Sunday, September 6, 2009

Industry standards

"The green checkmark label that is starting to show up on store shelves will appear on hundreds of packages, including — to the surprise of many nutritionists — sugar-laden cereals like Cocoa Krispies and Froot Loops.

“These are horrible choices,” said Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health.

He said the criteria used by the Smart Choices Program were seriously flawed, allowing less healthy products, like sweet cereals and heavily salted packaged meals, to win its seal of approval. “It’s a blatant failure of this system and it makes it, I’m afraid, not credible,” Mr. Willett said." (Thanks Anna)

2 comments:

constant gina said...

yeah...I was one of those kids in their briefs on Saturday morning with a box of Fruit Loops...

Rose Bridger said...

Here in the UK food labelling is ridiculous. Lots of labels proclaim how the food is free of something that it would not contain anyway. Recently I found some 'low salt' honey, 'vegetarian' pecan nuts and some frozen peas and carrots that were labelled 'gluten free'. Highly processed foods claim all kinds of nutritonal qualities, like low sugar potato chips.