Canadians avoiding junk food

New studies indicated that more Canadians today are avoiding junk food in favor of healthier snacks such as fruit, yogurt and nuts. And the number of people eating potato chips in an average week declined. The change could be due to the fact that the aging Canadian population desire to reduce obesity by making healthier alternatives, specially with the newest Statistics Canada survey that showed that some of 23 percent of Canadians are overweight. It is interesting to know that in 2003, young people spent about 15 percent of their discretionary money on snacks. But that dropped to 9 percent in 2004.

Harry Sutherland (no relation to Donald or Keifer) is an independent British Columbia producer who has produced a number of outstanding documentaries and feature films. His company is Long Tale Entertainment, a Vancouver-based production company that he formed with Filipino-Canadian Marc Borja. The company has international partners from the US, Japan, China and the Philippines.

One of Long Tale’s forthcoming projects is "Vanilla, Manila." It is scheduled for principal photography by February 2006. But why vanilla? Could it be because of the brown color? Or could there be a symbolism since the dictionary said that it is the flavoring extracted from the pod-like fruit of a tropical, climbing orchid used in ice cream?

Long Tale is now on a Canada-wide search for the lead role. He’s got to be Filipino-Canadian or Filipino-American. The role is for William, a 20-year-old from a mixed American or Canadian Filipino couple. William works for his sister’s bar in Manila while keeping up his studies and playing basketball. Although he remains distant from the night people, he is drawn and fascinated by Hobbes, a young Canadian who is in search of truth, his destiny and identity.

William is a determined young man and wants to meet his father in the Philippines. He leaves his beautiful, orderly and clean-living life in Vancouver to find a strange, smelly, chaotic, exotic and often dangerous world of Manila.

There must be a market for this type of movie because the only three Tagalog films (subtitled in English) readily available commercially on DVD format (not pirated) are Lino Brocka’s Macho Dancer, Mel Chionglo’s Midnight Dancers and Gil Portes’ Markova Comfort Gay. It took me time to get a DVD format, not VCD version of Mark Meily’s Crying Ladies.

Vanilla, Manila was written by Marc Borja and will be directed by Vancouver-based Monika Mitchell.

Here’s a quirky item from Canadian Press. Two Ontario men decided to wed and try out the new same-sex marriage legislation even though they are not gay. Sounds like a novel movie story-line for a TV-movie. Money, not love was the motivating factor for the two men who are just good friends.

The purpose of the marriage is simply for tax benefits and they stated that they don’t want their marriage to insult homosexuals. There is at the moment no laws in marriage that define sexual preference.

"Why OUST ARROYO?" leaflets can be found where Filipinos congregate, dine, shop and remit money. It was prepared, published and distributed by B Committee for Human Rights, Filipino Nurses Support Group, Philippine Women Center of B, SIKLAB (Advance the Rights and Welfare of Overseas Filipino Workers, Ugnayan ng Kabataang Pilipino sa Canada). The National Statement of Filipinos in Canada is well-intentioned and intelligently written. The activist group has affiliation in Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

The Department of Canadian Heritage confirmed one of the many reasons why living in Canada is a joy for people who think and don’t just blindly follow what they are told to think and believe. Canadians love to read so they are better-informed, educated and can rationalize independently unlike our next door neighbors and immigrants with third-world mentality.

Canadians are avid readers and the Internet and television have not dampened their passion for a good read. The survey concluded that more than half of Canadians read books for pleasure every day. About 87 percent read at least one book per year. Only 13 percent said they are non-readers. Reading shares first place with television as the most likely leisure activity.