Dumb Choices
Last year, I blogged about the new “Smart Choices” labelling system instituted by the food industry to “…help Americans make smarter nutrition choices and improve public health.” It looked ok – in theory – but I couldn’t help noting…
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out…the criteria used for the labelling looks sound enough, but the devil is always in the details. The list of participating companies is practically a “Who’s Who” of mega-junk food manufacturers/marketers, after all…
Uh-huh. The system is now in place and the New York Times has the details…
A new food-labeling campaign called Smart Choices, backed by most of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, is “designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.”
The green checkmark label that is starting to show up on store shelves will appear on hundreds of packages, including — to the surprise of many nutritionists — sugar-laden cereals like Cocoa Krispies and Froot Loops.
“These are horrible choices,” said Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health.
He said the criteria used by the Smart Choices Program were seriously flawed, allowing less healthy products, like sweet cereals and heavily salted packaged meals, to win its seal of approval. “It’s a blatant failure of this system and it makes it, I’m afraid, not credible,” Mr. Willett said.
No kidding…
…Dr. Kennedy, who is not paid for her work on the program, defended the products endorsed by the program, including sweet cereals. She said Froot Loops was better than other things parents could choose for their children.
“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.”
A parent in a supermarket has MANY choices, so “doughnuts vs. Froot Loops” is a false dichotomy. Dr. Kennedy is being disingenuous here, to say the least.
Makes you wonder why they even bothered… looks like the whole thing is simply a sham.
September 7, 2009
To bad. It had some promise as something that could help.
I absolutely hate this comment. ” You’re rushng around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal”.
If those are the only choices you have, and you think those are healthy for your children, you’re parenting skills need a tune-up.
What ever happened to planning ahead so you don’t have to “rush around”? How long does in take to make a couple eggs and some wheat toast with a little natural peanut butter?
What is wrong with these people?