Smart Choices Food Labels are Crap...

Here is a quick story on the diet-blog.com regarding the "Smart Choices" food label system. If you hadn't noticed it, the Smart Choices program was started in 2009 by a coalition of food makers as a way to promote "healthier eating" using a quick checkmark label on the packaging that specifies the calories per serving and how many servings are in each package. Plus the big checkmark draws attention to the product as being better than, say, serving your children a bucket of lard.

Oddly enough there were concerns raised about the program when, for example, the "Smart Choices" label appeared on boxes of food like Froot Loops. How was it possible that a sugary breakfast cereal was a "smart choice" for your kids?

Easy. According to the second diet-blog entry linked just above:
*****
The program's guidelines mean that if a product meets certain criteria, and doesn't exceed the limits for others, it can have the label. In the case of Froot Loops, the cereal meets the standards for Vitamins A and C and for fiber content, and comes within the limits on fat, sodium and sugar. It contains 12 grams of sugar per serving, the maximum allowed--but, this is 41% of the product, by weight.
*****

To sum it up, the industry is expecting the consumer to sit down and do a critical analysis of everything they're pulling off the shelf before buying their four year old's favorite gotta-have food they saw on the TV during their favorite cartoon.

It's fairly well known that people prefer to outsource thinking to others they believe to hold authority in topics the individual doesn't necessarily have any interest in pursuing themselves. How many average consumers know anything about nutrition beyond the latest news blurb on Fox News?

So when a food item has some sort of label on it that looks like it came from a third party verifying that it's healthy, it gives the consumer a warm fuzzy feeling that they're not doing something all that bad when they buy food better suited to the garbage bin then their gullet.

Most don't stop to question things like, 120 calories per serving? How big is the serving? Or 9 servings in the package, but how big is the package?

It takes actual research to find out just how a program like the Smart Choices program is actually good on the surface but distorted just right to allow the sponsor's agendas to be met.

It doesn't take a lot of common sense to know that Froot Loops aren't something that will keep your body well fueled and in good repair. You don't associate Cocoa Crispies as being a staple in a healthy weightlifter's diet, and you'd have to have lived under a rock to not know that these foods are usually associated with being processed flour and sugar and possessing very little in the way of nutritional value.

But still...these aren't what shoppers are thinking of when they're actually at the supermarket. And the food makers know it. They take advantage of our intellectual laziness, our human nature, while at the same time skirting regulations and social responsibility. They wanted to have something to hold up to the government and say, "See? We're doing a good thing! You don't need to regulate us!"


I have no illusions that consumers will start taking responsibility for what they're doing, nor will they start educating themselves to separate the fact from fiction from distortions that gray the line between the two. We live in a complicated world with too many groups and businesses looking out for themselves at the expense of the consumer.

Fortunately with the rise of news-blurb-friendly media like the Internet there are also more opportunities for third party advocate groups to spread their message as well, and this time it prompted the FDA to get food manufacturers to suspend the Smart Choices program. Will there ever be a point where the common good trumps marketing and profit? Probably not. But as long as there are people who are fighting to educate others using tools of skeptical and critical thinking, there is some hope that people can get information on making good choices for nutrition.