AS SEEN ON KESQ: F.D.A. Food Labels

TheFood and Drug administration is cracking down on product labels promising that the food you buy is healthy.

Specifically, the FDA is taking a closer look at the Smart Choices program. Products ranging from General Mills’ Cocoa Puffs and Kelloggs Fruit Loops are stamped with the Smart Choices logo.

Friday, News Channel 3 learned that the Smart Choices program would be temporarily halted. Kraft, Kellogg, and General Mills worked together to launch the program together earlier this year.Smart Choices has been criticized because its guidelines allow cereals high in sugar to bear the stamp.

“When you have 40 percent sugar, can you imagine that half the box with grain and half the box with sugar, that’s not such a smart choice,” said Michael Jacobson, with the Center for Science in Public Interest.

The Smart Choice program is just one of many systems designed by grocery stores, scientists, or manufacturers themselves to push consumers to “supposedly healthy” products.

The people behind the Smart Choice idea stand by it.

Richard Kahn, a board member says, “It’s not the perfect program, but it’s a program that is going to move America. There’s nothing about these criteria that are not grounded in science.”

The FDA raised the question of nutritional honesty in August, with a letter to the Smart Choices program, and still available on the FDA website:

“With statutory responsibility for nutrition labeling, our agencies highest concern is to ensure that people receive complete and accurate information on food labels so that they can make healthy food choices at the point of purchase.”

Friday, the Food and Drug Administration said even though the Smart Choices program is halted, manufacturers that currently use the logo can continue to do so.

To read that letter in its entirety, visit the FDA website by clicking here.

And, for more information about the Smart Choices program, click here.