MORE FOOD LABELING BULLSH*T

I've touched on food labeling practices in a few prior posts (here and here), but there's a new one that is hitting supermarket shelves all over the country:

Smart Choices Program

"Helping Guide Smart Food and Beverage Choices"

The whole purpose of this label (according to the website) is to give consumers a quick way to identify whether or not a food product is healthy.  If the product has this label, well then it must be healthy (I want to emphasize my use of the phrase "food product" since fruits and vegetables do not have packaging or labels and therefore cannot display this label).  To qualify for this label, foods must meet a comprehensive set of criteria ranging from total calories and fat content to vitamin and mineral content.  To summarize, they have three categories (quoted directly from their website):

Nutrients to Limit - These are nutrients that Americans need to eat less of in their diet for better health (total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, added sugars, sodium).

Nutrients to Encourage - These are the “nutrients of concern,” that is nutrients lacking in the diet, as identified by the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (Calcium, Potassium, Fiber, Magnesium, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Vitamin E).

Food Groups to Encourage - These are groups of foods, rather than individual nutrients, that are recommended in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (Fruits, Vegetables, Whole Grains, Fat-Free/Low-Fat Milk Products).

Generally speaking, those categories seem to be a step in the right direction.  They even make exceptions in the "Total Fat" category for items like nuts, seeds, avocados, and fatty fish since they contain high amounts of healthy fats.  That's good, right?

Now if you've read my other blog posts about food labels or my thoughts on the food industry in general, you're probably sitting there just waiting for me to tell you how much I hate this new labeling system...well WAIT NO LONGER!!

As I mentioned earlier, the first strike against this program is that it can't apply to whole food items like fruits and vegetables since those items do not include any packaging in the first place.

Strike Two is the following:

Froot Loops qualified for this "Smart Choices" label??  ARE YOU KIDDING ME??  Froot Loops are nothing more than sugar circles in milk.

Strike Three will involve a quote from their website:

"The Smart Choices Program encourages balanced eating by evaluating foods across every aisle and section of the supermarket."

By eating "across every aisle," that simply encourages people to buy food products and not whole food items (which are located on the store periphery, not on the aisles).  Buying food products is fantastic for the manufacturers, but pretty much terrible for the consumer.

A few more sample products that apparently meet healthy criteria:

FUDGSICLES, MAYONNAISE, AND REGULAR PEANUT BUTTER!!  It's probably best that I can't tell what the product is behind the Fudgsicles because I would probably just get really pissed off.  Also, please note that Natural Peanut Butter (made only from peanuts) is a great food choice.  Regular Peanut Butter (made with sugar and partially hydrogenated oils) is NOT a great food choice.

There's also more B.S. on the horizon...foods will soon be marketed as "Better for You" foods.  It is important to note that the industry is not calling them "Good for You," and there's a reason for that.  3 slices of double-fudge brownie cake is definitely "Better for You" than 4 slices of it.