Tags : fda, food, Smart Choices
Smart Choices are actually pretty stupid
Well it looks like yet another group has discovered a way to scam the public and make a pretty penny doing it to. The group known as Smart Choices are hawking their program and labeling to the food conglomerates that love nothing better than to keep selling us junk at increasingly high prices.
Companies that sign onto the program get to display the Smart Choices Program label with a great big green checkmark on their food items that meet the group’s criteria for “smarter food and beverage choices”. Some of the companies that have signed up are: Kraft Foods, ConAgra Foods, Unilever, General Mills, PepsiCo and Tyson Foods. Participating companies pay up to $100,000 a year to the program – based on the total sales of products that bear the seal.
Now on the whole one would think that such a program would be a good idea, and it would until you see some of the foods that are being graced with this fancy label. Among the foods that have passed the Smart Choices criteria are Cocoa Krispies, Froot Loops, pretty much all of the Kid Cuisine frozen foods, and Hellman’s Real Mayonnaise (not the low fat stuff either).
Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interests, was a member of the panel who helped devise the Smart Choices nutritional criteria until he quit because the panel was dominated by members of the food industry. At this point the criteria would allow as he puts it: “You could start out with some sawdust, add calcium or Vitamin A and meet the criteria,”
Nutritionists questioned other foods given the Smart Choices label. The program gives the seal to both regular and light mayonnaise, which could lead consumers to think they are both equally healthy. It also allows frozen meals and packaged sandwiches to have up to 600 milligrams of sodium, a quarter of the recommended daily maximum intake.
“The object of this is to make highly processed foods appear as healthful as unprocessed foods, which they are not,” said Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University.
Source: The New York Times – For Your Health, Froot Loops
The group was recently sent a letter from the Food and Drug Administration as well as the Department of Agriculture saying that they intend on monitoring the effects of the groups’ program on the food choices of consumers.
hat tip to Sara at Suburban Oblivion
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