The industry-created badge ignores the fact that they are 41% sugar because “well, it’s better than eating donuts for breakfast”
That’s all the recommendation you need, I guess.
I can’t wait to see if the Donut Council will respond with a new “Seal Of Health” because “It’s better than eating a bucket of lard”
Or fried butter. 
Then the lard companies can make their own Seal of Health because “it’s better than shooting yourself in the face.”
And then the gun manufacturers will make a Seal of Health because, “Hey, shooting yourself in the face is still better than getting married.”
And the marriage industry will put their Stamp of Approval on the whole thing, because it’s better than a bowl of Froot Loops!
But it contains froot; it MUST be good for you!
“Consumers are smart enough to deduce that if it doesn’t have the checkmark, by implication it’s not a ‘better for you’ product," Dr. Kennedy says.
If that’s what the checkmark implies, than the checkmark is lying.
“Companies that participate pay up to $100,000 a year to the program, with the fee based on total sales of its products that bear the seal.”
Dr. Kennedy should be ashamed.
That reminds me of the time I wrote to Healthy Choices cereal to complain that their cereal was sickeningly sweet and that I found it hard to believe they could call their cereal healthy when it had more sugar in it that Marshmallow Mateys (a Lucky Charms copycat) and the same amount of sugar as Captain Crunch.
They wrote back that many people enjoy the taste of their cereal so they don’t care how unhealthy it is and “shut up and eat your cereal or we’ll kill you”. I am surprised they didn’t send me a coupon.
This is disgusting.
The OP is surprised? When one of the big fast food places is marketing a “healthy” kids meal: mac n cheese and apple slices with carmel dipping sauce. Apparently if you can get consumers to believe something is good for you, it is. I guess that’s the magic of capitalism!
C’mon, Kelloggs has been printing “fat free” on their products for years! All they’ve done now is rephrase it.
Fact: methamphetamine is low in sodium.
Now you know!
This post paid for by the Methamphetamine Council of North America.
Back in the 70’s, we used to turn out the lights and eat our froot loops under the Blacklight in my bedroom. They glowed so brightly that you could read by them…
Wonder if that still happens…
(It was calcium salts that were glowing btw, nothing harmfull)
You mean the package is not a perfectly objective guide to the product it contains?
Capitalism is the victim of lies, inaction and misdirection, because there are agencies who are supposed to protect you, the consumer, from yourself already. The box has all the labeling you wanted on it.
In the end (how amazing is THIS?!) you can help yourself and not depend on some stamp (and by golly, you, magic little elfkin477, have helped yourself and now you won’t. Go you!).
Stupidity is to blame. And, quite frankly, if you are too stupid to know that junk food is junk food, then eat it all up, die young and eliminate your stupid genes from the pool. Then no one can ‘‘prey’’ upon you and be an ‘‘evil’’ capitalist.
How do we know this icon won’t be limited to the Reduced Sugar Froot Loops?
Hey, caveat emptor. No gov’t council can be relied upon to take care of you.
it’s not the government applying these labels, it is a for-profit business.
Exactly the point. The question is at what point can a product no longer claim to be safe and/or healthy. Obviously qualitative statements like “tastes great” and “Mikey likes it” can’t truly be misleading, but a seemingly quantitative health statement like “Smart Choices” is intentionally designed to mislead.
At what point are a product’s claims so divorced from reality that they are tantamount to fraud?
That is a rough one. On one hand, the government’s previous attempts at telling us what is healthy is an abject failure. The food pyramid is a joke. On the other hand, businesses will always lie about how healthy their food is, and Government mandated food labels and ingredient lists are a godsend to anyone trying to eat healthy.
To further complicate things, no one really agrees what’s healthy or not. If you look in any of the “why are poor people fat?” threads, you will see a lot of people listing off “healthy” things poor people can get cheap like rice and pasta. To my nutritional philosophy, rice and pasta for dinner is a good way to get fat. Nutritionally it is very similar to eating a loaf of white bread for dinner. Even if you get the (more expensive) brown rice and whole wheat pasta, you move up from “terrible” to “a healthy side dish in moderation, but where’s the protein if it is a main course?”