Fruit may only be on the box's label

By STAY FINZ
Saturday, January 27, 2007

Fruit is a big seller for parents who want to feed their children nutritious food. So it's no surprise that manufacturers prominently display berries, cherries and oranges on boxes of breakfast cereals, drink cans and yogurt containers.

Unfortunately, according to health advocates, many companies fail to put the fruit where it counts _ inside the products.

The Prevention Institute and the Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments, an Oakland, Calif.-based coalition of California's leading public health, physical activity and nutrition organizations, say more than half of the most aggressively advertised children's foods that show fruit on their packaging or even put the word "fruit" in their name contain no fruit.

Yoplait Go-Gurt Strawberry Splash yogurt, Fruity Cheerios and Berry Berry Kix are just a few of the products named in the organization's study being released today, "Where's the Fruit?"

Some products boast natural fruit flavorings, but those don't contain the nutrients of real fruit.

"Frankly, it was pretty surprising to find that nearly 51 percent of these products had no fruit in them at all and that 16 percent had minimal fruit," said Leslie Mikkelsen, managing director of the Prevention Institute and a registered dietitian, who headed up the four-month research project.

"Parents are rushing through grocery stores with their kids, and a lot of them are relying on what they see on the front of the package. Most are too harried to read the fine print."

The organization used a 2006 study by the nonprofit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation to identify which children's foods were most heavily advertised on television. More than $10 billion a year is spent on marketing food to children, according to Prevention Institute.

Strategic Alliance narrowed down the foundation's findings to supermarket products that featured fruit on the packaging, a $3 billion-a-year industry. When they pored over the labels of the 37 items selected, they found that what was pictured on the front of the box wasn't necessarily found in the list of ingredients on the back.

"The deception is really intolerable," said Larry Cohen, executive director of the Prevention Institute. "There is really no excuse for misleading parents in a way that weakens their ability to encourage their children's health."

Children's diets are of particular concern these days in light of growing rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes, both of which are related to poor nutrition.

Cohen and Mikkelsen said they hope the study will alert parents and nudge food and beverage companies to change their policies. They also would like to see the Food and Drug Administration strengthen its rules on packaging and advertising. "Current FDA regulations on health claims and product definitions, such as those for fruit drinks, are not sufficiently protecting parents and children," the report states. "These regulations need to be updated to ensure the packaging clearly states fruit content on the cover."

The FDA did not immediately return calls when asked for comment. But Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit nutrition and science advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., says the FDA's typical reaction is to point to a lack of resources to pursue these types of cases. Although there are laws that forbid false package advertising, Jacobson said they contain so many loopholes that these cases are difficult to win in court.

Marion Nestle, professor of food studies and public health at New York University and author of "What to Eat," urges all parents to carefully scrutinize labels but says that to understand them, "you have to be a Talmudic scholar."

"Unfortunately, if there is a health claim on the package, people believe it," she said. "And people think a picture of a piece of fruit is a health claim."