By SN
Sunday September 6, 2009
New York Times – September 4, 2009:
A new food-labeling campaign called Smart Choices, backed by most of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, is “designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.”
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.
The Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Agriculture have also weighed in, sending the program’s managers a letter on Aug. 19 saying they intended to monitor its effect on the food choices of consumers.
Dr. Kennedy, who is not paid for her work on the program, defended the products endorsed by the program, including sweet cereals. She said Froot Loops was better than other things parents could choose for their children.
“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.”
Wow! Now with more High Fructose Corn Syrup AND Monsanto GMO’s!
Sounds completely contradictory. These “sugar laden” cereals contain no added sugar what-so-ever, zero, zip, zilch. They use HFCS instead.
Those breakfast cerials are a load of “CRAP”.
As a practicing diabetic the sugar or sweetner
levels are too high. Stick to Shredded Wheat.
You’s get all the sugar you need in the milk.
Sugar: The Bitter Truth ( click website to see video )
Robert H. Lustig, MD, UCSF Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology explores the damage caused by sugary foods.
Cosmetic dentists agree!
Sugar the cocaine of breakfast… 😛
Loops are basically sugar, refined flour, artificial flavoring and artificial coloring. They should be excluded for virtue of being “not a food”, having more in common with campfire fire lighters and edible packaging materials.
Tell me people don’t feed their kids doughnuts for breakfast. Please say it aint true.
A couple of commercials, a couple of whiny kids, busy schedule, poor money management and Americans penchant for cognitive dissonance, voila; Americans will buy into this heart and head.
Then when someone tries to tell them this is not healthy for kids, Americans will yell them down calling them health Nazis.
I don’t see what the big deal is. We all know that breakfast cereals are laden with sugars and only the dumbest of people would be swayed by the “smart choice” pitch. How about parents using common sense?
Besides, this has been going on for 50+ years. Most of you grew up on these types of breakfast cereals, and here you are, smart Dvorak readers, even though you consumed hundreds of pounds of Count Chocula when you were kids.
The best I’ve come up with is a V8 vegetable juice and a peanut butter sandwich made on whole wheat at 50 calories a slice. I get my Vitamin D from a small capsule.
Not perfect but the dietitian I talked to said it beat the crap out of what most people eat and I used to eat.
Eating sugar before your lunch is tricking your body into thinking it doesn’t need to burn calories for the day.
So, guess what it does with those calories instead?
I don’t really consume much of anything that has lots of added sugar… I don’t drink soda or juice, I don’t eat any candy/pastries/deserts… I think that I’ll be just sticking to my sugary cereal.
“…Froot Loops was better than other things parents could choose for their children.”
She is right. They could choose rat poison, cyanide, steel wool pads, dog poo, engine coolant, etc, etc.
God I hate people like her that try to tell us that it is raining while they piss in our pockets.
What nonsense. I give my kid a lite beer doe breakfast. Great nutritional start to the day. Low sugar, low fat, lots of carbs for energy. And, he’s got a head start on the first recess burping contest!
I ate Fruit Loops as a kid and I grew to be 6′ 6″ tall and skinny.
Sugar is a vitamin, obviously.
Jeez, people that endorse this kind of food for kids are as bad as tobacco executives. Are you obese? Try more High Fructose Corn Syrup! Yum!
yeah…I was one of those kids in their briefs on Saturday morning with a box of Fruit Loops…