Another way to look at the issue is to look at the inadequacies of the diet such as people not consuming enough fruits and vegetables. We really ought to be filling up on fruits and vegetables, yet they are typically a side dish rather than the main course.

Limiting Junk Food Advertising Aimed at Children

CSPI has had a legal team for several years. What actions undertaken by your legal team do you consider most important?

We threatened to sue Kellogg for junk food advertising on television and they agreed to negotiate. Over more than a year, we worked out a legal agreement by which they set limits on the nutritional quality of the products that they advertise to kids. They agreed to limits of no more than a certain amount of fat and sodium and sugar per serving of food.

That set the stage for many other companies to agree to limits. Because our agreement with Kellogg was a negotiated settlement, the limits are not optimal. But they excluded the advertising of some of their junkiest foods, which means that over the years they will not be introducing those kinds of foods as new foods for kids. Because if you can’t advertise them, how do you get the word out? Also, having a precedent of nutrient limits could lead to much tighter limits set by the Congress or the government.

Another important case was our threat to sue Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and other soft-drink companies for marketing sugar-sweetened beverages in schools. After a lengthy negotiation, the companies signed an agreement—but with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which was set up by the William J. Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association. We’re now trying to get an even stronger agreement approved by Congress.

What Will Replace the “Smart Choices” Program?

There’s been a recent controversy about the Smart Choices program, which was initiated by the food industry as a way of assuring the public that their products were healthy. When non-nutritious foods like the sugary breakfast cereal, Fruit Loops, qualified for the Smart Choice seal of approval, many people noticed and objected. What’s happening with that right now?

Smart Choices is apparently dead. The FDA questioned their nutrition criteria, and Smart Choices folded, saying they would support the FDA’s development of nutrition standards.

The concept of Smart Choices is quite reasonable. The idea was to have a logo that companies could put on the front of their packages to signify that this is a particularly healthy choice. Or, as the industry says, it’s a “better for you” food. Meaning, perhaps, that it’s not so good for you but it’s better than the other junk that they market. But the concept of highlighting more healthful foods is a good one because consumers don’t have to plod through a Nutrition Facts label. Most of the criteria for better-for-you products were quite reasonable, but they screwed up on several categories. One was allowing an extra-liberal limit for sugar in breakfast cereals. Another was that for cereals, bread and other grain products, they didn’t require any whole grains in the product, even though the government recommends that at least half of the grains one consumes be whole grains.

Is someone else, a more neutral party, picking up the ball following the demise of Smart Choices?

Yes, the Institute of Medicine. I don’t know why the food industry just decided to close up their Smart Choices program rather than change the criteria. But it has contributed something good, which is that Congress has funded the Institute of Medicine to look at a range of approaches for front-label symbols. One possibility is a better-for-you symbol. Another approach might be ratings from -100 to +100. Another would be having a red, yellow or green dot signifying whether the food is bad, medium or healthful. There are lots of approaches to providing simple means of conveying the overall nutritional value of a food. The challenge is to figure out which would be the most effective at encouraging healthier consumer choices.