Currently browsing posts about: Kellogg

You have to see New York City’s latest tourist attraction: a Pop-Tarts World Store in Times Square.  OK, M&Ms has a fabulous light display.  OK, Hershey’s has an enormous store filled with chocolate tchotchkes.  But Pop-Tarts?   I think it’s weird to turn Times Square into a food court (with tee shirts) but hey, I’m not in the junk food business.

Kellogg must think it’s worth the exorbitant cost of store frontage in the middle of New York City.  According to the account in the New York Times, a Kellogg spokesman said:

Our long-term hope is to strengthen the bonding between the brand and the consumer, and that has great benefits for the brand.

Others explain that “Just a presence in Times Square can help a company…It [is] a way to project an image of growth and maturity.”

I had no idea that bonds between brands and consumers needed strengthening.  It never occurred to me that Times Square projects an image of maturity.

OK, it’s cute that Kellogg named Pop-Tarts after Pop Art, but Pop-Tarts as a tourist destination?

Check it out and let me know!

Update, August 12: Here is Mark Bittman’s review.

Update, August 16: And here is CNN’s take on it (I’m interviewed, briefly).

I’ve been collecting items on food safety for the last week or two. Here’s a roundup for a quiet Friday in July:

Antibiotics in animal agriculture

     USA Today does great editorial point/counterpoints and here is one from July 12 on use of antibiotics as growth promoters or as  prophylactics in farm animals and poultry.  This selects for antibiotic-resistant bacteria.   If we get infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, too bad for us. 

     The paper’s editors think that use of antibiotics for these purposes is irresponsible:  Our view on food safety: To protect humans, curb antibiotic use in animals.

     Dr. Howard Hill, a veterinarian who directs the National Pork Producers Council, defends these uses of antibiotics: Don’t bar animal antibiotics.

The source of the 2006 E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak in California spinach

     USDA and UC Davis investigators are still trying to figure out how the toxic E. coli O157:H7 got onto the spinach. Investigators did not find the bacteria on the spinach field itself, but they did find it in water, cattle, and cattle feces at a cattle crossing over a stream one mile away. Leading hypotheses: runoff from that stream or wild boar.

     Subsequent studies showed low levels of E. coli 0157:H7 in wild animals and birds.  A new study confirms that just under 4% of wild boar harbor the bacteria. 

     The investigators say the spinach outbreak of 2006 was the result of a combination of circumstances: “Everybody is starting to realize that maybe unusually heavy rainfall prior to planting could be an issue in terms of where water is routed.”

     Dairy farming is moving into California’s Central Valley in a big way.  Runoff from those farms will not be sterile and growing vegetables along water routes may be risky.  Compost, anyone?

The chemical behind Kellogg’s cereal recall

     Kellogg recalled 28 million packets of breakfast cereals last month because people reported funny smells and getting sick from something in the packaging.  At first, Kellogg would not say what the chemical contaminant might be.  

     Then it said the chemical is methylnaphthalene. Mothballs! (Are they still making mothballs?  Their smell is unforgettable)

     Tom Philpott’s comments on Grist.com point out what’s really at stake: “And of course, the real scandal is what Kellogg’s is marketing to kids: a tarted-up slurry consisting mainly of sugar, corn products, partially hydrogenated oil, and food colorings. But that’s a whole different story.”

Salsa and guacamole are sources of foodborne illness

     The CDC reports that salsa and guacamole are becoming more frequent sources of contaminants leading to illness.  CDC started collecting information on sources of outbreaks in 1973.  Its first outbreak due to salsa or guacamole occurred in 1984.  Since then, there have been 136 such outbreaks.  Restaurants and delis were responsible for 84%.  Between 1984 and 1997, salsa and guacamole outbreaks accounted for 1.5% of total foodborne outbreaks.  But the percentage rose to 3.9% from 1998 to 2008.

     Moral: make your own!

China deals with melamine in milk powder

     China is taking creative steps to prevent melamine from getting into milk powder and infant formula.  To discourage fraudulent producers from boosting up the apparent level of protein in milk with melamine, it simply reduced the amount of protein required.

The latest on food irradiation

     FoodSafetyNews.com presented a two-part series on food irradiation (part 1 and part 2), both of them quite favorable to the technology. As I discuss in my book, Safe Food, I don’t have any safety ojections to food irradiation, but I consider it a late-stage techno-fix for a problem that should never have occurred in the first place.

     I conclude with my favorite quote from former USDA official Carol Tucker Foreman: “sterilized poop is still poop.”

Enjoy a safe weekend!

The FTC has imposed new advertising restrictions on Kellogg because of the Immunity claim on Rice Krispies.  The company is not to make claims about “any health benefit of any food  unless the claims are backed by scientific evidence and not misleading.”

Under a previous order dealing with Frosted Mini-Wheats, Kellogg was not supposed to make claims about benefits to cognition on any of its cereals or snack foods unless the company could prove that the claims were backed by real science. This new decision extends that ruling to include any claim at all.

OK, but I’m confused about several aspects of this decision:

• How come the FTC is doing this and not the FDA?  At some point years ago, regulatory responsibility was split between FDA and FTC.  Since then, the FDA regulates claims on food package labels, whereas the FTC regulates advertising claims.  I realize that food labels are a form of advertising, but it’s unusual and surprising for the FTC to get involved in FDA-regulated matters.
• As FoodNavigator also wonders, why didn’t the FTC fine the company and, instead, write a harsh letter? [see update below]
• Why is the FTC doing this?  Kellogg agreed months ago to withdraw its Immunity claim ( see my November 5 post about the withdrawal).  The Immunity boxes gradually disappeared from supermarket shelves and I haven’t seen one for a long time.

So what’s going on here?  Is the FTC getting serious about regulation (and about time, too)?  Or is FDA sitting back and letting the FTC do its enforcement work?

Could this be why the FDA hasn’t sent a warning letter to Mead-Johnson, the maker of the chocolate toddler formula with three health claims aimed at kids ages 1 to 3.  I posted about this product on April 26, but haven’t heard whether the FDA is doing anything about it.  Can the FTC be on this case but waiting for investigations to be completed before taking action?

Kellogg, it seems, is under fire on all fronts.  CSPI’s Margo Wootan sent me the recent decision by the Children’s Advertising Review Unit of the Better Business Bureau that Kellogg must stop advertising Pop-Tarts to kids:

CARU was concerned that the product packaging, which features berries and states “Made with Real Fruit” for several of Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts®  products that have fruit in their names, impliedly represents to children that the products contain substantial amounts of fruit.

In fact, according to CARU, Pop-Tarts contain less than 6% fruit and less than 2% of the fruit shown in the advertising. Kellogg claimed that its marketing was not aimed at kids, but lost that one.

It’s great that regulatory agencies like FTC and FDA (and voluntary agencies like CARU) are regulating but it’s hard to keep track of who is doing what.   Nothing to do but wait and see what happens next.  Stay tuned.

Update, June 8: CSPI’s Margo Wootan writes that FTC can’t impose fines because it does not have the authority to issue civil penalties.  Ted Mermin of Public Good Law concurs.  He says:

Companies fight hard to make FTC (and similar) orders as narrow as possible, in large part to avoid precisely the situation in which they are held responsible for violating an existing injunction/order.  Since (in the Commission’s view, at least) Kellogg hadn’t violated an existing order, the FTC did not have the authority to fine them without first going to the US Department of Justice to get DOJ to take the case (a matter of a 45 day delay, if DOJ takes it at all).  The burden of that delay (and of needing to get authority from DOJ in the first place) is precisely what is driving the congressional charge for enhanced FTC authority as part of the financial reform legislation.

If the House version of financial reform legislation had been in effect, the FTC would have had the authority to seek civil penalties (i.e., fines) and the outcome here might have been different.  As it was, the fact that Kellogg had stopped the practice…kept the Commission (at least the three commissioners in the “majority”) from focusing on any remedy other than injunctive relief–that is, a broadening of the existing order from the Mini-Wheats case, with the threat of that $16,000 per violation (and an expanded area of prohibited activity) running into the future.

Update, June 11: In an editorial titled “Snake oil for breakfast,” the New York Times explains why health claims matter so much.  If you can’t believe health claims, what part of the food label can you believe?:

Businesses have been making dubious claims about their products at least since the 17th century, when the British clergyman Anthony Daffy sold Daffy’s Elixir as a cure for scurvy as well as agues, gout, rheumatism, rickets, worms and other ailments. Hucksterism — no matter how implausible the claim — lives on…[for example] POM Wonderful claimed its pomegranate juice helps treat, prevent or cure hypertension, diabetes and cancer.  This might be par for the course for an era of swift-boating political ads and a torrent of television commercials plumping for myriad wonder drugs (sudden death may result). It leaves the consumer in a quandary: what part of the label can be believed?

While we are on the subject of European decisions on health claims, Kellogg has just petitioned the European Food Safety Authority to be allowed to put claims for weight loss on its breakfast cereals: “Ready-to-eat breakfast cereal can help to reduce body weight, can help to reduce body fat, can help to reduce waist circumference.”

Do you think they mean Froot Loops?

Kellogg is always way ahead of the curve on health claims.  What is especially creative about this one is that the company is filing the claim through “article 13.5,” which means that the “science still remains proprietary and does not require disclosure through this process.  A Kellogg official explained:

As we understand article 13.5, five years after approval of the health claim, the wording can then can be used by other cereal manufacturers but our scientific data does not have to be made public.

EFSA, I hope, will turn this one down flat.  I want to see the science before believing that breakfast cereals are diet products.  Sure they are, if you eat just one serving for breakfast, use one more to substitute for a meal, and then eat a small meal.  That would work.  But so would chocolate bars.

Thanks to Anita Laser Reutersward in Sweden for forwarding the most recent decisions of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) on  petitions for health claims.

Health claims are vitally important to food marketers.  Evidence: they have filed 44,000 petitions with EFSA to date.  EFSA consolidated these into 4,185 claims.  It is dealing with them in batches.

EFSA did not approve many of the 416 petitions in this latest batch :

Experts issued unfavourable opinions on most of the claims in the second series due to the poor quality of the information provided to EFSA including:

• Lack of information to identify the substance on which the claim is based, e.g. “probiotics”
• Lack of evidence that the claimed effect is indeed beneficial to the maintenance or improvement of the functions of the body (e.g. food with “antioxidant properties”)
• Lack of human studies with reliable measures of the claimed health benefit

Its decisions about antioxidants are especially interesting in light of claims on products in American supermarkets.  Under EFSA rules, this Kellogg package would not be allowed.

In its decision, EFSA said:

“On the basis of the data presented, the Panel concludes that a cause and effect relationship has not been established between the consumption of the food(s)/food constituent(s) evaluated in this opinion and (1) a beneficial physiological effect related to antioxidant activity, antioxidant content, or antioxidant properties, and (2) the protection of body cells and molecules such as DNA, proteins and lipids from oxidative damage.”

My translation: EFSA panels took a good hard look at the science and could not find evidence for benefits at the physiological or molecular levels from taking antioxidant supplements or eating foods with antioxidants.

I can’t wait to see how food manufacturers respond.

March 1 update: here come the comments.  According to FoodNavigator.com, EFSA rejected health claims for:

vitamin D, probiotics, green tea, black tea, lutein, beta glucans, meso-zeaxanthin, alpha-lipoic acid, melatonin, peptides, xanthan gum, sugar-free gum, guar gum, gamma-linolenic acid (GLA), fermented whey and linoleic acid.

These decisions “came as a massive blow to the European and international functional foods and nutraceuticals industries, especially the herbal antioxidant and probiotic sectors, which have yet to see a positive NDA opinion.”

I went to the reception last week for Diet Coke’s red dress event,:

Diet Coke and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health have joined forces to raise awareness about women’s risk of heart disease — in support of NHLBI’s The Heart Truth campaign — with a multi-faceted program that will reach consumers across the nation.

To celebrate American Heart Month in February, Diet Coke’s Red Dress Program will take center stage at high-profile events, including sponsorship of The Heart Truth’s, Red Dress Collection fashion show at Fashion Week 2008. Diet Coke will also unveil new packaging and programs featuring The Heart Truth and Red Dress logos and messages on heart health.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest points out that Coca-Cola, whose products are not exactly heart healthy, is a strange partner for the NHLBI.  The agency should reconsider.  It wrote NHLBI to say so.

New York Times reporter Tara Parker-Pope asks: “Should Coke talk about heart health?”

I don’t know how long Diet Coke and NHLBI have been engaged in this partnership but it is surely more than five years.  From NHLBI’s point of view, the partnership publicizes the risk of heart disease to women.  For Coca-Cola, the benefits are obvious.

Are such partnerships a benign win-win?  History suggests otherwise.  In 1984, Kellogg cooked up a partnership with the National Cancer Institute to put health claims for fiber on the boxes of All-Bran cereals (I discuss this incident in Food Politics).  In doing so, Kellogg (and NCI) went around the FDA and undermined that agency’s control over health claims on food packages.  This let to the current mess over health claims, which the FDA is now trying to clean up.

Update March 3: The Public Health Advocacy Institute at Northeastern University has filed a petition to NHLBI to give up the partnership.

My latest column in the San Francisco Chronicle deals with the immunity health claim on boxes of Kellogg Cocoa Krispies (see previous posts).  I’ve been writing the column for the last year at irregular intervals of about once every three weeks.  Beginning in January 2010, it has its own slot and will appear on the first Sunday of the month.  Here’s this one:

Q: It’s great that San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera put a stop to the absurd “immunity” claim on Kellogg’s Cocoa Krispies, but how do companies get away with this?

A: I confess; I’m a health-claims junkie. I snatched up the immunity-claiming box of Cocoa Krispies the minute I saw it in a supermarket last August. I consider it a treasure: “Now helps support your child’s IMMUNITY.”

How does Cocoa Krispies perform this miracle? The cereal contains 25 percent of the daily value of antioxidant vitamins A, B, C and E per serving instead of the old 10 percent. Vitamins, Kellogg points out, play an important role in immunity.

Of course they do. All nutrients are involved in immune function. But is it remotely possible that Cocoa Krispies might protect your child against colds or swine flu? I wish.

Antioxidants present an unparalleled marketing opportunity. Kellogg does not have to prove that its cereals are protective. Immunity claims fall into a Food and Drug Administration regulatory gray area. “Supports immunity” is a “structure-function” claim, so called because it promises to support a structure or function of the human body. However you might interpret such claims, they do not really promise to prevent, treat or cure disease.

Congress expressly authorized structure-function claims when it deregulated dietary supplements in 1994. But that law did not apply to foods. Food companies wanted to use these claims, too. At first the FDA balked. When faced with further legislation and court overturns, the FDA gave up. Now it merely says that structure-function claims on supplements must be truthful and not misleading. The FDA says nothing about structure-function claims on food products. It mostly looks away when they appear.

“Misleading” is inevitably in the eye of the beholder. Herrera turns out to be a skeptic.

“The Immunity claims,” he said, “may falsely suggest to parents that cereals like Cocoa Krispies are more healthy for their children than other breakfast foods … [and] mislead parents into believing that serving this sugary cereal will actually boost their child’s immunity.” Kellogg, he said, must produce the evidence or have the claim subject to “immediate termination or modification.”

Faced with this threat and with ridicule in the press, Kellogg wisely decided to phase out the immunity-labeled Cocoa Krispies packages. Consider them collectors’ items.

Much is at stake. Ready-to-eat cereals produce more than $8 billion a year in sales. Kellogg spent about $32 million in 2008 to promote Rice Krispies cereals, and $4 million of that amount went to advertise Cocoa Krispies alone.

Shoppers care about health. If cereals can be advertised with special health benefits, more boxes will fly off the shelves. Food companies consider health claims essential for marketing their products.

This explains why so many companies are adding omega-3 fats, probiotics and antioxidants to so many foods. These ingredients make foods “functional,” meaning that the foods contain something beyond their usual nutritional value. Although little evidence shows that functional foods make healthy people healthier, companies can use functional ingredients to make health claims, no matter how far-fetched. These days, functional foods are about the only processed foods with increasing sales.

Kellogg has plenty of company with functional ingredients and health claims. See, for example, the claims on Nestlé (no relation) Juicy Juice products targeted to toddlers. One product adds antioxidants to “help support immunity.” The other adds omega-3s to “aid brain development.”

Think about it: Will feeding your toddler a sugary juice product really make her smarter? Face it. You are not supposed to think about it. You are supposed to buy – and feel good about doing so.

Absent the FDA, Herrera stepped into the breach. He does not care whether the claims are on Kellogg cereals or Juicy Juice cartons. If companies make such claims, he insists that they produce the evidence for them.

This will not be easy to do. It is one thing to find evidence that specific nutrients are involved in immune function. It is quite another to show that people who eat sweetened cereals or juices containing such nutrients are healthier than those who do not.

That is why the European Food Standards Agency denied hundreds of company petitions for health claims. The agency cannot find much evidence for the health benefits of foods with added functional ingredients. Its decisions have put European food marketers into crisis. How are they supposed to sell products without health claims?

As I keep saying, health claims are about marketing, not health. If it were up to me, I would remove all health claims from food packages. Foods are not drugs. Health claims cannot help but mislead.

So let’s congratulate Herrera for filling a regulatory gap. His colleagues – and the press – are doing their job on this one. FDA: Get to work!

Kellogg’s says it will phase out boxes of Cocoa and other Rice Krispies cereals with the IMMUNITY claim on them.

Withdrawn, November 4, 2009

The Immunity claim falls into an FDA regulatory grey area.  It is a structure-function claim, meaning that the product is supposed to support a structure or function of the human body – not treat or cure a disease. If Cocoa Krispies were a dietary supplement, the claim would be completely legal because Congress authorized structure-function claims for supplements when it passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.

Over the years, food makers complained that if supplements could use such claims, they could too.  At first, the FDA issued warning letters to food companies using structure-function claims.  It stopped after the courts ruled that food companies could make claims for the health benefits of their products on First Amendment grounds.

Now FDA says structure-function claims are OK to use as long as they are truthful and not misleading.  Misleading, of course, is in the eye of the beholder.  Evidently, the San Francisco city attorney thought this claim was misleading and demanded the evidence to back it up.  USA Today wrote about this on the front page (I’m quoted in it).

Wisely, Kellogg’s is going to find another design for its Rice Krispies packages.  Consider this particular box a collector’s item.

The lesson: In the absence of FDA action, food marketing is allowed to run rampant, and city and state attorneys are doing the FDA’s job.  Good for them.  And let’s hear cheers for the power of the press.