The FDA is not pleased with Kellogg’s waffle manufacturing plant in Georgia. The federal authority sent the company a warning letter. Kellogg’s is reprimanded for the poor sanitary conditions at the factory, and requested to clean up its act. From Food Navigator:

The list of breaches included leaving uncovered rubbish just inches from raw materials, allowing potentially tainted water to drip onto food lines, and a number of unsatisfactory cleaning methods by employees. read more…

These conditions led to the discovery of Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes), a pathogenic bacterium. It can cause  mild illness (called listerial gastroenteritis) or a severe, sometimes life-threatening, illness called invasive listeriosis. Listeriosis is a major public health concern because of the severity of the disease, a high case-fatality rate, a long incubation and a predilection for individuals with underlying conditions.

What you need to know:

Life is all about trade offs. Food from factories means that every once a while there may be a safety issue. That factory can be a peanut processing plant, a CAFO (where thousands of cows are grown into steaks), or a waffle plant. While churning peanuts into butter is not something most people can do, nor raise a cow in their backyard, waffles are rather easy to prepare from scratch. And yet, Kellogg’s has an entire factory devoted to Eggo waffles.

Here’s what goes into a pre-frozen Eggo Homestyle Waffle:

Were you to make the waffles at home by yourself, you wouldn’t add artificial colors Yellow #5 and Yellow # 6 to make the waffles look better (these colors are not good for you). You wouldn’t use palm kernel oil with TBHQ and citric acid. You’d use real butter, or perhaps canola oil. And you wouldn’t fortify your waffle with vitamins and minerals in order to make it appear more healthy than it really is. And you probably wouldn’t find any surprise bacteria waiting to make your kids ill.

Hot fresh waffles are a such great treat on a weekend morning. So why settle for a pre-frozen product? It tastes so poorly compared to a fresh homemade batch. AND it contains unwanted ingredients, sometime with additional surprises…

What to do at the supermarket:

Buy some eggs, flour, and milk. Make sure your pantry is stocked with sugar, salt, baking powder, and vanilla extract. Now turn to one of many recipe websites and make your own waffles in 10 minutes. Bon apetit.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

New! Choose a better breakfast with CerealScan™ by Fooducate

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 !!!

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

We posted a few days ago about how 80% of Kids Commercials on Nickelodeon are for junk food. Junk cereal is also in the mix. If you were wondering how bad the situation is, watch the spot below for Froot Loops and Apple Jacks [Hat tip to Change.org]. Anyone still believe that the food industry isn’t manipulating kids?

For decades, advertisers sold kids cereals as fun, but now they are appealing to a 5 year old’s health and nutrition concerns. Thank you, Kellogg’s, for misinforming our children, creatively, once again.

What you need to know:

Let’s forget for a minute the sexist role play (Male doctor, female receptionist..)

The cutesy commercial fails to mention that Froot Loops includes trans fat, is 44% sugar by weight, and contains controversial artificial colorings that may prevent  any of these kids from being able to concentrate long enough to learn about nutrition. Apple Jacks is not much better.

What to do at the supermarket:

Breakfast cereals should contain much more fiber (5 grams and up) and much less sugar (6 grams or less). A kid oriented cereal will usually not be up to par. But you can buy a “grownup” cereal and sweeten it at home with a teaspoon of honey or sliced bananas.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

The Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday that Kellogg’s has admitted it falsely advertised the nutritional merits of kids breakfast cereal Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats Bite Size Cereal. From the LA Times:

Kellogg’s national TV ads asserted that attentiveness improved nearly 20 percent in children who ate the cereal, compared with those who skipped breakfast, the FTC said. But the study the ads refer to found a benefit from eating Frosted Mini-Wheats in only half the children studied, and only 11 percent of the children’s attention improved 20 percent, according to the FTC.

“We tell consumers that they should deal with trusted national brands,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement. “So it’s especially important that America’s leading companies are more attentive to the truthfulness of their ads and don’t exaggerate the results of tests or research.”

Read the article…

The PR folks at Kellogg’s quickly issued a statement citing the company’s “long history of responsible advertising.”

The maximum fine Kellogg’s can expect – $18,000. That’s sure to deter a company that last year of $13,000,000,000 (that’s 13 billion dollars).

What you need to know:

Health claims on food packaging are used to promote sales. In many cases, the actual science behind the claims is questionable. But in many borderline cases, the government can’t do anything about it because it will get sued on the grounds of limiting a Constitutional right of Freedom of Speech.

The Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA), passed in 1990, requires all packaged foods to bear standard nutrition labels including ingredient lists and nutrition data. The food ingredient panel, serving sizes, and terms such as “low fat” and “light” were standardized. As a concession to food manufacturers, who lobbied heavily during the legislation process, the government authorized some health claims for foods as part of the new law.

The health claims are regulated by the FDA, but there is enough leeway within the regulations to allow manufacturers, relying on very flimsy research, to post preposterous claims such as Kellogg’s.

What to do at the supermarket:

Do not be fooled into believing health claim on a box of cereal, or any other product for that matter. Take them for what they are -  marketing speak.

The real data is in the nutrition panel where you can find a full list of ingredients along with nutritional information. And even then you need to watch out for sneaky tricks such as minuscule serving sizes that make the calorie count seem low, trans-fat labeled as zero when it’s not, etc…

The simplest solution is to choose minimally processed foods, with short understandable ingredient lists. Staying away from certain aisles in the supermarket (beverages, snacks, frozen dinners) can help.

And, if you have questions, to ask Fooducate. feel free to drop us a line : blog at fooducate dot com

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

Australian consumer advocacy group The Parents Jury is interested in improving the food and physical activity environments of Australian children.

Recently they compared a few breakfast cereals to see how close the touted health claims were to what was really in the box. While the product brand names are slightly different than here, the corporations behind them are not (Kellogg’s, for example).

During our investigation, we identified some trends on how manufacturers use children’s cereal packaging. For example, in contrast to when Coco Pops appealed to children because it was ‘just like a choclate milkshake, only crunchy’, these days claims are mostly about the purported nutritional benefits, and not purely taste or enjoyment. This could be seen as a responsible move by the manufacturers, however as we discovered, the boxes still contain a bombardment of claims and ads on every panel.

We also observed that the cereals that rated worst on fibre, fat, sugar and sodium content tended to boast the longest lists of added vitamins and minerals, which could lead many parents into believing that a product is healthier than it is.

To find which products were labeled offenders click here…

What you need to know:

Sugar is one of the big problems with breakfast cereals. The cereal offenders covered in the Australian checkup contained 30% sugar by weight, which is terribly high.

The situation in the US is even worse. Comparable products here contain as much as 50% sugar by weight. Oh dear.

What to do at the supermarket:

Check the sugar content on the cereal box nutrition label. Divide it by the serving size. If the result is higher than 0.25 (25% sugar), look for another option

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Follow us on twitter: twitter.com/fooducate

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

The American Dietetic Association, the largest organization of dietitians in the US, has accepted a new sponsorship from Truvia. Truvia is the brand name of a stevia based sweetener manufactured by Cargill, recently approved as safe for consumption by the FDA.

Cargill is not the first sponsor of the ADA, a 68,000 member strong organization based in Chicago. On the ADA’s sponsorship page, one can find The Coca Cola Company, PepsiCo, Mars Company, Unilever, General Mills and Kellogg’s.

Is this a problem?

Rephrasing the question with more detail:  Can an organization whose mission is to direct people to proper dietary choices be sponsored by food companies whose products aren’t always inline with proper dietary choices?

Read more…

Image via Wikipedia

From the UK, Marketing Week brings an interesting snippet:

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned an ad for Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Soft Oaties because it misleadingly implies the biscuits are healthy.

The press and poster ads use the headline “Wholesome cookie goodness” and highlight that the biscuits are made with oats and wheat, sources of fibre, vitamin and iron.

…the ad could imply the biscuits are wholly beneficial to health because it only refers to their nutritious ingredients, and not that the biscuits are also high in sugar and saturated fat.

What you need to know:

Can you blame the marketing folks at Kellogg UK trying to highlight the wholesomeness of their cookies? So what if 33% of each cookie is sugar.

The prominent claims appearing in ads and on the front of packages will always highlight the “healthy” aspects of an item, never the downside. For example, low-fat means high in sugar. A fatty treat made with vegetable oil may boast “No cholesterol”, but that’s stating the obvious because cholesterol only comes from animal products.

In 2006, Kellogg’s was reprimanded for misleading claims in an advertisement for its Corn Flakes cereal.

What to do at the supermarket:

Don’t be fooled by advertisements or front of package promises. Read the nutrition label and the ingredient list.

Get Fooducated: RSS Subscription or Email Subscription

Help us test our new food comparison tool: alpha.fooducate.com

In one sentence: Err on the side of caution – don’t buy a product with peanuts for the time being. If it hasn’t been recalled yet, it may be tomorrow.

As parents and slightly paranoid consumers, when someone tells us everything is fine, we worry. If that someone is an investment manager or the FDA, we worry A LOT.

While just 2 weeks ago consumers were assured that the PBS outbreak was limited, and that they need to watch out for only a few items, it now appears that almost any product containing peanuts in various forms  is being recalled. This is partly due to new findings about the subpar sanitary conditions at the supplier manufacturing plant, which included mold, slime, pests, and rodents. Yikes!

Peanut Corporation of America  expanded its recall to ALL products it manufactured at its plant in the past 2 years! The expanded recall includes dry roasted peanuts,  oil roasted peanuts, granulated peanuts, peanut meal, peanut butter and peanut paste. The firm has supplied hundreds of manufacturers across the country, so the results of this recall have had and will continue to have a ripple effect.

Some previous recalls are being expanded by manufacturers to additional products, and more states. The recal list is growing, almost by the hour. The FDA has contacted over 350 manufacturers concerning possible contamination.

But knowing how underfunded and understaffed the FDA is, does not add confidence that the parents are receiving timely advice. Nor does the fact that recalls are voluntary, which means manufacturers have the last say, instead of the FDA mandating a recall on day one of the outbreak.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you spot someone walking into a supermarket with a list of the 500+ products being recalled in order to find one that isn’t, please let us know. Right now,  parents are reading food labels carefully. May are avoiding anything with the word peanut in the ingredient list. Proceed with caution.

Here’s the Current Recall List: Read more…

More updates on the salmonella / peanut butter outbreak. According to USA Today:

Peanut butter and peanut paste manufactured by the Peanut Corp. of America (PCA) has been tied to the salmonella outbreak that has sickened 501 people in 43 states and is believed to have contributed to eight deaths.

Read the article…

Half of the outbreak victims are children under the age of 18. Children and the elderly are especially prone to sickness as a result of salmonella contamination.

A small consolation – The outbreak seems to finally be slowing down in the past day or two.

Here’s the Current Recall List: Read more…

photo: Elliott Minor/Associated Press

The current salmonella / peanut butter crisis has caused 500 illnesses and 7 deaths, with more product recalls every day (see updated list at the bottom of this post). The New York Times reports that the processing facility in Georgia was repeatedly cited for unsanitary conditions, as recently as 2007:

Inspections of the plant in Blakely, Ga., by the state agriculture department found areas of rust that could flake into food, gaps in warehouse doors large enough for rodents to get through, unmarked spray bottles and containers, and numerous violations of other practices designed to prevent food contamination. The plant, owned by Peanut Corporation of America of Lynchburg, Va., has been shut down. Read more…