Society's Needs and Health Technology: Food, Fitness and Organ Transplants

Science answers society's questions (and raises new ones)

Why does Health Canada require a "high in" symbol on the front of many foods? Why does your phone count your steps? Why can a hospital in Ontario keep a donor's lungs breathing in a box? Each began with a societal need: too much heart disease, too little activity, not enough organs. Research identified causes and possibilities; technology and policy turned them into products, devices and systems. And each new technology brings its own costs and new questions. This lesson assesses that cycle for the systems in this unit.

The need for healthy food

Diets high in sodium, sugar and saturated or trans fat, and low in fibre, vegetables and fruit, are linked to high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, type 2 diabetes, some cancers and digestive problems. Societal responses in Canada include:

• Canada's Food Guide (2019): a simple plate model (half vegetables and fruits, a quarter whole grains, a quarter protein foods, choosing plant-based proteins more often) and water as the drink of choice. It also encourages cooking more often, eating meals with others and being aware of food marketing.
• Front-of-package nutrition symbol: Health Canada now requires most prepackaged foods that are high in saturated fat, sugars or sodium to show a "high in" symbol on the front of the package (required as of January 1, 2026), so people can make quick comparisons.
• Trans fat ban: since September 2018, manufacturers in Canada may no longer add partially hydrogenated oils, the main source of industrial trans fats, which raise LDL cholesterol.
• Fortification: vitamin D is added to cow's milk; folic acid has been required in white flour since 1998 (to help prevent some birth defects); iodine is added to table salt.
• Dietary products for specific needs: lactose-free milk (lactase added), gluten-free foods for people with celiac disease, high-fibre cereals, plant-based protein products, and foods with less sodium.

Food security is a societal need too. Healthy food costs much more in many fly-in Northern communities. The federal Nutrition North Canada program subsidizes some foods there, and many Inuit, First Nations and Métis communities also rely on country foods (such as caribou, Arctic char, seal and moose) that are rich in protein, iron and healthy fats and are central to culture.

The need to counteract sedentary lifestyles

Cars, desk jobs, screens and delivery apps mean many Canadians move far less than earlier generations. Low activity weakens the heart and muscles and raises the risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. Responses include:

• Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Children and Youth (ages 5–17): at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity a day (including vigorous activity and muscle- and bone-strengthening activity at least 3 days a week), several hours of light activity, no more than 2 hours of recreational screen time, and 8 to 10 hours of sleep for ages 14 to 17.
• Fitness equipment and wearables: treadmills, stationary bikes, rowing machines and resistance bands make exercise possible indoors during long winters. Heart-rate monitors, fitness watches and apps track steps, heart rate and sleep. Many watches estimate heart rate by shining light into the skin and detecting changes in blood volume with each pulse.
• Community design: bike lanes, multi-use trails, active school travel programs, and recreation centres.

Assessing wearables: they can motivate people and give useful data, but studies have found that wrist heart-rate readings tend to be less accurate during intense or irregular movement, and calorie estimates are often not very accurate. They also raise privacy questions about health data. A chest-strap monitor (which detects electrical signals, like an ECG) is generally more accurate during exercise.

The need for organs

For some people with failing kidneys, livers, hearts or lungs, a transplant is the only long-term treatment, and there are far more people waiting than organs available. That need has driven science, technology and policy:

• Immune science: transplanted organs are attacked as foreign. Tissue matching (blood type and HLA markers) and immunosuppressant drugs, which became much more effective in the 1980s, made transplants practical. Recipients take these drugs for life, which raises their risk of infection.
• Preservation technology: organs used to be kept only on ice, for a limited time. Machines that keep organs perfused, such as Toronto's ex vivo lung perfusion system, let teams assess and even improve donor organs outside the body.
• Safety standards: Health Canada's regulations on the safety of human cells, tissues and organs for transplantation set rules for screening donors (for example, for infections), testing, handling and record-keeping.
• Donation systems: in Ontario, donation is coordinated by Ontario Health (Trillium Gift of Life Network), and people 16 and older can register their consent to donate online. One deceased donor can save up to eight lives. Living donors can give a kidney or part of a liver; Canadian Blood Services runs a national Kidney Paired Donation program that matches willing donors with compatible recipients across Canada. In 2021, Nova Scotia became the first place in North America to adopt deemed consent, in which adults are considered willing donors unless they opt out.

These developments raise ethical questions (consent, fair allocation, living-donor risks) that society keeps debating; you explored some of them in Grade 10.