Words are tricky things. They have power (“We hold these truths to be self-evident…”), but they are also mutable. There’s a brilliant example of this currently in the cereal aisle of your local grocery store, where several products of the Kellogg’s company boldly proclaim on the front of the packaging that each “helps support your child’s IMMUNITY.”
Yet these cereals aren’t ones built on whole grains, or bran, or shredded wheat. Nope, they’re built on krispies – as in Rice Krispies, Cocoa Krispies, and Frosted Krispies. This is the latest trend of marketing ordinary packaged items as health foods.
The claim is based on the fact that Kellogg’s has increased the amount of synthetic vitamins they spray onto the cereals, bringing the dosage up to 25% of the recommended daily allowance. But, as The Early Show on CBS reported this week, these are still sugar-packed kids’ cereals, chock full o’ high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils. In our view, these two ingredients are the junk food dividing line.
The claim of enhanced immunity raised red flags all over the place, among not only parents and nutritionists but the government of San Francisco (where everyone is eligible for government health insurance), which has asked for evidence backing up that claim.
The Early Show sought such proof, too, and got this statement from Kellogg’s: “These nutrients have been identified by the Institute of Medicine and other studies as playing an important role in the body’s immune system. Therefore, we believe the claim … is supported by reliable and competent scientific evidence.”
There again you see the power of words, this time as exercised by a public relations professional. The company essentially admitted they’ve done no empirical testing on the immunity claim, though not in so many words.
While experts interviewed by The Early Show expressed serious misgivings and general disapproval of the claim, over at NaturalNews.com the tone trended towards outright scorn.
“Cocoa Krispies isn’t even real food, if you ask me. It’s a nutrient-deficient, highly processed, sugar-laden source of empty calories. To claim it ‘supports IMMUNITY’ is so far-fetched that you’d have to be living in some alternate universe to even think about believing it,” wrote Mike Adams.
Cereal manufacturers (not to mention fast food restaurants) have long proclaimed their fare to be “part of a balanced diet.” However, there you get into that language trap again. “Diet” is, perhaps, the most misused word in Western popular culture. That’s because it has primarily come to mean “weight-loss program.” Someone generally only says “I’m on a diet” if they’re following a specific regimen, simple or complex, to lose weight.
But we’re all on diets, even if it’s Kit-Kats and cucumbers. What you eat is your diet. And more and more often, what you eat is processed and packaged food (which, the BBC reports, could increase the risk of depression).
And that is about the worst thing for one’s immune system since DDT.
Hoo boy! I read of this claim in The WaPo. Their health blog did one of those “Is that right?” entries. They thought it was a load of crap, too, though they were polite about it.
Bah! This isn’t a quaint little wink-wink, “can you believe they’re saying that?” nothingness. It’s as screwed up as what some of those healthcare reform opponents are saying. When lies become the truth…do we even know what truth — any truth — is these days? We are what we eat. Now THERE’s a truth.
That photo from Wiki is awesome. Reminds me of the packaging of generic (no-brand) foods back in the day (the 70’s? the 80’s?). I’d love to see an art installation of generic poisons…uh, I mean edible items…like this (can’t even call them foods). “Now With Even More Hormonal Disruption!” “Fortified With Chemicals Not Found In Nature!” “Guaranteed To Spike Your Child’s Blood Glucose!” Tell it like it is, I say.
I don’t eat sugars (including honey, dried fruit, molasses, agave syrup, etcetc) or refined grains. I eat very little prepared foods (I cook about 80% of what I eat). The longer I go this way (it’s been about 3.5 years), the more this processed stuff looks like plastic to me. Like those toy foods I used to play with as a little girl.
@Len W-hello, and many thanks to your for your feedback on other, more recent threads here. A pleasure to read your thoughts! 🙂
@author of this “Immune Protection, or More Corn Syrup?”
I really appreciated this piece of writing-it expresses some basic truths about how we are conditioned to understand our food. I liked the way your writing tears down the veil around the words we exchange freely everyday without giving much consideration to what they mean…before we put them in our mouths and swallow them whole.
With the Sun applying to square Jupiter and the Moon applying to oppose Jupiter, Jupiter is under a lot of pressure today. If’in i wuz Jupiter i’d be sayin’: “conjunct Chiron is lookin’ awful good right now”.