Smart Choices?

Advertisers are very keen on making consumers feel good about their purchases: smart, beautiful, trendy, healthy, knowledgeable.  Problem is, for us consumers, that the market is flooded with choices, and actually making well-considered choices from among our options would be at least a full time job.  And who among us can take on another full time job?  So advertisers operate in the business of shorthand, assuring us that we don’t really need to look into our options, because what they’re offering is the best choice anyway.

I can’t begrudge advertisers for this.  I can, however, begrudge the food industry for this; for teaming up with nonprofits in the so-called “Smart Choices” program, wherein certain food items receive a big green check mark on their labeling, leading the consumer to believe that by purchasing the product that bears the check mark, they are making a smart choice (and the implication is: smarter choice than the products that don’t bear the green check).  I can understand that food choices, in large part, do govern our health, and agree that measures taken to nudge the consumer towards healthier options are well worth the effort.  But the criteria for selection of the “smart choices” foods is simply wrongheaded.

As reported in the New York Times, the following paragraph alone ought to illustrate just how wrongheaded the standards are:  “Froot Loops qualifies for the label because it meets standards set by the Smart Choices Program for fiber and Vitamins A and C, and because it does not exceed limits on fat, sodium and sugar. It contains the maximum amount of sugar allowed under the program for cereals, 12 grams per serving, which in the case of Froot Loops is 41 percent of the product, measured by weight. That is more sugar than in many popular brands of cookies.”  Hmmm…..is it that Froot Loops naturally contains those ingredients that help it to meet the Smart Choices standard?  Nope.  They are additives.

In fact, this type of program only incentivizes the food industry to add synthetic vitamins and fiber to processed foods that have been stripped of any nutritional value, a practice that has long made my head spin.  Conversely, there seem to be no guidelines for the questionable additives that are placed in store bought food: preservatives, sugar substitutes, flavor enhancers, GMOs, food coloring, and the like.   Wonder if Morgan Spurlock would do 30 Days on a Smart Choices Program diet and monitor his results?

Read all about the Smart Choices program on their website.  And for added fun, do a search among the product categories.  This is the telling part — how very few products are listed, represented by even fewer corporations that manufacture almost exclusively processed food.  Among the few that are in my pantry at the moment:  Hellman’s Mayonnaise and Quaker Instant Oatmeal (maple and brown sugar).  Not exactly shining beacons of healthy food choices.

The only true shorthand I can think of that might be worthy of such labeling practice is this:  Don’t eat anything with ingredients that your grandmother wouldn’t recognize.  But the food industry wouldn’t be very gung-ho on that one, would they?

Updated 10/26:  Success!  Kudos to the news media for staying on top of this story, and to Gaga for the link:  Food Label Program to Suspend Operations