FDA Still Insisting Food Labels Someday Be Accurate

These are the times that try the soulless processed food makers.  Especially for those whose bread and butter comes from making foods containing artery-clogging trans fats and sugar.  Last week, the Food and Drug Administration warned many food manufacturers that their marketing claims were not in accordance with the law.  A spokesperson offered, “if an ice cream claims to have zero grams of trans fat, but still has enough saturated fat to light an oil lamp and keep it burning through all of Channukah, it cannot be considered a healthy alternative to say, a soy milk slushie, for example.”  Until the FDA can get their message across, nutrition experts are warning that there are still plenty of misleading claims.  Here are some considerations for you to get it right before you bite:

1. Foods Claiming to Be Immune System Boosters
Foods can claim that they can fight colds and flu if they contain even minute traces of the antioxidant vitamins A and C.  But unless you are on a pirate ship with no access to fresh fruits and vegetables, you shouldn’t have to rely on a glass of Hawaiian Punch to fight Scurvy or even the Swine Flu.  However, these newer strict FDA labeling rules will still not stop the pomegranate people from putting their fruit into everything and claiming it will cure everything from a heart disease to hemorrhoids. They will make those people behind the cranberries look like slackers by putting pomegranate not only into every juice or fruit related product, but also crossing it genetically with a chicken and then injecting the cells into a potato.  Once they are finished with food, and all food-like products, they will add pomegranate to household cleaning products and claim they are environmentally safe and even good for your skin.  They MUST be stopped.

2.  Sugary Foods Lobbying to Be The Sixth Food Group
Recent studies have suggested that the antioxidants in dark chocolate can have health benefits including lowering blood pressure.  This has caused the sugar cane and cocoa growers to petition for the FDA to consider making sugary foods, specifically those containing chocolate, the new food group.  As much as female scientists would like to agree, they still contend that products containing milk chocolate contain no health benefits.  This has presented a conundrum so far for Cocoa Krispies, but the makers of Count Chocula, thinking outside the cereal box, are rumored to already be reformulating their product and are also in talks with the talent agents representing “Blackula.”

3. Snacks Claiming to Be Made With Real Fruit
The rule of thumb to judge a claim made by a product like that is to read the ingredient list and take note the of order.  If the first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup, followed by items like, purified recycled motor oil, emulsifiers, xanthium gum, glycerin, titanium, red dye number two and finally, “strawberry puree and/or essence,” you can be pretty sure it’s about as much fruit as there is in a tube of lip balm.  See: fruit leather (also believed to made in tanneries).

4. Food Claiming to Be Whole Grain
The FDA has yet to substantiate the amount of whole grains a product must contain to make this claim.  So, take it at as a given that a manufacturer can drop one lousy buckwheat hull into an entire box of Frosty Fruitastic Os and call them whole grain.  They still cannot call them fruit, surprisingly.

5. “All Natural” Products
Just because a product wasn’t grown in a Petri dish or mixed in a test tube before arriving on your supermarket shelf doesn’t always mean natural is better.  Nutritionists suggest you shouldn’t be swayed in making a purchase based upon such claims.  After all,  dirt is all natural – and so is e-coli.

In conclusion, if there is any doubt about a nutrition claim, or a food’s safety in general, experts suggest that you just leave it on the kitchen counter at work for the irritating lazy people to eat.