The Great Froot Loop Debate

Lately, all I can think about is FROOT LOOPS. I've mentioned the Smart Choices Labeling Program before, but it's gotten under my skin again after an article in the NYT (For your health, Froot Loops). In it, Eileen Kennedy, the Dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and the President of the "Smart Choices" board, defends the inclusion of Froot Loops in this way:

“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

I am deeply concerned by this line of reasoning. What really confuses me is that the Smart Choice program itself states the intention of the program in the first paragraph on its own website as follows:

"No matter where you shop or what brands you buy - the Smart Choices Program, a new front-of-pack nutrition labeling program, helps shoppers make smarter food and beverage choices within product categories in every supermarket aisle."

There it is: WITHIN product categories. While you can always argue that Froot Loops has a place in a healthy diet under the umbrella of "moderation" and "as part of a healthy diet", the "Smart Choices" program was designed to help you choose a "smarter" (presumably, healthier) option within whatever category you are considering. If you are a mother standing in the cereal aisle, you have already decided to buy cereal, and doughnuts aren't part of the equation. And the "Smart Choices" program is designed to help you identify a "smarter" choice among the cereals you are faced with when you stand in front of that great wall of cereal. Cereals: That is the product category. That the defense of this program has to include a hypothetical situation involving doughnuts (from a different supermarket aisle entirely) is a red flag. It's not called the "It's Better than a Doughnut" program. I agree with the comment made by Walter Willet, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health, in the NYT article...these ARE horrible choices.

Equally unnerving are Dean Kennedy's comments that consumers "don’t want to be told ‘You must do this". Yes, I am sure that is the case, and no doubt why the program is called "Smart Choices" and not "You must eat this". My issue is that, while of course no one wants to be told what to do or eat, people DO seem to want some guidance in the grocery store, or these food companies wouldn't be lining up to pay up to $100,000 a year to be included in such a program. Obviously, food companies want you to eat what they are selling. But why is such an esteemed nutritionist backing this program?

Is telling people what they want to hear, instead of the truth, what we stand for at Friedman? I surely hope not.