Here’s an interesting story from Italy, posted Thursday on GlobalPost:

“From lands freed from the Mafia,” reads the light blue pack of penne rigate pasta on display among dozens of other products in a dedicated shop in Via dei Prefetti 23, in the heart of Rome. To understand that label, travel 250 miles as the crow flies south, to Sicily.

Turns out that lands confiscated from mafia members have been turned to good use -  an agricultural cooperative is selling products such as pasta, olive oil, tomatoes an wine, all from fields not far from the town of Corleone, Sicily.

Get the full story from global post here.

Speaking of the mafia, how come there are no good mobster outfits for kids to wear when trick or treating. They’d sure get a larger bounty than with those goofy monster costumes.

Happy Halloween and don’t forget to brush your teeth when it’s all over…

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[Update November 4: In a press release earlier today, Kellogg's announced it would remove the immunity label from its packaging.]

Earlier this week, San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera sent a letter to Kellogg’s CEO expressing concerns over the very misleading front of package “claim” which you can see for yourself on the right.

“I am concerned that the prominent use of the Immunity Claims to advertise a sugar-laden, chocolate cereal like Cocoa Krispies may mislead and deceive parents of young children. Specifically, the Immunity Claims may falsely suggest to parents that cereals like Cocoa Krispies are more healthy for their children than other breakfast foods that are not high in sugar and not highly processed.

The Immunity Claims may also mislead parents into believing that serving this sugary cereal will actually boost their child’s immunity, leaving parents less likely to take more productive steps to protect their children’s health.

At a time when parents are increasingly worried about the spread of the H1N1 virus (“swine flu”), it is vitally important that parents receive accurate information about what they can do to protect their children’s health.”

A copy of the letter, which requests to see the scientific evidence behind the immunity claim, has also been sent to FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg. As Marion Nestle points out in her excellent Food Politic blog “Shouldn’t the FDA be taking this on?”

What you need to know:

Is a new wave of backlash against food processors starting to rise? Just 2 weeks ago Connecticut’s Attorney General wrote strongly to the Smart Choices Program regarding its questionable benchmarks. The FDA followed up a week later with a letter that ultimately led the program to suspend itself indefinitely (read – harakiri).

This is a good sign (hopefully) of things to come. A product package is not a billboard for half baked medical claims. When you come to think of it, it’s surprising that the FDA didn’t do anything when the revamped Rice Krispies came out this summer.

The product in question is a sugar bomb (40% by weight) that also carries trans fat and BHT. You can read our recent analysis here.

What to do at the supermarket:

Since the only product information tightly regulated by the FDA is the nutrition panel and the ingredient list, those are the ONLY places you should look to for accurate information regarding a food you are about to place in your shopping cart.

Short, understandable ingredient lists are usually a sign of a better product.

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Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity presented a report on breakfast cereal this weekend  in Washington DC as part of the annual meeting of the Obesity Society. The findings were not surprising and can be summed up as follows: Manufacturers peddle sugary cereal to kids while painting these cereals as health to parents and nutritionists.

General Mill, one of the big four cereal manufacturers, responded with a letter to health professionals. Below is an excerpt and our commentary in bold:

October 27, 2009

You may have seen or heard reports over the weekend about a cereal study conducted by the Rudd Center for Food and Policy. While the focus of the Rudd Center study is on advertising, it also seems to imply that kid-cereals are linked to obesity in children. We wanted to assure you that all General Mill’s Big G cereals continue to be nutritious and help children and adults maintain a healthy body weight while also meeting key nutrient requirements–this includes presweetened cereals.

Cereal remains a low-calorie, nutrient-dense food contributing positively to the overall nutritional status of children:
•    Kids who frequently eat cereal for breakfast have healthier body weights, have better nutritional status, and are less likely to have weight gain during adolescence. And kids that eat less sweetened cereals probably do even better, don’t they?

•    Cereal is a lower calorie breakfast choice compared to many other foods at only 110-130 calories/serving (and that includes pre-sweetened cereals). Sugar is only 16 calories per teaspoon, does that mean kids 4-6 teaspoons of sugar for breakfast?

•    Cereal is nutrient dense and provides a good or excellent source of at least 10 key nutrients and very few calories. It is only an excellent source because of fortification. The vitamins and minerals are sprayed on the cereal and dissolve into the milk. If your child doesn’t consumer the milk, she does not take in all the nutrients. And who can tell us how bio-available each one of the nutrients is. Lastly, most Americans are not deficient in any of the fortification nutrients to begin with. They are deficient in fiber. Why do kids cereals range in the 0-3 grams when they could be 5or 6 grams worth per serving?

•    Overall, cereals—including presweetened cereals—provide less than 4% of a children’s sugar intake. And according to Coke’s CEO, so do soft drinks. And if we’ll ask Mars Inc CEO, they’ll also point the finger elsewhere. So if nobody is responsible for a big chunk of of our kids’ sugar intake, where is it all coming from?

Juli Hermanson, MPH, RD                    Tamara Schryver, PhD, RD
General Mills Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition    General Mills Bell Institute of Health and Nutrition

Lastly, don’t you get a strange feeling in your stomach when a food company sets up an “Institute of Health”?

What to do at the supermarket:

Breakfast is important. Breakfast cereals can be a great start to the day. But keep the sugar low (less than 6 grams per serving) and the fiber high (5 grams per serving and up).

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Sloppy Joes are an iconic American family meal dating back to the 1930′s. They are comprised of ground beef, tomato sauce, onions, and seasoning, all inside a hamburger bun. In this era of minimum preparation at the kitchen, most consumers forgo a full blown preparation and opt to mix cooked ground beef with a ready made everything-else. ConAgra’s Hunt’s division introduced its Manwich line of sauces exactly 40 years ago and has been very successful through good marketing (“A sandwich is a sandwich, but a Manwich is a meal.”) and palatable products.

At 40, the Manwich brand must be having a mid life crisis, so Hunt’s marketers decided to change the advertising strategy from “family fun” to “nutritional value”. The new tag line, seen in commercials – “There’s a full serving of vegetables in every Manwich.”

Our nutrition investigation team decided to take a look inside the label to uncover the real story. We took a look at the Manwich Original Sloppy Joe Sauce.

What you need to know:

Here is the ingredient list:

Tomato Puree (Water, Tomato Paste), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Distilled Vinegar, Corn Syrup, Less than 2% of: Salt, Sugar, Dehydrated Onions, Dehydrated Red and Green Bell Peppers, Chile Pepper, Tomato Fiber, Spices, Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum, Dehydrated Garlic, Carob Bean Gum, Natural Flavors.

Tomato Puree as a first ingredient is to be expected. But why is it composed mostly of water? The reason is that tomato paste is highly concentrated (they take the water out when manufacturing paste).

Next – why sweetener in the #2 position?  Chefs know that adding a spoon of sugar to round out the flavor of the slightly acidic tomatoes is fine, but come on folks, we were first expecting to see some more veggies.

Ingredient #3 is vinegar, not something you would add to a homemade tomato sauce. and then at #4, another sweetener. Seems like a lot of liquids for the first 4 ingredients. That’s where the gums come in later on in the list (guar gum, xantham gum, carob bean gum – all natural). They all serve as thickeners, so you’ll feel like you’re getting less water, more tomato.

The nutrition facts are as follows: a serving is a quarter cup of sauce (not including the beef) which seems quite small. Mixing a 15.5 oz can with 1 lb of beef and then dividing to 7 portions as suggested will yield much less “joe” than is pictured in the  images on the product label and in the commercials. The “mini-serving” has 40 calories, 6 grams of sugar (1.5 teaspoons) and 2 grams of fiber (good, but comes from added ingredient called tomato fiber…). The sauce is not a substantial source of vitamins A or C, but cooked tomatoes are a great source of lycopenes, a kind of antioxidant that is supposed to help ward of cancer. The little serving has 410 mg of sodium, about 16% of the daily maximum value. A real manwich serving would be double the sodium though – upping sodium to a third of your daily max.

So is this a nutritious product? Yes and No. You can’t argue with tomatoes, although they are heavily watered down in this product. And all the added sugars / high fructose corn syrup seems superfluous.  And if you eat a portion as pictured in the label – you’ll be getting a hefty amount of sodium. On the other hand, there are no artificial preservatives here and the calorie count is low (lots of water…). There are worse things you could add to lean ground beef.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you’re going to be sauteeing the beef anyhow, why not start off with a tablespoon of canola or olive oil, a diced onion, 2 bell peppers and some spices? When the veggies get soft, add the beef, and when it loses all its pink, add a can of crushed or diced tomatoes and simmer for 15-30 minutes. Salt to taste. If required, a single teaspoon of sugar will round out the flavor of the entire skillet.

So much better, not much harder. Can keep in the fridge for up to a week.

Here’s the shopping list: lean ground beef, can of diced tomatoes, 2 bell peppers, one onion, (oil, spices)

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Last week, the FDA  hinted it would be seriously looking at regulating Front of Pack (FOP) nutrition labeling systems. As a result, Smart Choices called it quits, and other programs are “on alert”. The FDA’s involvement can be of great assistance to the public, by creating a single unified system in ALL supermarkets and on ALL packages.

But first, wouldn’t it be nice if the FDA cleaned up the mess originally created when the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) brought us the nutrition facts label as we know it today?

Here’s a list of 10 things the FDA can do to improve the existing information on labels. Read more…

USA Today has two stories out about a recent research project by Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The findings were presented in Washington DC as part of the annual meeting of the Obesity Society. Here’s what they found:

Cereals marketed to kids have 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber and 60% more sodium than those aimed at adults!

Some more interesting facts:

•The least nutritious cereals are  the most heavily marketed to children – Reese’s Puffs, Corn Pops, Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Cap’n Crunch.

•Some of the products with the poorest nutrition ratings have health claims on the boxes.

•The average preschooler sees 642 TV cereal ads a year; most are for types with the worst nutrition ratings.

•Cereal companies spend more than $156 million a year marketing to children.

This study shines an even brighter light on the ludicrous Smart Choices Program, terminated this weekend, which elevated candy breakfasts such as Froot Loops and Apple Jacks to a “nutritious” status.

As Expected, the major cereal manufacturers have an answer though:

General Mills spokeswoman Heidi Geller says kids who eat cereal more frequently, including pre-sweetened cereals, “tend to weigh less than kids who eat cereal less frequently — and they are better nourished.”

The Rudd center put together a great website called Cereal Facts, that lets parents search cereals by name or manufacturer, and then receive a nutrition ranking, including information about the product.

What to do at the supermarket:

Look for cereals that are high in fiber (3 grams and up per serving), low in sugar (less than 6 grams), and low in sodium (less than 120mg). If your kids complain that they are not sweet enough – you can always add a spoonful of honey, maple syrup, or sugar to the milk.

Click here for a list of the top 10 cereals according to Cereal Facts. In the list are shredded wheat products from Kashi, Barbara’s Bakery, Nature’s Path and the big players too.

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You’re off to a meeting, flying to a conference, or simply got a hectic day to get through. You need an energy boost and don’t want a candy bar full of crazy ingredients. What do you do?

One healthy option is dried fruit, which, unlike their fresh cousins, can wait patiently in the pantry for over a year. We took a look at Dried Blueberries by Amport Foods, to see how good a (nutritious) deal we’re getting. Read more…

Update [Wednesday morning 10/27]: General Mills has thrown in the towel as well. Just last week, at the annual ADA conference, Susan Crocket, PhD, RD the company’s Senior VP of Health and Nutrition defended the program’s integrity with deep fervor.

Update [Monday night 10/26] : Unilever just announced that it will be phasing out the Smart Choices logo from its food and beverage products now that the Food and Drug Administration plans to standardize criteria for food nutrition labels.

The Smart Choices Program will cease Front of Pack food labeling effective immediately. Bowing to pressure from the public as well as warning letters from the FDA and Connecticut’s Attorney General, the industry led organization announced

it will voluntarily postpone active operations and not encourage wider use of the logo at this time by either new or currently enrolled companies. more…

The American Society for Nutrition, which served as the “objective, scientific” cover for the nutrition criteria set by the food industry, sent out a letter to its members:

ASN commends the FDA on its announcement of intent to develop standardized criteria on which front-of-pack nutrition and shelf labeling could be based. In addition, ASN fully supports the decision of the Smart Choices Program Board of Directors to postpone their active operations as FDA works to address both front-of-pack and on shelf labeling. “ASN will continue to provide nutrition science expertise within the dialogue on front-of-pack labeling in order to best serve the interests of the health of Americans,” said ASN President Jim Hill in a statement to media.

Interestingly, the statement by the Smart Choices Board of Directors does not appear on their website homepage. It was also issued late Friday afternoon, a time slot usually reserved for bad news by PR professionals, assuming the upcoming weekend will help soften the blow.

What you need to know:

This is a great piece of news to kick off the weekend.

Despite explanations by top nutrition experts and as to why the Smart Choices program was scientifically sound, anyone with a bit of common sense will tell you that Froot Loops cereal is not a “Smart Choice”.

What to do at the supermarket:

Make your own Smart Choice by learning to read nutrition facts panels and ingredient lists. Here’s an easy piece of advice to follow: in many cases, the shorter the ingredient list, the better the product.

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With a fair share of travel in the past week to the annual Food and Nutrition Conference in Denver, we had an opportunity to examine airport fare. Unfortunately, most of the offerings are not much better than an average food court in a suburban shopping malls.

That’s a double downer – the food is both untasty AND unhealthy.

Not to mention the meals served on the flight itself (if at all served).

But every airport must have some hidden jewel, right?

Please share your favorite airport spot for decent food when traveling. If we get enough responses we’ll repost a list of top airport culinary destinations.

Of course, there’s always the option of bringing your own food from home. We didn’t see too many brown baggers at the terminal though.

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Con-Agra, the food industry powerhouse with brands such as Chef Boyardee, Hunt’s, Hebrew National, Marie Callender’s, and Healthy Choice, announced this week a new public awareness campaign urging Americans to consume 100 calories less in a day. Using “proprietary research”, the Omaha, NE based company concluded that even such a small reduction in calories can have many health benefits and cost savings in medical bills. And of course the company used the announcement to plug its products:

Explains Barbara Ivens, ConAgra’s senior director, nutrition: “Making simple dietary improvements — such as substituting a Healthy Choice meal for a takeout lunch, Egg Beaters instead of eggs, and Orville Redenbacher’s SmartPop! as a whole grain, calorie-controlled, sodium-controlled snack — empowers people to make meaningful changes that can translate to healthier lives, less costly health care and increased productivity.”

What you need to know:

Cutting down just 100 calories a day will help people lose almost a pound of weight every month (3500 calories equal one pound of body weight). Problem for most Americans is that we consume much more than the allotted 2000-2500 calories per day.

How much more? Try over 1000 (one thousand!!) calories more per day than necessary.

Calories have lost some of their respect in the past years with carbs taking the spotlight. It seems they are now making a comeback as people realize that a calorie from any source is still a calorie. Many people have no idea what their caloric intake is or what it should be, and thus can’t even plan a diet correctly.

What to do at the supermarket:

Here is one very important tip: When selecting products, look at the calorie count AND the serving size to calculate how much you are going to be putting in your body.

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