Poison Marketed As Food
Was Mother Teresa considered saintly because she did not do awful things? Did
In the same way, efforts to label the most healthful foods should identify those with obvious nutritional value. Such labeling should not award a seal for simply lacking unhealthful ingredients. Thus, the "Smart Choice" program, an effort by many of the largest food manufacturers in the country to voluntarily label their most healthful products, may be discrediting itself and, simultaneously, industry-based regulation of food labeling.
Before I discuss the Smart Choice program, please consider if the following is a healthful breakfast to give a child:
1 Tablespoon of sugar
2/3 slice of plain white bread (not whole wheat)
1 multivitamin
1/2 cup of skim milk
Any half-thinking person would say, "no, that is not a reasonable breakfast." Yet, that "breakfast" is actually 5 calories less, and more nutritious, than a serving of Froot Loops cereal with skim milk.
How could any reasonable labeling system identify Fruit Loops as a smart choice? A front-of-package label calling it that would be an outright lie and essentially weaken the usefulness of such label on other, more healthful, more deserving, food products. Yet the Smart Choices program does just that.
I was dumbfounded when I first read the article in the NYTimes on Saturday reporting that Fruit Loops and Cocao Crisps sugary breakfast cereals would qualify as "Smart Choices." The article can be seen in full here -- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/business/05smart.html
The Smart Choices labeling program is being coordinated by large, national food producing corporations. The official website is http://www.smartchoicesprogram.com/ and, on first look, the program looks promising as it states it "was motivated by the need for a single, trusted and reliable front-of-pack nutrition labeling program that U.S. food manufacturers and retailers could voluntarily adopt to help guide consumers in making smarter food and beverage choices."
Now I wonder if by "guide consumers in making smarter food and beverage choices," the program actually means to guide them to smarter choices to improve corporate profits. I have no other way to understand the criteria that would label Fruit Loops as a smart choice if considering nutrition!
The Smart Choices program does set criteria to judge food products (http://www.smartchoicesprogram.com/nutrition.html) but looking at the nitty-gritty (http://www.smartchoicesprogram.com/pdf/Smart%20Choices%20Program%20Nutrition%20Criteria%20Matrix.pdf) I see that the NYTimes article is right that Fruit Loops would fit the criteria for a "smart choice" label. With that, I feel it obvious the criteria are either based on very bad information or are being overtly manipulated to encourage sales of higher-profit foods for the companies participating in the program.
A serving of Froot Loops is 1 cup and has 110 calories. In a serving there is just 1 gram of fat and about 25% of the daily recommended amounts for a good handful of vitamins. But, it is important to note that there is almost no fiber or protein in Froot Loops, and there are 12 grams of sugar. For comparison, 1 teaspoon of real sugar is just 4 grams.
The Smart Choices Program awards a seal if a breakfast cereal has less than or equal to 12 grams of sugar. Interestingly, Froot Loops has just that much sugar. Also, to qualify, a breakfast cereal must "encourage" the use of one or more healthful "food groups," two of which are "fruits" and low-fat milk products. Thus, I assume the nutritional label noting values if the cereal is eaten with skim milk "encourages" its consumption. But, I must also wonder if the criteria counts the "Froot" in the name, a homophone, as supporting the eating of fruits!
I am not happy that any food label would call Froot Loops a smart choice. It is not! Yet the NYTimes article reports: "Eileen T. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said the program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards." And she was quoted as saying Froot Loops was a smart choice because it would be better than giving a child a doughnut. An absurd argument, I feel.
Other nutritional specialists disagreed as well. Walter Willett, the chair of the Department of Nutrition in the School of Public Health at Harvard University is quoted as saying, "These are horrible choices,” and “it’s a blatant failure of this system and it makes it, I’m afraid, not credible,”
Willett and many others have also spoken in the past about the poor criteria used by the US Department of Agriculture to make the Food Pyramid (http://www.mypyramid.gov/) and how it was influenced by the lobbying of big agricultural corporations and interest groups.
The NYTimes article also reported: "Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, was part of a panel that helped devise the Smart Choices nutritional criteria, until he quit last September. He said the panel was dominated by members of the food industry, which skewed its decisions.
“It was paid for by industry and when industry put down its foot and said this is what we’re doing, that was it, end of story,” he said."
Jacobson also complains that credit is given for foods with nutrients added, like many of the sugary breakfast cereals.
Caveat emptor! Buyer beware! Any industry-based effort to label for nutrition risks lack of credibility. The Smart Choice program threatens to do just that. Rather, non-partisan groups should use stringent criteria that would label food products that are of unquestionable quality not because they lack unhealthful ingredients but because their ingredients are generally agreed to be predominantly healthful.
We can not ask the foxes to guard the henhouse. Be careful reading package labels suggesting healthfulness -- you may be helping coporate profits more than your nutrition.
-- Timothy Malia, MD
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