For Your Health, Froot Loops
September 8th, 2009Related: Toxic Sludge is Good For You by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton
Via: New York Times:
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.”
…
Eileen T. Kennedy, president of the Smart Choices board and the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, said the program’s criteria were based on government dietary guidelines and widely accepted nutritional standards.
She said the program was also influenced by research into consumer behavior. That research showed that, while shoppers wanted more information, they did not want to hear negative messages or feel their choices were being dictated to them.
“The checkmark means the food item is a ‘better for you’ product, as opposed to having an x on it saying ‘Don’t eat this,’ ” Dr. Kennedy said. “Consumers are smart enough to deduce that if it doesn’t have the checkmark, by implication it’s not a ‘better for you’ product. They want to have a choice. They don’t want to be told ‘You must do this.’ ”
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.”
Research Credit: dilinger
well, i would make a crack about america being a wonderful place and everything, but then i think about the australia-new zealand food (sic) safety (sic) authority. so yes, toxic sludge and all that other shit in the supermarket is indeed “better” for you. than plutonium. the uk and japanese food safety (sic) regulators (sic) appear to be just as compromised…nevermind.
She neglected to mention the choice of a genetically modified, irradiated, pesticide-slathered piece of fruit shipped from some far-flung corner of the globe with a “Certified Organic” label slapped on it.
If you’re “rushing around” you don’t navigate the aisles then wait in line in a grocery store to buy breakfast cereal, you go into a donut shop. So the comparison fails. And what, by the way, are you “rushing around” to do? Dropping in on your manicurist hoping to be squeezed in between appointments? Dropping your shitsu off to a pet groomer for a shampoo? If “rushing around” is more imporant than taking the time to feed your child properly, then congratulations, you have just become a finalist in the Darwin Awards, along with the nation that believes it appropriate to cater to your morbid needs.
I think the heat I feel in my left ear is the sound of various respected professionals rolling over in their respective graves: Dr. Weston Price, Linus Pauling, Raymond Rife, etc. Who are these effers kidding? Not to mention some really alive people – such as Nancy Fallon, Micheal Pollan and countless OTHER living people on the planet who are teaching me and like minded others a gazillion facts about food that are saving us from death by not eating processed food.
Who are these morons? FRUIT LOOPS???
Surely, this is A JOKE!
Anything in a box is not worth eating. I don’t care who says it is.
Its snot.
Yeah, i hate it too. Yesterday i wanted to buy my lunch in the Migros and spotted tangerines (what a funny english word 😛 ) right next to prun plums from my region.
The prun plums growed some 20km, no, 10km (!) away from my city and the tangerines… where… from south africa. What are they thinking? They had the same price. I really appreciate the regulations about food origin labels. But i don’t need them. Local fruits are riper, more smellier and get older much faster, because they aren’t processed for shipping.