Smart Choices Campaign

Have you heard about the new food-labeling program called "Smart Choices"? Many of our country's largest food manufacturers (General Mills, ConAgra, Kelloggs, Kraft, Unilever, PepsiCo, and others) are participating in this campaign, "designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices" through the use of a green checkmark prominently displayed on the front of "smart choice" food items.

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.

I guess it's hard to put a checkmark on a bunch of broccoli.