Kellogg’s keeps getting slammed with lawsuits related to misleading consumers. This time the product line in question is Nutri-Grain breakfast bars. According to Food Navigator:

The company is being sued in the US District Court of Southern California for violations of the Lanham Act, Unfair Competition Law, Common law of Unfair Competition, False Advertising Law, and the Consumer Legal Remedies Act.

In their adverts, the company suggests that Nutri-Grain bars allow you to ‘Eat Better All Day’ because they contain calcium and whole-grains, but the plaintiffs insist that those claims are invalidated by the presence of trans-fats, which contribute to diabetes and heart disease. Read more…

A quick reminder, in November Kellogg’s settled with the state of Oregon, after misleading “immunity claims” on it’s Cocoa Krispies breakfast cereal.

Let’s take a look at Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Yogurt Bars Strawberry Yogurt to see what all the fuss is about.

What you need to know:

Here is the ingredient list. Take a deep breath:

CRUST: WHOLE GRAIN ROLLED OATS, ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMIN MONONITRATE [VITAMIN B1], RIBOFLAVIN [VITAMIN B2], FOLIC ACID), WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR, SUNFLOWER AND/OR SOYBEAN OIL WITH TBHQ FOR FRESHNESS, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, SUGAR, HONEY, DEXTROSE, CALCIUM CARBONATE, SOLUBLE CORN FIBER, NONFAT DRY MILK, WHEAT BRAN, SALT, CELLULOSE, POTASSIUM BICARBONATE (LEAVENING), NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, MONO AND DIGLYCERIDES, PROPYLENE GLYCOL ESTERS OF FATTY ACIDS, SOY LECITHIN, WHEAT GLUTEN, NIACINAMIDE, SODIUM STEAROYL LACTYLATE, VITAMIN A PALMITATE, CARRAGEENAN, ZINC OXIDE, REDUCED IRON, GUAR GUM, PYRIDOXINE HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B6), THIAMIN HYDROCHLORIDE (VITAMIN B1), RIBOFLAVIN (VITAMIN B2), FOLIC ACID.

FILLING: HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, GLYCERIN, WATER, FRUCTOSE, MODIFIED CORN STARCH, PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAN AND COTTONSEED OIL†, NONFAT YOGURT POWDER [CULTURED NONFAT MILK; HEAT-TREATED AFTER CULTURING], STRAWBERRY PUREE CONCENTRATE, MODIFIED TAPIOCA STARCH, SUGAR, CORNSTARCH, MALIC ACID, NATURAL AND ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR, CELLULOSE GEL, SALT, COLOR ADDED, CELLULOSE GUM, DATEM, MONO- AND DIGLYCERIDES, MALTODEXTRIN, SOY LECITHIN, CARAMEL COLOR, RED #40.
†LESS THAN 0.5g TRANS FAT PER SERVING

Oh Dear.

Over 60 ingredients!

We won’t go over each one, but we did mark in bold all the sugar synonyms, and underlined the trans-fat.

Note that partially hydrogenated oil means there is trans-fat in the product, even if the nutrition facts label says it contains zero. This is because of a labeling loophole which allows values lower than half a gram per serving to be rounded down to zero.  Too bad that ANY amount of trans-fat is bad for you, and if you’re going to have any it should not be in a purportedly healthy food item.

Don’t be fooled by the strawberry puree concentrate, it is nothing more than sugar by the time it makes it into the filling. No fiber, no vitamin C lost in processing.

Another irritating feature of this product is the claim on the package “More of the Whole Grains your Body Needs.” Unfortunately the second ingredient here is enriched flour, aka refined white flour without any of the whole grain benefits such as fiber.

A serving is one bar, and it contains 14o calories. 13 grams of sugar account for about one third of  the calories, and the fiber count is a measly 2 grams – you really aren’t getting the benefits of the whole grains your body so “needs”.

All told, this is nothing more than a glorified snack bar. Much closer to Twix and Snickers than something that will allow you to “Eat Better All Day”.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you’re looking for a healthier snack to pack in your purse or backpack, how about a banana or an apple? Need something in a wrapper? Look for bars that have short ingredient lists and little or no added sugars. Not to mention partially hydrogenated oils.

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Yogi Berra and the Yankees helped Yoo-hoo chocolate drinks become an American icon in the 40’s and 50’s. The sweet and refreshing chocolaty taste became a kids’ favorite across the nation.

When buying Yoo-hoo, many parents mistakenly think they are providing their children a healthy milk-based drink with a touch of sweetness from chocolate so to make it fun to drink. They don’t notice that Yoo-hoo is a “chocolate drink”, not a “chocolate milk”.

A look at the ingredient list shows that there is virtually no milk here, mostly water, sugars, a smidgen of milk by-products, and some chemicals. Oh, and a bit of cocoa too.

Yoo-hoo is not something to treat the kids to. Here’s why…

What you need to know:

If you are looking for nutrition and ingredient information on Yoo-hoo’s website, forget about it. When companies don’t share this information on their website, you can rest assured their product does not have much to boast on the nutrition front. Such is the case with Yoo-hoo.

Let’s begin with the ingredient list (22 items!):

Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Whey (from Milk), Sugar, Corn Syrup Solids, Cocoa (Alkali Process), Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil, Sodium Caseinate (from Milk), Nonfat Dry Milk, Salt, Tricalcium Phosphate, Dipotassium Phosphate, Xanthan Gum, Guar Gum, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Soy Lecithin, Mono and Diglycerides, Vitamin A Palmitate, Niacinamide (Vitamin B3), Vitamin D3, Riboflavin (Vitamin B2).

Water is the main ingredient followed by copious amounts of the highly debated High fructose corn syrup. Sugar and Corn syrup solids are also added to further sweeten this drink, just for good measure…

Notice that there is no liquid milk in here, only milk by-products such as whey (ingredient #3), sodium caseinate (#8), and non-fat dry milk(#9). Whey is the leftover liquid after milk is curdled into cheese. Together with sodium caseinate, they are a source of protein.

Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil (#7) appears ahead of the milk powder here. Why in the world do we need trans-fat in a drink?

Tricalcium Phosphate is a source of calcium, while Dipotassium Phosphate is an additive that is used to prevent coagulation. The Guar and Xantham gums serve as thickeners, providing a richer creamier mouthfeel despite the fact that this is a water based product. You can read more about soy lecithin, an emulsifier, here.

The nutrition facts:
Each 15.5 oz bottle contains two servings, but many people gulp the entire bottle down. Here’s the info per 8oz serving:
130 calories, with only 10 from fat and almost all the rest from sugars! 27 grams of sugar, the equivalent of just under 7 teaspoons!

There’s also 210 mg of sodium in here, almost 10% of the daily maximum value. This is something you wouldn’t expect in a sweet drink.
Trans-fat appears as zero because of a labeling loophole that allows 0.5 grams or less per serving to be rounded down to zero. But remember, if you see a partially hydrogenated oil in the ingredient list, expect trans-fat. And no amount is good for you.

All the vitamins and minerals have been tacked on to this drink, and do not appear naturally in the main ingredients.

What to do at the supermarket:

Ideally you should have your children drinking milk with their cookies, not a sugary concoction. But at some point after infancy, our kids tend to forget the pure milk flavor and demand a sweet flavor. So drinking plain milk is a challenge for many families.

Adding a teaspoon of instant cocoa powder is also fine because you control the sugar level. Another option is to buy chocolate milk and mix it half and half with regular milk to drive down the sugar levels.

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New! Choose a better breakfast with CerealScan™ by Fooducate

Cereal has become, in just over a century, the quintessential American breakfast. Tens of millions of people start their day with a bowl of flakes, puffs, or crisps poured from a cardboard box .

There are over 1000 different cold cereal products one can choose from, and any given supermarket dedicates an entire aisle to these. Last year, Americans bought over Ten Billion dollars worth of breakfast cereal. This is a big business, with lots at stake for manufacturers, big and small, who fight for every sliver of market share.

Let’s remind ourselves that cereal is not the only option for breakfast. Whole wheat toast, banana, yogurt, cheese, fruit salad, a glass of milk, and eggs are a great start to a day, and don’t require much effort.  For many households, though, cereal is a morning tradition not easily broken. But can it be nutritionally improved?

As consumers are becoming more educated about health and nutrition, the cereal category is in flux, with each brand trying to convince us that its line of products is the nutritional Olympus. Despite small improvements here and there, most of the achievements are in marketing claims. Shoppers are now more confused than ever – with an overload of conflicting information – and no true means to decipher it all to make a good decision.

No more.

Today, we are happy to announce CerealScan™, an iPhone application that will help you choose a better, more nutritious breakfast cereal at the supermarket.

It’s dead simple to use: You launch the CerealScan application on your iPhone. It automatically scans a cereal box’s barcode (UPC).   You then see a product dashboard with concise, graphic information that helps you decide in 3 seconds if the cereal is healthy enough for you. If not, CerealScan shows 5 better choices.

Here is an example (see image). The scanned cereal scores only 2 out of 5. It is high in sugar and medium in sodium. It contains trans fats and controversial artificial colorings. Not good. Swipe your finger across the alternatives to view all 5 better options. Tap on an alternative’s image to see its nutrition dashboard.

How it works: We’ve culled over 2000 cereal boxes into the CerealScan database. The analysis and recommendations are fully automated. They are modeled on answering a simple question – “What would a dietitian recommend if she was standing there with you at the cereal aisle?” The implementation of that answer is by no means trivial. Thankfully a dedicated group of dietitians and programmers at Fooducate have been working on this project for quite some time. I think they’ve done a great job.

If you want to to learn more, there’s more information at the Cereal Scan Website. To get it on Apple’s iTunes click here.

What to do at the supermarket:

When it comes to cereal, the basics we’ve been writing about for the past 18 months have not changed. More fiber, Less sugar. No artificial colors and funny preservatives.

Now you have another option – you don’t need to remember anything, just bring your iPhone along with you to the supermarket and use CerealScan.

Try it out, we’d love to hear how CerealScan has helped you make a better choice. Comment below or email us: cerealscan at fooducate dot com.

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Should we be adding nutrition to New York’s list of leadership roles in addition to finance, tourism, and entertainment?

After paving the path with calorie labeling in fast food restaurants, banning trans-fat, shocking us with anti-soda pop ads, and then suggesting a tax on sugary drinks, the city’s department of health circa January 2010 is all about salt reduction.

In a press release yesterday, the health department announced a plan for voluntary reduction of salt from packaged foods and in restaurants of 25% over the next 5 years. The National Salt Reduction Initiative, is a New York City-led partnership of cities, states and national health organizations, that plans to work with the industry to achieve this goal. Precedents exist on national levels, most notably in Finland, which nearly halved sodium consumption over several decades starting in the 1970’s.

What you need to know:

A bit of salt is good, both for our body and our food enjoyment. The problem for many Americans is that the bit-of-salt has become too-much-salt, almost twice as much as we need to consume. And the excess is not doing us any good:

• Diets high in salt increase blood pressure, a leading risk factor for heart attacks and stroke.
• These conditions cause 23,000 deaths in New York City alone each year – more than 800,000 nationwide – and cost Americans billions in healthcare expenses
• Most Americans eat almost twice the recommended limit of salt each day.
• Even people with normal blood pressure benefit from lowering their salt intake.

Over 70% of the salt we consume comes from processed foods, whose manufacturers have been under a certain pressure to reduce their salt content for several years. Their big problem is who’ll jump into the cold water first. You see, our collective taste buds are currently wired to extra-salty. If one manufacturer decides to dramatically decrease the salt value in its foods while the others don’t , it stands a chance of falling out of f(l)avor with consumers and losing market share.

That’s why a coordinated effort where all manufacturers are required to reduce sodium gradually over time may be a good idea.

Incidentally, in the food industry’s praise (which is not something Fooducate often doles out) some manufacturers have been reducing sodium content gradually and quietly over the last few years. It’s interesting to note the stark difference in approach in canned soup, a notoriously sodium laden product, between Campbell’s and Progresso. Both are reducing their salt content but while the former proudly boasts the sodium reduction on its products and marketing materials, the latter is keeping mum.

What to do at the supermarket:

While we wait for salt values to enter orbit, let’s not fool ourselves into complacency. Salt is still a big issue and even after the proposed reduction values will be higher than necessary. The fastest way to lose the salt is to eat less processed foods. If you do buy prepared foods, look at the sodium values and compare.

A good number to remember is 600mg per serving. Lower is better, higher is not.

PS – enjoy the video of Alicia Keys singing about NY. Not directly related to nutrition or nutrition, but probably one of the best thing in music in a long while…

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Remember the absurd immunity claims on Kellogg’s cereals last year? The company added some vitamins and minerals to its sugary kids cereals and plastered a huge “Immunity” logo on the front of Cocoa Krispies and three other products. A public uproar ensued, especially given raging swine flu, and Kellogg’s announced in November it would pull the claim from its packaging.

Concurrently, Oregon’s Attorney General subpoenaed Kellogg’s and asked for the scientific evidence behind the claim. The company preferred not to answer that question but rather:

• stop shipping cereal boxes with immunity language by January 15
• destroy more than 2 million boxes (sans krispies)  with the immunity claim
• donate 108,000 boxes of cereal to the Oregon Food Bank
• donate 372,000 boxes to  Feeding America.

That’s quite an effort just to evade answering a question for which obviously Kellogg’s should have been prepared.

What you need to know:

Cocoa Krispies, as we wrote, is a terrible cereal to feed your kids. The krispies are over 40% sugar by weight. They contain trans fats. They carry artificial flavorings, and less than 1 gram of fiber. Immunity? Ha! This was sheer chutzpah on Kellogg’s part. Good for Oregon!

We hope that the donated cereal is the plain unsweetened variety of Rice Krispies.

What to do at the supermarket:

Hard as it may be, ignore all the marketing messages on product packaging. Go straight to the nutrition panel and the ingredient list.

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Image via Wikipedia

The first decade of the millennium brought both good and bad developments in the food and nutrition space. Mostly, this decade was a wake up call for many families and individuals that they cannot blindly trust government and market powers to provide the healthy food that they deserve.

2001 – Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, by investigative reporter Eric Schlosser, is published. People begin to understand that there is a very high price society is paying for cheap food.

2003 – The FDA announces plans to permit food manufacturers to make “qualified health claims”. Industry can now rely on “Some scientific evidence” or “Very limited and preliminary scientific research” to make a health claim. Opponents criticize it as opening the door to ill-founded claims. Advocates believe it will make more information available to the public. We shoppers get more confusing marketing messages than ever.

2003 – the low carb diet craze is launched with the publication of the South Beach Diet. The trend peaked in 2004 and pretty much died off by the end of 2005.

2004 – Morgan Spurlock’s Supersize Me, a documentary film following the health of its director eating only McDonald’s for an entire month, is released and meets with mixed reactions. Fast food chains duck for cover.

2004 – Passage of the Food Allergy Labeling and Consumer Protection Act. Requires labeling of any food that contains one or more of: peanuts, soybeans, cow’s milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, and wheat. People suffering from allergies still confused over statements such as “produced in a factory which also processes peanuts”.

2005 – Blogging goes mainstream, and people find new and useful sources of information on any subject, including food, nutrition, and health.

2006 – Wal-Mart joins the Organic Food bandwagon, signaling the mass acceptance of a once hippy movement.

2006 – Trans-fat is proclaimed the new evil. It’s labeling is required on all packaged foods. As a result, many manufacturers reformulate their products.

2007 – Author, professor, and food lover Michael Pollan publishes The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and continues the theme of Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. The result is a mass yearning for organic, sustainable fare. A follow-up book in 2008, In Defense of Food, argues against the “nutritionism” and suggests a creation of a food culture where  we “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

2008 – COOL (country of origin) Labeling goes into effect. fresh beef, pork, and lamb. After repeated debilitation and stakeholder pressures, the law that was enacted in the 2002 Farm Bill finally went into effect on Oct 1, 2008, and even then with many loopholes.

2008-9 – Front of Pack Nutrition Labeling becomes a food industry pastime, with over 15 different systems competing who will become the dominant player. In late 2009, the FDA decides to start thinking of maybe possibly beginning a process of evaluation which could eventually lead to government regulation in this area. While Guiding Stars and NuVal still survive, Smart Choices is nixed.

2009 – In January, a salmonella outbreak caused by a dirty peanut butter processing plant in Georgia, leads to one of the largest recalls of products in the history of supermarkets. Hundreds of products are recalled after the unnecessary deaths of innocent peanut butter aficionados.

2009 – As the recession takes hold, many  turn to comfort foods. Although home cooked meals are generally healthier and cheaper than restaurant fare, McDonalds’s stock has never done better. Coupon usage increases for the first time since 1992.

Here’s a graph of McDonald’s (red)  vs. Whole Foods Market (blue) stock performance over the course of the decade. How’s your (nutrition) performance changed over the last 10 years?

Note #1 : Apologies for not mentioning any TV shows, of which surely some deserve mention, as we have not watched TV since the late 1990’s. Perhaps a fastidious reader would like to add these in the comments section.

Note #2:  many good ideas for this post appeared in Delish.

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Help the FDA Improve

NUTRITION FACTS LABELS

The FDA is reconsidering the Nutrition Facts Panel. Almost 20 years after the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990, and with soaring rates of obesity, one could argue that the goals of a healthier, slimmer America have not been achieved.

The Food and Drug Administration, charged with most foods’ nutrition labeling realizes this. So it has decided to experiment with changes, additions, and omissions in order to improve consumer understanding of what they are about to eat.

But before building the experiment, the FDA is soliciting comments from the public, and that includes us – you, me, and whoever cares about nutrition. Unfortunately, the digital hallways of the federal government are not user friendly and it is not trivial to find the right webpage to comment. This means that in many cases, the only comments come from food manufacturers and trade groups. You can probably guess what their comments will look like.

So here’s some help from Fooducate. Not only did we dig up the single click that takes you straight to the comment page, we’ve also collated Seven Label Improvement Suggestions [see below] that you can suggest to the FDA.

The invitation to comment by the FDA can be downloaded [PDF] or viewed online.

You need to submit your comments by January 19, 2010. For reference, the docket number is FDA–2009–N–0532 and you can submit your comment here.

Seven Suggested Label Improvements:

If you are contemplating what improvements the FDA should undertake, let us help with a few examples. Feel free to “copy paste” when you file your comment with the FDA.

1. Show REAL serving size. Have you ever noticed the ridiculously small serving sizes on packages – 3 Oreos? 15 potato chips? Or a single serve 20 fl oz bottle of cola written up as containing 2.5 servings? Manufacturers like to minimize the servings to toddler size portions so that the nutrition facts per serving won’t seem too bad (calories, sugar, etc…). This is misleading and needs to change to reflect how people really consume food and drink.

2. How much ADDED sugar? The nutrition label states the amount of total sugar in a serving, but it does not indicate whether the sugar is added to the food, occurs naturally, or both. Caloric-ly, there is no difference between added sugar and sugar found naturally in fruits and vegetables. But the benefit of fruits containing naturally occurring sugars is in the additional vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidantss and phytochemicals they provide. Added sugars provide no health benefits. They are truly empty calories. People should choose products with as little added sugar as possible. Unfortunately, today consumers can only guess how much sugar has been added to a product.

3. Daily Values for Protein, Sugar. These numbers don’t appear on nutrition labels today and consumers can only guess if 5 grams of protein are a lot or a little. As most people consume plenty of protein daily, this will decrease the marketing hype around high protein bars and snacks. As for sugar, people don’t know what amount is an acceptable daily intake of total sugar, and of added sugar.

4. Zero should be zero. Did you know that if a product contains trans fat, but less than 0.5 grams per serving, it can legally be labeled as 0 gram of trans fat? This is ridiculous. Knowing this, manufacturers can “calibrate” serving sizes to be just under half a gram’s worth of trans-fat, thus earning the right to place the coveted zero number on the nutrition label. But when wolfing down a snack bag (real serving size much larger than labeled – see #1 above), you could be getting even 1.25 grams of trans-fat, all while thinking that the product contains none at all.

5. Caffeine content. Products that contain caffeine should clearly state the amount. People are often surprised to discover caffeine in soft drinks, cakes, and other snack items. Some energy drinks contain ridiculously high amounts. Physicians have asked the FDA to require caffeine labeling on energy drinks.

6. Allow rBGH-free labels. rBGH / rBST is a hormone injected into cows to increase their milk output. The hormone has been associated with various health risks for humans consuming the milk. People should know if their milk comes from cows treated with these hormones.

7. Label Booz. Alcoholic beverages should be labeled as well. At a bare minimum, provide serving size and calories.

Click HERE to submit your comments to the FDA.

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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.

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Consumer interest in omega-3 is not as high this year as it was in the 2005-2007 time frame. Perhaps it’s because we’ve been inundated by so many omega-3 messages on the news, web, and supermarket that most of us have simply come to accept the easy to remember association:  “omega-3 = good”.  In the same time period we also learned that “trans-fat = evil”.

It’s a bit like Star Wars , what with the dark and light side of the force. The “force” here is fatty acids, or what dietary fats (animal fat and vegetable oils) are composed of.

While the trans-fat message is quite simple at the practical level – just avoid products containing it – with omega 3 things are a bit more complicated. And when something is not as simple as good/bad, you can be sure there’s lots of money to be made off of the public’s ignorance. Enter the thousands of processed products now marked with “omega-3″ in large font type on the front of the package.

The analogy to Star Wars ends here because not all omega-3’s are created equal. Which means you may be buying a product fortified with omega-3 that has almost no health benefits for you. Yet you will likely be paying more than you would have for the standard, un-enriched version. In order to better understand what’s going on, here’s a quick primer on omega-3, in 10 bullet points. Read more…

[Update November 4: In a press release earlier today, Kellogg's announced it would remove the immunity label from its packaging.]

Earlier this week, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent a letter to Kellogg’s CEO expressing concerns over the very misleading front of package “claim” which you can see for yourself on the right.

“I am concerned that the prominent use of the Immunity Claims to advertise a sugar-laden, chocolate cereal like Cocoa Krispies may mislead and deceive parents of young children. Specifically, the Immunity Claims may falsely suggest to parents that cereals like Cocoa Krispies are more healthy for their children than other breakfast foods that are not high in sugar and not highly processed.

The Immunity Claims may also mislead parents into believing that serving this sugary cereal will actually boost their child’s immunity, leaving parents less likely to take more productive steps to protect their children’s health.

At a time when parents are increasingly worried about the spread of the H1N1 virus (“swine flu”), it is vitally important that parents receive accurate information about what they can do to protect their children’s health.”

A copy of the letter, which requests to see the scientific evidence behind the immunity claim, has also been sent to FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg. As Marion Nestle points out in her excellent Food Politic blog “Shouldn’t the FDA be taking this on?”

What you need to know:

Is a new wave of backlash against food processors starting to rise? Just 2 weeks ago Connecticut’s Attorney General wrote strongly to the Smart Choices Program regarding its questionable benchmarks. The FDA followed up a week later with a letter that ultimately led the program to suspend itself indefinitely (read – harakiri).

This is a good sign (hopefully) of things to come. A product package is not a billboard for half baked medical claims. When you come to think of it, it’s surprising that the FDA didn’t do anything when the revamped Rice Krispies came out this summer.

The product in question is a sugar bomb (40% by weight) that also carries trans fat and BHT. You can read our recent analysis here.

What to do at the supermarket:

Since the only product information tightly regulated by the FDA is the nutrition panel and the ingredient list, those are the ONLY places you should look to for accurate information regarding a food you are about to place in your shopping cart.

Short, understandable ingredient lists are usually a sign of a better product.

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