Cheerios and Truth in Labeling

So while I was looking for bridesmaids' earrings the other day, I came across these delightful and sparkly things, which were described as "classic Hollywood glam". I couldn't help but smile, really accurate labeling is a precious commodity.

When it comes to food labels, as anyone with allergies knows firsthand, that's doubly true.

Consider Vitamin Water, a product marketed to appeal to the health conscious. Its vitamin content may not be absorbed, but its dose of sugar certainly will. This almost-but-not-quite-soda drink can seem like a break from the typical sugared beverage, but it's a difference only in degree.

Industry has responded to people's concern for their health by claiming that the junk we've already been eating was healthy for us all along. As if the problem with processed food was that we didn't believe nice things about it.

I was going to let the argument pass though, today's developing cereal theme notwithstanding, until I ran across this Reuters oped outlining the fury of right wing bloggers over the decision by the FDA to class Cheerios as a drug due to its health claims. High comedy:

... "It's fairly obvious to me why the Obama administration is going after Cheerios over possible deceptive advertising," says the Deadenders blog. "Babies love them more then him."

... "Washington raised ciggie taxes to pay for SCHIP expansion and are [sic] gearing up to raise soda taxes to pay for Obamacare," writes the reliably nutty Michelle Malkin. "No vice is safe from the health police. Dijon mustard and arugula exempted, of course."

"So I guess now the Communist-in-Chief will declare a War on Cereal," rants Ed Anger of the Weekly World News ...

Sean Hannity even did these clowns one better, calling this, along with a proposed soda tax, a war on American institutions. Erm, okay, dude. Try me on that one again when you solve your beef with Social Security.

But lo, General Mills has been claiming on their boxes that by eating Cheerios, "you can lower your cholesterol 4 percent in 6 weeks." That's a very specific health claim, of the sort that even a drug company would be extremely hesitant to make. Four percent? Six weeks? For everybody? Let's compare this to the full physicians' guide to Zocor (simvastatin), a drug actually approved by the FDA for the treatment of high cholesterol:

ZOCOR® is an HMG-CoA reductase inhibitor (statin) indicated as an adjunctive therapy to diet to:

• Reduce the risk of total mortality by reducing CHD deaths and reduce the risk of non-fatal myocardial infarction, stroke, and the need for revascularization procedures in patients at high risk of coronary events. (1.1)

• Reduce elevated total-C, LDL-C, Apo B, TG and increase HDL-C in patients with primary hyperlipidemia (heterozygous familial and nonfamilial) and mixed dyslipidemia. (1.2)

• Reduce elevated TG in patients with hypertriglyceridemia and reduce TG and VLDL-C in patients with primary dysbetalipoproteinemia. (1.2)

• Reduce total-C and LDL-C in adult patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia. (1.2)

• Reduce elevated total-C, LDL-C, and Apo B in boys and postmenarchal girls, 10 to 17 years of age with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia after failing an adequate trial of diet therapy. (1.2, 1.3)

... In a study including 16 elderly patients between 70 and 78 years of age who received ZOCOR
40 mg/day, the mean plasma level of HMG-CoA reductase inhibitory activity was increased approximately 45% compared with 18 patients between 18-30 years of age. ...

Now that, that there, is a drug label. And every doctor on the planet is well aware that these drugs aren't always effective for every individual. That what works better in one patient may have no, or a negative effect on another.

You will note that nowhere in the list of recommended uses is there anything like a guarantee of a certain level of cholesterol reduction within a certain timeframe. You can be guaranteed that Merck spent years and many millions of dollars testing this drug in patient populations, and they won't go near such a degree of certainty.

The only place they add specific numbers, specific claims about the level of cholesterol reduction, is in reporting study data on people who'd already taken it. For these people, who have already tried it, Merck is willing to say, cholesterol was lowered by this much across the group. For people who haven't tried it, they indicate that it can reduce risk, or reduce elevated levels of this or that, but nowhere is there a claim as bold as the one on the Cheerios label.

General Mills even made what could be construed as an effective dosage claim: “eating two 1½ cup servings daily of Cheerios cereal reduced bad cholesterol when eaten as part of a diet low in saturated fat and cholesterol”.

This crosses a line, and I think the FDA was right to pull this trigger. It's wrong for packaging to raise false health expectations, something the vitamin and herbal supplement industry really has to toe the line on. You could never get away with making a claim that specific on a bottle of cinnamon extract or vitamin E capsules, why should you be able to do so on a cereal box?

You'll still be able to buy Cheerios in stores when this is over, but the box won't be making promises they can't deliver on. And that's what our regulators are there to make sure of.

(Photo credit: DRB62 on Flickr.)