Just as the year is ending, the tireless consumer advocacy group CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) has sent a 158 page report to the FDA, entitled Food Labeling Chaos – the case for reform [download PDF]. In it, the organization claims that nutrition labeling today is insufficient, and that existing regulations are too lax to deal with the marketing brainpower of the food industry.

If you have a nutrition label addiction like we do, this report is awesome. The authors break the issues down into 3 areas:

1. Improving the Nutrition Facts Panel
2. Improving ingredient labels
3. Stopping false and misleading health-related claims

They provide examples, from a wide range of product by Kellogg’s , Nestlé, Gerber,  Minute Maid, and others of why regulatory changes are needed ASAP:

Smart Start Cereal by Kellogg’s misleads consumers to believe that half a cup of added sugar a day is approved by the Institute of Health (that’s 125 grams or 600 empty calories!)

Glacéau vitamin water that comes in 20 fl oz bottles misleads people to think that a serving is only 8oz. In fact, most people gulp down the entire bottle receiving 125 calories instead of just 50.

Thomas’ Hearty Grains English Muffins claim to be “made with the goodness of whole grain” and “made with whole grains”, when in fact the primary ingredient is “unbleached enriched wheat flour,” meaning white flour without the benefits of the whole grain (fiber).

“Consumers need honest labeling so they can spend their food dollars wisely and avoid diet-related disease,” said CSPI senior staff attorney Ilene Ringel Heller, co-author of the report. “Companies should market their foods without resorting to the deceit and dishonesty that’s so common today. And, if they don’t, the FDA should make them.”

What you need to know:

The food industry has a very strong lobby and indirectly exerts a lot of pressure on the FDA. Changes will occur slowly, if at all, and the smart folks in the business sector will always find loopholes and tricks to keep consumers just confused enough to want to buy their products.

What to do at the supermarket:

Don’t fall for marketing tricks disguised as nutrition claims. Simply ignore health claims on the front of the package. Read both nutrition facts panel AND ingredient list, to get a better picture of what food you are buying. Buy products with short, understandable, ingredient lists.

HAVE A HAPPY AND HEALTHY NEW YEAR !!!

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Yesterday we wrote about the FDA’s plan to refresh nutrition labels and made several of our own suggestions. In parallel, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer watchdog organization, published its own set of recommendations. They’ve done a great job, including some very cool graphics. You can download their 2 page report here [PDF]. Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times also has a good summary.

Some of CSPI’s recommendations include:

1. Putting calorie and serving size information in larger type at the top of the label so it’s immediately clear how much you are eating. To that, we would add listing the entire calorie content of a package soa person doesn’t have to do the math.

2. Making the ingredient list easier to read by printing it in regular type instead of all capital letters. Use bullets to separate ingredients rather than allowing them to all run together. This is a good point – consumers have a hard time just reading what’s in the box, let alone trying to understand it.

3. Listing similar ingredients together and show the percentage by weight. For instance, sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup and grape juice concentrate are all forms of sugar and should be listed in parenthesis under the catchall heading “sugars.”

4. Using red labeling and the word “high” when a product has more than 20 percent of the daily recommendation for fats, sugars, sodium or cholesterol. This is a good idea, but we think focusing on sodium, sugar, and saturated fats should be enough. Not all fats are bad, and avocados, high in healthy fats, would be reprimanded in vain.

5. Displaying prominently the percentage of whole grains contained in a product – This is important because many times a bread or pasta will boast “multi-grain” or “whole-grain” when only a small percent of the wheat used is whole, and the rest is plain white flour, devoid of fiber and other nutrients.

What to do at the supermarket:

Until the FDA actually does something, we still have a while to go. In the meantime, shop around the perimeter of the supermarket, look for products with short ingredient lists,  and when in doubt, ask us.

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The most popular kids TV Network, Nickelodeon, should be ashamed of itself, says the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer watchdog group, in its latest expose. The reason: Most of the ads running on the network are for food products that promote obesity, diabetes, and other health problems in young children.

This is especially irritating because the industry set up a self-regulatory body with the Better Business Bureau – the Children’s Food and Beverage Advertising Initiative (CFBAI) – several years ago. Once again, this goes to show that you can’t have the cat watching over the cream. Just as with the ill-fated Smart Choice Program, the nutrition benchmarks that this group have set are – how shall we say – very lenient.

CSPI evaluated the nutritional quality based on the National Alliance for Nutrition and Activity’s (NANA) Model
School Wellness Policies on Physical Activity and Nutrition. It’s a standard supported by over 50 health, nutrition, and education organizations.

Here are some findings:

• Of 425 foods and beverages that were advertised, 267 (60%) were sub par nutritionally (too much sugar, salt or fat, for example).
• 25% of the products had excess sugar.
• None of Pepsico’s 10 products met the nutritional minimum.
• The only bright spot – the figures are slightly better than 4 years ago, when 90% of commercials were for junk food.

You can download the full report here (PDF)

What to do at the supermarket:

My mother recently reminded me how as a 7 year old tagging along on her grocery shopping trips I would pick up a box of cereal I had seen on Saturday Morning cartoons. In a serious tone I would tell her “We need to buy this, mom.” and then add “They said on TV that it’s good for you.” Most often, the box would find itself back on the supermarket shelf.

Luckily, in retrospect, my parents had good sense. And I hope you do too. Teach your children at an early age to read critically, to look for products with good values in nutrition labels. In breakfast cereal for example, sugar should be below 8 grams per serving, and fiber higher than 3 grams. By getting your children involved in the nutrition hunt, they will be more apt to choose better products together with you.

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Popcorn, the quintessential snack of the movies, is a long standing tradition.

The Good: it’s a healthy, low calories snack – very filling due to its fiber content, and less than 100 calories per 3 cups of air popped popcorn.

The Bad: Problems start when pop corn is bathed in oils and butters and serving sizes balloon to double, triple, and higher of the the 3 cup portion size.

The VERY BAD: Popcorn served in movie theaters, in conjunction with soda pop. The Center for Science in the Public Interest just published a report on this matter, and some of the finding were outrageous – Regal theaters largest size popcorn and soda are the caloric equivalent of three McDonald’s Quarter Pounders PLUS 12 pats of butter. The 1600 calories are almost a whole day’s worth, while the 60 grams of saturated fat are supposed to get you by a long weekend (that’s 3 days!). It’s got 20 cups of popcorn, or almost 7 times the recommended portion size.

“Regal and AMC are our nominees for Best Supporting Actor in the Obesity Epidemic,” said CSPI senior nutritionist Jayne Hurley

Oh well, at least that combo is quite expensive, $12.00. That should give some people pause, if not the nutritional atrocity.

Compare to the innocent serving sizes of the 1950’s drive-ins in the clip above.

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The consumer watchdog group CSPI published [PDF] a provocative list of 10 healthy foods that have been involved in large scale contamination in the past few years:

1. LEAFY GREENS: 363 outbreaks involving 13,568 reported cases of illness
2. EGGS: 352 outbreaks , 11,163 illness
3. TUNA: 268 outbreaks , 2341 illness
4. OYSTERS: 132 outbreaks , 3409 illness
5. POTATOES: 108 outbreaks , 3659 illness
6. CHEESE: 83 outbreaks , 2761 illness
7. ICE CREAM: 74 outbreaks , 2594 illness
8. TOMATOES: 31 outbreaks , 3292 illness
9. SPROUTS: 31 outbreaks , 2022 illness
10. BERRIES: 25 outbreaks , 3397 illness

The group is not trying to scare us away from these foods, it is simply pointing out a fact that the FDA must do a better job of enforcing safety regulations on growers, shippers, and manufacturers. The FDA should be given the tools by law:

the United States Senate should follow the House and pass legislation that reforms our fossilized food safety laws

What you need to know:

Food Safety is something we take for granted when everything is OK. But a rushed trip to the emergency room, fevers, cramps, bloody stools, or worse remind us how fragile we are vs tiny contaminants that find their way into our food. And the grave responsibility of the entire supply chain in providing us safe food.

While we believe that most companies try to maintain high standards of safety, there is always room for improvement. Unfortunately, many times the pressure to cut costs is at odds with additional safety measures.

Just this past January the great peanut butter recall exposed how easy it is for one bad apple (or in this case peanut) to infiltrate hundreds of food items.

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Michael Jacobson is the director of the non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a non-profit consumer advocacy group that serves as an almost lone crusader against the might of the food industry lobbies in Washington DC. At a weekend nutrition conference at Tufts University, Dr. Jacobson presented, as he has been doing for decades, the case against excess salt consumption.

He began his presentation with a proclamation that salt is the single deadliest ingredient in our food supply – worse than all the additives, pesticides, and trans fats combined.

After reviewing the regulatory history of salt over the past 50 years, it was quite obvious that government efforts not only failed in curbing sodium consumption, it has actually gone up. (If you are wondering why, look no further than the average American pantry. Each year, more processed food takes the place of unprocessed cooking ingredients. Salt is used in many of these processed items as both a preservative and a flavor enhancer.)

The FDA held a public hearing on salt in 2007, one of many such activities that ultimately ended up yielding no tangible results.
But there is some hope. The UK, as well as New York City are mounting campaigns calling for the voluntary reduction of salt in processed foods in an incremental fashion over the course of the next 10 years.

And some manufacturers are playing game. In some product categories, there is a two to threefold variation in sodium levels. This means that salt can be removed without harming the product’s flavor. Additional measures include using potassium chloride (instead of sodium chloride), using herbs and spices to round off the flavor, and setting a different size of salt crystals to create a saltier taste perception while actually using less salt.

At the end of the day, Dr. Jacobson believes sodium reduction needs to be handled both through regulation and by industry efforts.

He notes the good work done by Campbell’s, who took a bet reducing sodium by 30% in their best selling tomato soup product line, which accounts for 15% of their sales. Campbell’s is heavily touting the new formulation in its current marketing campaigns. Other food processors opted to silently reduce sodium levels, as in their minds consumers associate less salt with bland product flavor.

On the regulatory front, CSPI would like to see the FDA partially revoke salt’s GRAS (generally regarded as safe) status if the amount per serving in certain food categories is above a certain threshold. And the USDA should also be involved, as 20% of the salt in foods comes from USDA regulated products such as hot dogs and chickens injected with a salt water “broth” of up to 200mg per serving.

Dr. Jacobson ended his talk on an optimistic note, hoping that 2010 will be the year of the salt. He left the podium with one last stat – a 100mg daily reduction in sodium consumption by every American will reduce health care costs in the US by $18 billion!

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1. Phosphoric acid is a clear, colorless, odorless liquid with a syrupy consistency.

2. Phosphoric acid is used as an acidifying agent to give colas their tangy flavor.

3. Due to the use of phosphoric acid, cola is a actually more acid than lemon juice or vinegar. The vast amount of sugar acts to mask and balance the acidity.

4. Phosphoric acid also goes by E338, orthophosphoric acid, and phosphoric(V) acid.

5. Food-grade phosphoric acid is a mass-produced chemical, available cheaply and in large quantities.

6. Phosphoric acid is commonly used for rust removal.

7. Phosphorus-containing substances occur naturally (0.1%-0.5%) in foods such as milk, meat, poultry, fish, nuts, and egg yolks.

8. Phosphoric acid has been linked to lower bone density in some epidemiological studies, including a discussion in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

9. Opposing studies showed the opposite – that *low* intake of phosphorus leads to lower bone density. Guess who funded the studies? PepsiCo.

10. Aside from the risk of osteoporosis, Cola consumption has also been linked to chronic kidney disease and kidney stones.

11. According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer watchdog group not affiliated with the food industry, only a small fraction of the phosphate in the American diet comes from additives in soft drinks. Most comes from meat and dairy products. So your reason for not drinking Coke should be its sugar content and artificial food colorings, not the phosphoric acid.

…

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This is Red Lobster’s Admiral’s Feast including: Shrimp, bay scallops, clam strips and fried sole.  Also comes with with creamy lobster topped mashed potato, Caesar salad with dressing, and a complimentary Cheddar Bay Biscuit. Not pictured, but included in the meal: Lemonade.

So just how much salt is inside? Read more…