SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Doing cooking demonstrations and putting out a colourful cookbook might seem like weak attempts at boosting canola’s market share.
But a heart surgeon and preventive medicine specialist thinks the joy of food is a better sales pitch than the fear of death.
“Joy is sustainable. Fear is not,” Dr. Dean Ornish told the Canola Council of Canada’s convention in San Francisco, Calif., March 19.
The canola industry thinks it’s got the research needed to prove that canola is the healthiest cooking oil on the grocery store shelf and the real challenge is to get people to embrace it by seeing it as easy and fun.
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That approach won a powerful vote of approval from Ornish.
“If we can use all of the advertising and promotion and marketing resources to make it fun and cool and sexy and convenient to live more healthfully, then we can really make a difference in the health of our country,” he said.
Ornish said consumers need to believe that switching to healthy foods like canola oil and away from unhealthy foods like saturated fats will make their life more enjoyable, not just longer.
The fear factor only works for a short period after a crisis such as a heart attack, before people slide into unhealthy behaviours.
“If someone’s had a heart attack, they’ll do just about anything for a few weeks. Then they’ll go back to their old habits,” said Ornish.
“Fear of dying is not a sustainable motivator.”
He said canola oil is the healthiest of the major cooking oils and substantially healthier than olive oil, the oil that many people believe is the best.
“I’m not as big a fan of olive oil as I am of canola oil,” said Ornish, who helped convince McDonald’s to switch to non-trans fats for frying.
Canola also won a major health endorsement when the American Diabetes Association agreed to allow canolainfo.org, a canola promotion wing of the industry, to publish materials and its logo.
That logo was prominently placed on the cover of The Heart-Smart Diabetes Kitchen, a canola-based cookbook containing 151 recipes, which both the association and the industry are promoting across North America. All the profits are going to the diabetes association.
While the focus of the cookbook is on health, it features colour photographs and non-healthy-sounding recipes, such as brownies with java cream.
Prominent recipe developer and cook Nancy Hughes, who wrote the recipes in this cookbook and gave a demonstration at the end of the convention, stressed that combination of sensuous and healthy.
FARM LIVING EDITOR: KAREN MORRISON | Ph: 306-665-3585 F: 306-934-2401 | E–MAIL: KAREN.MORRISON@PRODUCER.COM
