Now that the Smart Choices program is on hold, it’s time to take a look at what else is on food packages these days. My current favorite example is the huge IMMUNITY banner across Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies.
I don’t know how you interpret this but my mind boggles at the very idea that eating Cocoa Krispies might protect kids against swine flu.
Apparently, the minds of the San Francisco attorney general’s staff are equally boggled. They just sent a warning letter to Kellog:
“Specifically, the Immunity Claims may falsely suggest to parents that cereals like Cocoa Krispies are more healthy for their children than other breakfast foods that are not high in sugar and not highly processed. The Immunity Claims may also mislead parents into believing that serving this sugary cereal will actually boost their child’s immunity, leaving parents less likely to take more productive steps to protect their children’s health.”
The city attorneys are asking Kellogg to provide copies of all of the consumer and scientific research the company used to establish this claim, or else. If they don’t get these documents, they will “seek an immediate termination or modification of the advertising claim….”
Good idea. I can’t wait to see how Kellogg’s – ever at the leading edge of advertising claims – will respond.
Kelly Brownell and his colleagues at the Rudd Center at Yale have produced another well researched – and in this case, gorgeously presented – report on the ways cereal companies market their products.
Even a quick look at its summary gives an unambiguous result: most of the marketing dollars are aimed at pushing sugary cereals at kids. Companies use TV and the Internet to push the least nutritious cereals.
None of this is particularly surprising but it’s great to have the data. Information about marketing budgets for specific products is hard to get. It is easy to understand why companies would rather nobody knew how much they spent to get kids to pester their parents to buy Froot Loops or Cocoa Puffs.
Most troubling is the dual marketing. Advertising aimed at kids pushes sugar. Advertising aimed at parents uses health claims and self-endorsements like the late (and not lamented) Smart Choices program I discussed in previous posts.
Companies may argue that sugary cereals are good because they encourage kids to drink milk, but the Rudd Center researchers also have shown that kids are happy to eat non-sweetened cereals Furthermore, if they add their own sugar, they are putting in less than the cereal companies put in.
The bottom line: forget industry self-regulation. It doesn’t work.
The FDA has a new “Dear Industry” letter announcing that it is going to set some rules for those “better-for-you” stickers on the front of junk food packages. Why? “FDA’s intent is to provide standardized, science-based criteria on which FOP [front of package] nutrition labeling must be based.”
What this is about, of course, is all those self-endorsement labels food companies like PepsiCo (Smart Spot), Kraft (Sensible Solution), and many companies collectively (Smart Choices) have been putting on their products.
The companies set up their own nutrition criteria and then applied those criteria to their own products. Surprise! A great many of their products qualified for the “better-for-you” labels.
I’m guessing Smart Choices was the final straw for the FDA. The idea that the Smart Choices check mark could go onto Froot Loops was so astonishing, and the subject of so much ridicule, that the FDA had to act. If nutrition criteria are developed independently, most junk foods would not qualify.
The FDA also says it will be testing how well consumers understand different kinds of package labels. It gives a bunch of examples. Want to know how the FDA is thinking about this? Check out its handy backgrounder, which if nothing else is an excellent introduction to the entire issue of front-of-package labels.
Have a preference about what to use? Write the FDA at this address:
Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305), Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061, Rockville, MD 20852. All comments should be identified with the title of the guidance document: Guidance for Industry: Letter Regarding Point of Purchase Food Labeling.
Addendum, October 22: Here are two additional documents to add to the collection. First, a letter to representative Rosa DeLauro responding to her complaint about the Smart Choices program. Second, is a a summary of the talking points used by Commissioner Margaret Hamburg in her press conference on the new FDA initiatives. My conclusion: the FDA is back on the job!
It’s about time the FDA got back on the job.This is in reaction to the self-endorsements food companies have been making on package labels.The way this works is that companies set up their own nutrition criteria and then apply those criteria to their own products.Guess what.Lots of their products qualify for better-for-you labels.Examples: PepsiCo (Smart Spot) and Kraft (Sensible Solution), and now lots of companies working together (Smart Choices).I think Smart Choices was the final straw for the FDA.The idea that its check could go onto Froot Loops made it clear that the bar had to be set higher.Yes, they are suggesting something voluntary, but if the nutrition criteria are honest enough, junk foods won’t qualify.
The FDA just announced in the Federal Register that it plans to take a good hard look at public understanding of what’s currently on food labels. It says it will do an Internet survey of 43,000 people to:
Identify attitudes and beliefs to do with health, diet and label usage
Determine relationships between these attitudes and beliefs, demographics, and actual label use
Look at the relevance of these attitudes
Identify barriers to label use
I hope they ask me!
What is this about? Let me take a wild guess: Health claims? Smart Choices labels? Anything that makes people think highly processed foods are good for them? Or distracts from the Nutrition Facts panel?
The FDA is required to allow 60 days for comment. Tell the FDA you think the more research it does on food labels, the better!
Last week, I posted correspondence regarding the American Society of Nutrition’s (ASN) partnership with the industry-sponsored Smart Choices program. This program places a check mark on food products that meet its nutrient standards. I am concerned about ASN’s involvement in this project as it puts the society in conflict of interest. Several other food rating systems are under development, among them the traffic-light system used in Great Britain. How can the ASN objectively evaluate the relative merits of these systems if it is paid for administering – and, therefore, endorsing – Smart Choices? I much prefer the traffic light system, have concerns about the entire approach, and think some of the standards overly generous, particularly the upper limits of 25% of calories from added sugars and 480 mg sodium per serving. Several people who commented on my post asked to see the ASN’s response. Here it is:
From:John E. Courtney, Ph.D., Executive Officer, American Society of Nutrition Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2009 10:24 AM Subject: Sunday, May 10, 2009 10:36 AM email to Katrina Dunn
Importance: High
Dear Dr. Nestle,
Thank you for your comments on ASN and the Smart Choices program. We value feedback from our members and I’d like to take this opportunity to address some of your concerns and amend a few of the points you made. First, The Smart Choices Program is not an industry-initiated plan. The Smart Choices idea was facilitated by the Keystone Center, which works with a broad array of stakeholders to develop solutions to complex health and social problems. The Smart Choices front-of-pack symbol was developed through a series of plenary meetings over two years and intensive work groups with academics, food manufacturers, public health organizations, and with observers from federal agencies. This unique process with a broad array of stakeholders along with the fact that the program is completely transparent sets it apart from other programs that have been developed. In the fall of 2008, Keystone Center issued a RFP for organizations interested in administering the program. The ASN Executive Board was briefed on the program, discussed and evaluated it, and approved moving forward. ASN partnered with NSF to administer the program and was selected. ASN’s role will primarily be one of oversight and facilitation of the program governance, and the Society will be responsible for maintaining the scientific integrity in the Smart Choices program. This program was discussed at the ASN Volunteer Member Leadership Summit in January and most recently at the ASN Scientific Sessions and Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology in New Orleans, LA in April, 2009.
Perhaps most exciting for the Society and consistent with its mission is that ASN will be coordinating a rigorous evaluation of the program as well as consumer research to determine the effectiveness of the program. Perhaps most importantly, ASN neither “owns” the program nor are we making any profit from the program. The funds generated from company participants will be reinvested into the program. ASN is the pre-eminent society for nutrition researchers and practitioners and encourages scientific debate and transparency and is looking forward to evaluating the effectiveness of this program in helping consumers.
Thank you again for your comments and for your commitment to advancing nutrition research and practice.
Over the weekend, I received a letter from the American Society of Nutrition (ASN) nominating me to join the Board of Directors of the Smart Choices program. Smart Choices, you may recall from my previous posts on this program as well as on other such systems, is a food industry-initiated plan to put a check mark – a stamp of approval – on processed food products that meet certain nutritional criteria. Apparently, the ASN Board agreed to administer (and, implicitly, endorse) this program without discussing the matter with the membership. I think involvement of independent nutrition researchers with Smart Choices represents a conflict of interest and the ASN should not be involved in this effort. Here is what I told Katrina Dunn, the ASN Program Coordinator:
Dear Katrina—
Thank you for inviting me to join the Board of Directors of the Smart Choices program. I regret that I cannot accept. Participating in Smart Choices represents a serious conflict of interest for nutrition educators who wish to maintain independence from the influence of the food industry on nutrition advice.
But participation also represents a serious conflict of interest for the American Society of Nutrition (ASN). I am dismayed that the ASN—an organization devoted to the highest standards of nutrition research–is involved in this project. I think the ASN should reconsider this involvement and withdraw immediately.
The ostensible purpose of Smart Choices is to guide the public to select more healthful foods. I am unaware of a research basis indicating that the program is likely to succeed in this goal.
Evidence does, however, support two additional goals of the program. The first is to provide a basis for marketing highly processed food products. I think we would all agree that highly processed foods are, in general, demonstrably nutritionally inferior to whole or minimally processed foods.
The second is to stave off federal regulations requiring a traffic-light food rating system such as that in use in the United Kingdom. Preliminary research indicates that consumers prefer this system to numerical scores and understand the colors to mean that they should choose green-lighted foods and avoid red-lighted foods.
The cut points selected for the Smart Choices program may meet criteria of the Dietary Guidelines, but their health benefits are debatable (the sodium cut point is particularly generous). Surely, a great deal more research is needed before ASN directly or indirectly endorses specific processed foods simply because they meet arbitrary nutrient cut points.
These concerns all address questions of intellectual conflict of interest. But I am also concerned about financial conflicts of interest. If ASN receives payment for its endorsement and administration of this program, the organization—and its members—risk losing intellectual independence.
I appreciate the invitation but I believe the entire program is ill advised and I urge ASN to extricate as quickly as possible.
Sincerely yours,
Marion Nestle
Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health
New York University
This page is somewhat disorganized in that I now put occasional print, audio, and video interviews, which used to be separated, together by year. The section at the very end is called Controversies; it is where I post letters from critics. Scroll down to find whatever you are looking for. Media interviews and reviews for specific books are on the page tabs for that book. For old podcasts and videos of presentations, look under Appearances and scroll down for Past Appearances; in recent years, I’ve been putting them in the chronological list here.
Interviews, media appearances, and lectures (the ones for which I have links)
Jan 17 Podcast interview with Kathlyn Carney, Connecting the Dots. Lisen on Spotify or Apple Podcast
Jan 16 LA Times guide to Japanese subscription snack boxes (Video Part I). Part II is Jan 23 (same clip?)
Jan 14 The Franklin Institute’s Ben Franklin Birthday celebration. My talk comes first. Others are from Eric Oberhalter and honoree Wendell Berry. Use passcode $H81iALu
Jan 15 Two short answers to questions at FAO’s Regional Office in Santiago, Chile. Video 1: on what governments can do about childhood obesity. Video 2: on food choices in an unhealthy food environment.
July 5 Goldberg R. Food Citizenship: Food System Advocates in an Era of Distrust. Oxford University Press. Chapter 1. Health and Nutrition: Interview with Marion Nestle:1-13. Video online
July Carter J. Interview with Marion Nestle. In: Food for Thought: Feeding the People, Protecting the Planet. Aspenia [Aspen Institute Italia] 2015;67:101-105.
July Carter J. Intervista a Marion Nestle. Come cambiano le politiche alimentary. In: Fame Zero: Rinascimento agricolo. Aspenia [Revista di Aspen Institute Italia] 2015;69:198-202.
January 10 Video interview on Star Talk, co-hosts Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Eugene Mirman, with Anthony Bourdain, about the science of cooking (sort of).
May 21 Print interview with Revital Federbush for an Israeli women’s magazine, mostly about dairy foods I’m told (it’s in Hebrew, which I cannot read, alas).
November 19 Interview with Al Jazeera for a Fault Line program on “Fast food, fat profits: obesity in America (my 10 seconds starts at about minute 15).
September 16 Speech at Columbia University conference on Global Food Systems: Their Impact on Nutrition and Health for All on panel on Advanced Technologies, Food Safety and the Role of Local and Organic Food Production (video)
November 12 Panel discussion on the farm bill, Wagner School of Public Service, Puck Building (Lafayette at Houston), 2nd floor. Here is Wild Green Yonder’s take on it.
February 6, 2008 Biologique Foods radio, two podcast interviews with TJ Harrington in Bloomington, MN, one on food politics and the other on what’s in your food.
Interview with Laura Flinders (and Arun Gupta and Peter Hoffman), Grit TV. It’s on how to eat well without going broke, and starts with a Monty Python clip on Spam 11/26/08
September 5, 2007 Scientific American Podcast with Steve Mirsky. Because I am a Paulette Goddard professor at NYU, he sends along an article he wrote about Einstein’s experience with the gorgeous movie star.
NPR Science Friday, panel on the farm bill with Michael Pollan and Sandor Ellix Katz 8/10/07
Are you responsible for your own weight? Balko R. Pro: Absolutely. Government has no business interfering with what you eat. Brownell K, Nestle M. Con: Not if Blaming the Victim Is Just an Excuse to Let Industry off the Hook. Time June 7, 2004:113.
For this week’s Q and A on Eating Liberally, kat connects the dots between the recent increase in salt-induced kidney stones in children and the food industry’s new Smart Choices labeling system which, as I pointed out a few days ago, is particularly generous in the salt standard.
I don’t know how you interpret this but my mind boggles at the very idea that eating Cocoa Krispies might protect kids against swine flu.
