.
"It's more important to make … those kinds of foods more widely available as opposed to banning any type of food," she said.
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