Putting the F in FDA?

From Occassional Musings from the Lentil Rental by corn pow

May 30, 2009

I’ve fallen down on the weekly Hollywood Farmers’ Market report, but suffice it to say this week was a quick buy-and-run, and last week we arrived way too late. Not only were there no breakfast burritos to be found, but also there was no lettuce for the week--and this was a few hours before the official close. Thus, my dear occasional readers, please indulge me in my diversion of asking if this is the right “F” in the FDA.

Much ink has been spilled (or many pixels have been lit?) over the Food and Drug Administration and whether they are adequately monitoring the nation’s food supply. I don’t want to cross that bridge, but this story I just ran across got me wondering whether this is the right type of food the FDA should be regulating.

According to this blog post, the FDA is considering my beloved Cheerios a drug. That’s right, those beloved crunchy Os that I enjoy for breakfast or bring to work for a snack in a reused Emerald Valley Kitchen salsa container (where my co-worker thought I was caring for a six-year old child instead of satiating my inner child), is considered a “new” drug because of the company’s advertisement that Cheerios can lower cholesterol. The blog post summarizes it this way: “Cheerios can’t say it reduces cholesterol without having gone through specific FDA-approved testing to back it up.”

Wow.

An earlier Culinate post by Kim here gave us some FDA numbers to ponder and she wondered whether the change in Washington would make our food safer. What do you think? Does regulating a company’s advertising claims of what is a healthy food (because most foods don’t tout their unhealthiness) make us safer? Should we hear those same ominous voiceovers on television as we do in typical drug advertisements?

I can see it now: an image of a family enjoying a picnic in the park with the latest brand of potato chips and the voiceover saying: “May cause high blood pressure, love handles, dehydration, or an irresistible urge to eat the whole bag in one sitting.”

(photo taken from Cheerios.com)