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Not so smart choices

How useful is a new labeling program?

By Culinate staff

September 9, 2009

Noticed the "Smart Choices" green checkmarks on any of your groceries lately? The program, funded by major food manufacturers, suggests that such products as Froot Loops are, well, a smart grocery choice. Nutrition experts Walter Willett and Marion Nestle aren’t pleased, and neither is the FDA or the USDA. But a professor associated with the program says it helps parents out:

“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.”

No word on whether that hypothetical parent might be considering, say, oatmeal for his kids’ breakfast instead.

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