Ten Reasons Why the Smart Choices Food Labeling Scheme is Outrageous
Published September 09, 2009 @ 04:43PM PT
The Smart Choices Program is a new front-of-the-package nutrition-labeling program designed to help shoppers make smarter food and beverage choices in their supermarket aisle. After resigning from the board of the Smart Choices food-labeling program, Michael Jacobson remarked, "you could start out with some sawdust, add calcium or Vitamin A and meet the criteria." I've already explained a couple of reasons why this program is terrible news for consumers and for sustainability, but just in case that wasn't outrageous enough, here are ten more reasons to be angry about the food industry controlling a misleading food labeling program. (Once you've gotten angry enough, take action: Send a direct message to the doctors involved and institution leaders who say: "Don't Let Kellogg's Buy Scientists: Froot Loops Aren't a Healthy Breakfast.")
Ten Reasons Why The Smart Choices Food Labeling Program Is Outrageous:
- "Smart Choices" gives cereals like Froot Loops the right to display the "Smart Choices" green check mark, misleading consumers with connotations that Froot Loops cereal is healthy. Of course, the Onion was wise to the "Froot" ploy seven years ago, reporting that the surgeon general recommends "three to five servings of Froot per day."
- Michael Jacobson, who was a member of the Smart Choices board until last September when he quit, explained that to the Times that "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."
- The FDA and DoA sent a letter to Smart Choices that gets to the crux of the inherent problem with a program that has "the effect of encouraging consumers to choose highly processed foods."
- “The object of this is to make highly processed foods appear as healthful as unprocessed foods, which they are not,” explained Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University. She further asked, "Is better junk food a good choice?"
- Marion Nestle also wrote on her blog of the conflict of interest, "The more products that qualify for the Smart Choices logo, the more money the program gets. I’d call that a clear conflict of interest." Furthermore, Kraft Foods has paid for Tufts to set up a Nutrition Navigator — the Dean of that Tufts department is Dr. Eileen Kennedy, President of Smart Choices board. Lesson: Get on the side of the food industry and the money flows. In press releases companies can then happily point to the nutritionists and scientists who agree with them enough to take their money. While Kennedy is not compensated for her role on the Smart Choices board, her school does have a financial relationship with at least one of the companies involved.
- Involving the food industry in the program is "a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse," said Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center. The Chicago Tribune reports that Katz led the development of the NuVal system, one of the few impartial food-labeling programs.
- Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health, explained that including sugary and processed foods in the program make for "horrible choices," further explaining to the New York Times that "it’s a blatant failure of this system and it makes it, I’m afraid, not credible."
- Smart Choices address a legitimate problem in absolutely the wrong way. Clarity and consistency across brands is necessary, but more important is making sure that the program isn't misleading. Won't the presence of a check mark make consumers less inclined to take a look at the ingredients?
- Writing in Supermarket News David Orgel explained that he'd "rather see an imperfect approach for now than no guidance at all." But with a program expected to be widely adopted, imperfect is likely to stay imperfect, with the food industry controlling the program. Better to give no guidance than mislead, right?
- Kennedy made the most basic logical fallacy in her justification of awarding "Smart Choices" certification to junk-food, imagining a false-dilemma that isn't true: “You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.”
Froot Loops may be better than eating dirt, eating doughnuts, or eating rusty nails, but that doesn't make Froot Loops a Smart Choice. Outraged? You should be. Take Action!
[Photo credit: zanastardust]
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Mike Smith is associate editor at Change.org. Email: mike@change.org
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Sent the letter and shared with friends around the country. We can expose this marketing campaign as a ploy and get the academics to pull their valuable stamp of approval from the project.
Posted by Matt Kelley on 09/09/2009 @ 05:09AM PT
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More big business in government. I wonder how much this is costing the tax payers. Seperation of church and state, seperation of big business and state!
Posted by Christina Campbell on 09/09/2009 @ 09:27AM PT
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Just to be clear, I don't think government has anything to do with this. As mentioned above, the FDA has voiced disapproval. This is just the industry trying to make an advertising campaign appear more legitimate. The overtaxed FDA technically regulates blatant lying on food labels, but when the green check actually matches the "criteria" of the correct percent of fat and vitamins, it will be hard to stop. Industry and science have both purposefully and coincidentally contributed to making consumers believe the "trees" are more important than the "forest." How do we get people to just look at the food as a whole and use common sense??
Posted by Keisa Bennett on 09/13/2009 @ 11:23AM PT
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Here are 6 reasons why consumers won't benefit from these system:
http://www.fooducate.com/blog/2009/08/07/six-reasons-smart-choices-food-labeling-wont-help-shoppers/
Posted by Fooducate - eat a bit better on 09/09/2009 @ 10:50AM PT
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So, basically, it's business as usual. Profit at all costs. That's the American way, right?
Posted by Fred Frankenberg on 09/09/2009 @ 10:56AM PT
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Infuriating but yet disheartening! As Nutrition Professionals, we see and hear the daily confusion from the general public about what foods are 'healthy'. It is this junk food that is popularized by media and pretty labels that is a major contributor in our nation's health crisis! It boggles my mind how big business & the bottom line continues to win over ethics and human integrity!
Posted by Seanna Marceaux on 09/09/2009 @ 02:19PM PT
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Yep...That is bullshit indeed...
Consider the petition signed.
Posted by Thomas McHugh on 09/09/2009 @ 09:56PM PT
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This is disgusting. Capitalism without Conscience, the new force & governing body of the USA.
Besides that atrocity I would like to know, how can any parent or thinking adult see a label "smart choice" and think that Froot Loops are suddenly healthy for you.
Posted by Michele Rodriguez on 09/10/2009 @ 11:16AM PT
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Thank you. You've demonstrated why we need to support health, sex, gender, and sexuality education at an elementary school level. Thanks to my teachers, I learned at a very young age that whole grains, and unprocessed flour provide best quality nutrition.
Good nutrition is an important, everyday, human trait, among many, that we need access too, and know how to use it.
Kellogs, the corporate giant, is only interested in profits at the expense of wholesale ignorance.
Watch out for republicans who would oppose this common sense idea. They are aligned with corporation who are only interested in money, power, and control!
Posted by Flex Colby on 09/13/2009 @ 02:51PM PT
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Labeling should be a must in truth!
Posted by May Hostru on 09/13/2009 @ 08:29PM PT
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Business as usual. Welcome to globalization. Government is not evil, corporations are. Government is a problem only when it's bought up by corporations. Not the other way around. Read Naomi Klein's "The shock Doctrine".
Posted by Nicole Perrot on 09/13/2009 @ 10:17PM PT
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Congratulations on seeing through this sham. Would that y'all had done as good an analysis before supporting the "Make Our Food Safe" campaign for the currently proposed legislation.
HR 2749 and S 510 will both marginalize the healthy food movement. The healthy food movement is involves local, sustainable, no spray or low spray with well chosen sprays. Fortunately, that includes most certified organic growers. Unfortunately, it doesn't include a whole lot of certified organic food because it is grown by industrial agriculture.
As used in the federal legislation, "safe" certainly doesn't mean "healthy" by my standards. The FDA/USDA would permit irradiation, GMOs, cloned meat and food like substances masquerading as food to be labeled "safe." In common usage, "healthy" always means "safer." Completely "safe" would be risk free and well beyond affordable to the majority of Americans.
HR 2749/S 510 require separate HACCP-like "food safety plans" for every single product. They also require "food defense plans." And every "facility" pays the same $500 annual fee.
But farms are exempt, we are told. No, farms aren't; only "farms," as defined in the laws, are. Farms that make salad mixes, any value added product (e.g., cheese), distribute crops of a neighboring farm are not.
These laws will strangle our movement at the distribution and processing levels. And "processing" is anything more than washing, cooling and removing outer leaves of crops. The cooperative packing houses being created by farmers will all be subject to the law. We already can raise more meat than we can process because the implementation of falsely named HACCP regulations have caused many small meat processors to close and made it very difficult for the others to expand.
For the record, I am a second career market gardener, distributor and retailer of local food. Seldom a week goes by that my wife and I don't work 65-70 hours making less than the minimum wage on a financial investment of well into 6 figures. And just as our hopes of over a dozen year were becoming realizable, HR 2749/S 510 come along and much our our work will be destroyed.
I can be reached at hhamil@buncombe.main.nc.us or 828/669-4003. I will happily defend all that I have written.
Posted by Harry Hamil on 09/14/2009 @ 05:24AM PT
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how much money does Marion Nestle, Michael Jacobson, Walt Willett make from being professional critics? Katz, he's a industry whore who is getting paid big $ to promote his own program LOL
Saw this on Nestle's blog:
Kindly tell us, your audience, when can we expect to see your financial disclosure telling us how much you make from writing books critical of the food industry, money you receive from speaking and other engagements, and grant and consulting money and your sources? Thank you.
Whats your best guess? I don't think it is right to make profit being a critic. Lets stop this self serving promotion and disclose all financial arrangements so we have faith in the movement.
Posted by Qi Deqwon on 09/19/2009 @ 05:19AM PT
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I'm thankful that there are people such as Marion Nestle and Michael Jacobson who spend their life fighting for better foods for the rest of us.
Their time and effort in leading such an ongoing stuggle is worth more than what they make from writing books, speaking engagements and any grant or consulting money they receive. It wouldn't make sense for Anyone to invest so much time and investigation without being paid.
Without noted critics bringing to the surface what is 'really' going on - we'd all have to do our own intricate research ... So, thank you Marion and Michael for fighting for the rest of us - who are unfortunately, either to busy or to tired to take on the battle!!!
Posted by Deborah Deborah on 09/30/2009 @ 01:29PM PT
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