Ten Reasons Why the Smart Choices Food Labeling Scheme is Outrageous

The Smart Choices Program is a new front-of-the-package nutrition-labeling program designed to help shoppers make smarter food and beverage choices in their supermarket aisle. After resigning from the board of the Smart Choices food-labeling program, Michael Jacobson remarked, "you could start out with some sawdust, add calcium or Vitamin A and meet the criteria." I've already explained a couple of reasons why this program is terrible news for consumers and for sustainability, but just in case that wasn't outrageous enough, here are ten more reasons to be angry about the food industry controlling a misleading food labeling program. (Once you've gotten angry enough, take action: Send a direct message to the doctors involved and institution leaders who say: "Don't Let Kellogg's Buy Scientists: Froot Loops Aren't a Healthy Breakfast.")

Ten Reasons Why The Smart Choices Food Labeling Program Is Outrageous:

1. "Smart Choices" gives cereals like Froot Loops the right to display the "Smart Choices" green check mark, misleading consumers with connotations that Froot Loops cereal is healthy. Of course, the Onion was wise to the "Froot" ploy seven years ago, reporting that the surgeon general recommends "three to five servings of Froot per day."
2. Michael Jacobson, who was a member of the Smart Choices board until last September when he quit, explained that to the Times that "it was paid for by industry and when industry put down its foot and said this is what we’re doing, that was it, end of story."
3. The FDA and DoA sent a letter to Smart Choices that gets to the crux of the inherent problem with a program that has "the effect of encouraging consumers to choose highly processed foods."
4. “The object of this is to make highly processed foods appear as healthful as unprocessed foods, which they are not,” explained Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University. She further asked, "Is better junk food a good choice?"
5. Marion Nestle also wrote on her blog of the conflict of interest, "The more products that qualify for the Smart Choices logo, the more money the program gets. I’d call that a clear conflict of interest." Furthermore, Kraft Foods has paid for Tufts to set up a Nutrition Navigator — the Dean of that Tufts department is Dr. Eileen Kennedy, President of Smart Choices board. Lesson: Get on the side of the food industry and the money flows. In press releases companies can then happily point to the nutritionists and scientists who agree with them enough to take their money. While Kennedy is not compensated for her role on the Smart Choices board, her school does have a financial relationship with at least one of the companies involved.
6. Involving the food industry in the program is "a classic case of the fox guarding the henhouse," said Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center. The Chicago Tribune reports that Katz led the development of the NuVal system, one of the few impartial food-labeling programs.
7. Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health, explained that including sugary and processed foods in the program make for "horrible choices," further explaining to the New York Times that "it’s a blatant failure of this system and it makes it, I’m afraid, not credible."
8. Smart Choices address a legitimate problem in absolutely the wrong way. Clarity and consistency across brands is necessary, but more important is making sure that the program isn't misleading. Won't the presence of a check mark make consumers less inclined to take a look at the ingredients?
9. Writing in Supermarket News David Orgel explained that he'd "rather see an imperfect approach for now than no guidance at all." But with a program expected to be widely adopted, imperfect is likely to stay imperfect, with the food industry controlling the program. Better to give no guidance than mislead, right?
10. Kennedy made the most basic logical fallacy in her justification of awarding "Smart Choices" certification to junk-food, imagining a false-dilemma that isn't true: “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.”

Froot Loops may be better than eating dirt, eating doughnuts, or eating rusty nails, but that doesn't make Froot Loops a Smart Choice. Outraged? You should be. Take Action!

[Photo credit: zanastardust]