PEN® eNews 14(12) December 2024 - New and Updated Content!

The Question

The Recommendation

The Question

The Recommendation

Now that we know about sugar’s effect on our heart, what can we learn about sweeteners? PEN has comprehensive content examining different sweeteners, their safety, and their effect on health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, pregnancy and lactation. We even have content examining the effect of sweeteners in children.

For example, did you know that acesulfame, cyclamate, saccharin and sucralose have been measured in human milk as early as two hours after consumption? Or that nonnutritive sweetener intake likely has a negligible effect on markers of type 2 diabetes? Learn more in ourSummary of Recommendations and Evidence.

As holiday parties rage, you may find your patients/ clients asking you about cannabis. Statistics from 2015 to 2017 indicate that 15% of Canadians, 18% of Americans, 10% of Australians and 7% of those from the United Kingdom reported using cannabis, either recreationally or medicinally, at some point within the past year of when the studies took place.

Understanding a dietitian’s scope of practice is essential in providing safe, ethical and client-centered nutritional care. Canadian provincial regulatory bodies have released position statements or question and answer documents on cannabis and dietetics' scope of practice, with the following themes:

• Understand the evidence and literature of both the health benefits and dangers of consuming cannabis, including the quality of the studies and acknowledging that there is limited published literature.

• Use your professional judgement to determine if a client’s question about cannabis pertains to their nutritional health and whether you have the knowledge, skills and judgement to provide safe, ethical and competent advice. If not, consider referring this client to another health professional.

• Generally, dietitians are not allowed to prescribe or recommend cannabis (including suggesting cannabis recipes) to clients to manage health conditions (e.g. changes to appetite). It may be appropriate for dietitians to discuss the impact of cannabis on a clients’ nutritional health (e.g. body weight, appetite), although the dietitian must use their professional judgement to determine if this is within the scope of practice of dietetics.

• In Canada, the Cannabis Act prohibits the advertising, promoting or selling of cannabis to minors (age varies by province). Because of the presence of minors on social media, dietitians are advised not to advertise cannabis products or services on social media platforms.

The above recommendations are not a complete summary of the rules and regulations for safe and ethical practice of cannabis. It is recommended that each practitioner review their governing body’s statement (if provided) and contact them if there are questions about the scope of practice with cannabis.

With December being a traditional party season, it may be a time that your patients/ clients are asking you more about alcohol. If you missed last year's webinar about the safe upper limit for drinking alcohol, we've recorded it for you to watch anytime.

This webinar is a deep dive into the safe drinking guidelines from our PEN partner countries (Canada, the UK and Australia). We discuss how the guidelines differ, how different countries interpret the same evidence differently, and how you might interpret the evidence yourself. Find this open access webinar here