Can you guess which megacorp on the right owns each of the young brands on the left?

Solution after the jump.

Read more…

Fiber is an important nutrient. Good sources of fiber are fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. We need 25 grams a day, but most of us fall short on this number because we don’t eat enough of the above. That’s why many food companies today push fiber into their processed products.

Yogurt is a healthy dairy product, providing protein, calcium, and probiotics that aid in digestion.

General Mills has made billions off of two strong brands. One promotes fiber, the other is a yogurt.

What could be more natural than marrying these two brands together to create the ultimate healthy snack? Not only does Yoplait FiberOne have a good pedigree, it has gotten the blessing of an influential godmother.

But is this truly a “zero guilt” food, or should we be a bit more careful?

What you need to know:

We took a look at Strawberry flavored FiberOne Yoplait. The nutrition facts panel looks promising. Only 50 calories per serving. Zero fat. And a bonus of five grams of fiber (20% of the daily value).

But it all goes downhill from here.

First off, the serving is 113 grams, or 4 oz. A regular serving of yogurt is 6 oz. Which means the equivalent comparable would have 75 calories. But that’s just a tiny quibble. It’s the ingredient list that should make us feel guilty:

Nonfat Yogurt (cultured pasteurized grade A nonfat milk, modified corn starch, kosher gelatin, vitamin A acetate, Vitamin D3), Water, Chicory Root Extract (inulin), Strawberries, Modified Corn Starch, Citric Acid, Tricalcium Phosphate, Aspartame*, Potassium Sorbate Added to Maintain Freshness, Acesulfame Potassium, Natural Flavor, Red #40. * Phenylketonurics: Contains Phenylalanine

Can this legally be called yogurt? At best, it’s a watered down version of yogurt, literally. The second ingredient here is H2O! In order to maintain a semblance of yogurt mouthfeel, General Mills added tons of corn starch and gelatin.

The fiber added is inulin, which has its own set of issues when added to foods. Way better to get fiber in its original packaging (fruit or veggie) than like this. You’ll feel much fuller.

And don’t get us started on the artificial crap here, both sweeteners and colorings. The aspartame and acesulfame potassium duo are potential carcinogens, and Red #40 now requires warning labels on foods in Europe.

Don’t console your guilty conscious by saying to yourself “at least it has strawberries.” There is more water and fiber here than strawberry. Quantifying this would probably mean less than 1 strawberry per cup. The strawberry flavor originates from the “Natural Flavor” added to the ingredient mix.

Conclusion: This freak child of two mega-brands should never have been born. Yes it is a huge marketing success. Yes it is low in calories. But it won’t help your diet, because it sets you up for failure – expecting uber-sweet chemical laden goop to fill you up instead of real, portion controlled foods.

Yogurt is not a source of fiber, nor should it be. Adding fiber where it does not belong encourages people to eat the wrong kind of foods for the wrong purpose. For fiber – eat an apple. That’s 4 grams of fiber plus tons of additional nutrients you won’t be getting by adding inulin to your snack.

If you’re looking for a decadent snack, have a real one like chocolate, and truly indulge. Just don’t kid yourself that it is healthy.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you need a daily solution for the 3 o’clock office drowsiness and hunger pangs, how about plain yogurt with diced banana or some blueberries tossed in? If you make it Greek, you’ll double your protein and feel satisfied a bit longer.

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Big marketing move for General Mill’s Yoplait brand this week. The yogurt giant has reformulated its “Original” line of products by fortifying them with calcium and vitamin D. Calcium has moved up from 20% of the daily value to 50%, as has vitamin D.

Yoplait is also giving away 1 million cups of yogurt through a facebook campaign. Nice. Lots of PR. We’re writing about it too.

Is the calcium addition really important or is this just window dressing?

What you need to know:

Here is the product ingredient list:

Cultured Pasteurized Grade A Low Fat Milk, Sugar, Pears, Modified Corn Starch, Nonfat Milk, Tricalcium Phosphate*, Kosher gelatin, Citric Acid, Pectin, Natural Flavor, Colored with Turmeric Extract, Vitamin A Acetate, Vitamin D3*
*Ingredients Not in Regular Yogurt

As you can see, the increase in Calcium and vitamin D is by adding these nutrients indiviually.

Calcium is important for bone health. Vitamin D helps the body absorb calcium better. Increasing the calcium and vitamin D levels in yogurt (that were already fortified with calcium and vitamin D) seems like a good idea.

But let’s not lose sight of the bigger picture. If manufacturers continue to fortify products, we will eventually reach a point where any edible item contains 100% of all our daily vitamin and mineral needs. We won’t need real food anymore…

You should ask yourself two questions:

- Without the fortifications, is this product still a healthy choice for me? Does it bring any nutrition built in?

- What foods can provide the nutrients my body needs, without resorting to fortification?

So how does Yoplait stand test?

Healthy choice? In general, yogurts are healthy choices. And yogurts can provide nutrients our bodies need, even without fortification. Just not 50% of the daily value in one sitting. If you’re saying to yourself that you are not getting enough calcium, and Yoplait will now solve your problems, challenge yourself to get the additional calcium from other foods that are naturally high in calcium. You’ll not only get the calcium, but also many other nutrients naturally found in that food.

But the biggest problem with flavored yogurt is the exorbitant amount of added sugar in the product. For example, the pear yogurt here has 26 grams of sugar. 6 grams are from the lactose in the milk used to make the yogurt. At best, another 8 grams are from the pears. Which leaves us with 12 grams, or 3 teaspoons of added sugar. That’s a lot of sugar to add to 6 ounce cup of yogurt. And 48 additional calories. You wouldn’t add 3 teaspoons of sugar to a plain yogurt, would you?

What to do at the supermarket:

Yogurt should be incorporated into your daily diet. But opt for the non-flavored kinds. Add your own flavoring and control the added sugar by simply tossing in berries, dried fruit pieces, or a teaspoon of honey.

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Kix is a kid’s cereal that’s been around for over 70 years. It recently went through what marketing professionals call a “brand refresh”. See the new package image above.

The package promises “Kid Tested, Mother Approved”. So we had two fooducate community members receive a sample box to try with their kids (and get their approval), while we went over the nutrition information.

Here’s what Laura, a mom with 4 kids wrote: First, I measured the recommended 1 1/4-cup serving of Kix cereal with 1/2-cup milk. Then I let my four kids, between ages 5 and 12, run with it.  Being an entirely new experience for them, these are a few of the things they said while eating:

“Well, it’s really sweet.”
“It tastes like corn.”
“It’s pretty basic, and I like that.”
“It tastes really sweet at first and then just like corn.”
“I don’t really like corn.”
“I could eat this everyday.”

Overall, during the experience itself, my kids and I were satisfied.  The cereal was fun to eat, lightly crunchy–not one to tear the roof of one’s mouth apart–and rather sweet.  However, the serving size was quickly consumed, leaving four children looking around at each other and then inside the cupboards and refrigerator.  Just barely over one cup of the sweetly puffed cereal left my athletic and active kids still rather hungry.  So, I passed out a tangerine and planned for a heartier late-morning snack.

My own experience mirrors the kids’.  It was light, crunchy, rather sweet, and puffed corn for breakfast; fun to eat, but wholly unsatisfying by the end.  But, this comes from a family that eats oatmeal, pancakes, eggs and such for breakfasts.  For us, cereal is a once-in-a-while treat, so, although I liked the low-sugar levels of this brand, I would prefer more substance, more fiber perhaps.  Or, maybe we’ll just add some fruit and sausages on the side, if we ever choose to eat Kix again.

Here’s what Jessica wrote: I checked the label first thing, and the sugar content wasn’t bad, however, the sodium was really too high for my liking. This alone would keep me from purchasing this product. I do not like a breakfast cereal to have more sodium per serving than potato chips. It bothers me.

Aside from the sodium being high, we thought this would make a good occasional “busy snack”. As in, something small, non messy, and easily portable that our child can snack on while we’re on the go. It tasted good, and our toddler very much enjoyed a handful here and there. Being only 3 yrs old, he’s not much into cold cereal with milk yet.

I tried it as a breakfast for a few days, and honestly, I was left starving an hour later. At which point I resorted to a whole fruit to keep me feeling full until lunch. It really isn’t a very substantial breakfast, certainly not something I want my child to rely on for his morning meal.

I think the remainder of the box will be added to our homemade sugar free yogurt with fruit… sort of a kix parfait.

What you need to know:

A serving size is over one cup in size, but from a weight perspective is only 1 ounce. Such is the voluminous nature of puffed corn products. There are only 110 calories per serving. But as you can see from the reviews, a single serving is not enough. If you start consuming twice or 3 times the serving size, the calories will add up.

Each comes with 3 grams of fiber (good) and just 3 grams of sugar (very good for a kid cereal). The sodium count is high though – 180 mg or 8% of the daily value.

This is the ingredient list:

Whole Grain Corn, Corn Meal, Sugar, Corn Bran, Salt, Brown Sugar Syrup, Trisodium Phosphate. Vitamin E (Mixed Tocopherols) Added to Preserve Freshness. Vitamins and Minerals: Calcium Carbonate, Iron and Zinc (Mineral Nutrients), Vitamin C (Sodium Ascorbate), a B Vitamin (Niacinamide), Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine Hydrochloride), Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin), Vitamin B1 (Thiamin Mononitrate), Vitamin A (Palmitate), a B Vitamin (Folic Acid), Vitamin B12, Vitamin D3.

You can see that whole grain corn is used, but not exclusively – corn meal is also used. The ingredients are easy to understand, up until the trisodium phosphate. This is a chemical used as food additive and also as a stain remover when painting. The rest of the ingredients are fortifications of vitamins and minerals.

Bottom line: Of sweetened kids cereals, Kix seems to be one of the better options. If only it were more filling.

PS: If you’ll take a look at the box again, you’ll see a marketing claim that we shrug off “Made with all natural corn”. What does that mean? Corn is natural isn’t it?

What to do at the supermarket:

When buying cereal, look for a sugar count lower than 6 grams AND a fiber count higher than 3 grams. Avoid artificial colorings and partially hydrogenated oils (trans-fat). For more tips on choosing a healthy cereal, download our free ebook.

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We got the following question from Lanette:

I do much of our cooking from scratch and am trying to eliminate processed  foods.  I have found several ‘recipes’ for make-your-own-baking-mix but they all call for shortening.  I don’t know which is worse!  I’m wondering if you could
do a post on Bisquick vs. Homemade options.  I use it all the time for pot-pies, dumplings, the occasional biscuits, pancakes, etc. so it’s handy to have a mix on hand.  I’d love to hear Fooducates take on this kitchen.

Excellent question. We’re happy to read that you’re making lots of food from scratch. Now let’s take a look if Bisquick is worth the time it saves. But first a note on shortening.

Shortening is basically a fat that is semisolid at room temperature and can be used for baking. It provides an amazing texture to baked foods – making light and fluffy breads, biscuits, and rolls. You don’t get the same mouthfeel with liquid oil.

Historically, shortening meant lard. But then hydrogenation was invented, and vegetable oils, bombarded with hydrogen atoms suddenly became semisolid at room temperature too. They were cheaper than lard, and became very popular. Crisco, anyone?

Unfortunately, the side effect of hydrogenation is the creation of trans-fatty acids, which are even worse for health than saturated fats of butter and lard.

What you need to know:

Betty Crocker’s Bisquick was invented in the early 1930′s to save time for busy cooks by premixing the ingredients needed for baking biscuits. Betty Crocker is part of General Mills.

Here’s what you’re getting in the Bisquick box:

Enriched Flour Bleached (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil, Leavening (Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Dextrose, Salt.

Dear Betty: you lost me at Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil. Is there any reason to continue selling a product with trans-fat in this day and age? We know how bad these fatty acids are for us. The recommendation is for NO consumption of trans fats a day.

What to do at the supermarket:

It’s really easy to mix your own bisquick equivalent. Buy the following ingredients at the supermarket: flour, baking powder, salt, Canola oil / butter. And here’s the “recipe”, that takes all of 96.3 seconds to prepare:

1. pour 1 cup flour, 1½ tsp baking powder, ½ tsp salt, and 1 tbsp oil or melted butter into a mixing bowl.
2. mix

Butter based recipes will taste better than ones with oil but you’re going to get more saturated fat. If you really want to go all out with a recipe – lard is making a comeback.

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A New York woman is suing General Mills for misleading and false advertising. The products in question are Fruit Roll-Ups, which are sold through General Mills’ Betty Crocker subsidiary. The complaint – while the products are marketed as healthy, they contain partially hydrogenated vegetable oils (a source of trans-fat).

Interesting.

Lets take a look at an example: “Fruit by the Foot”.

What you need to know:

Here’s what you get in the ingredient list:

Pears from Concentrate, Sugar, Maltodextrin, Corn Syrup, Partially Hydrogenated Cottonseed Oil. Contains 2% or Less of: Carrageenan, Citric Acid, Acetylated Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Citrate, Malic Acid, Xanthan Gum, Locust Bean Gum, Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid), Potassium Citrate, Natural Flavor, Color (Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 1).

Sugar galore, trans-fat through the partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, and an assortment of artificial colors (see yesterday’s post).

Although the nutrition facts panel says the tran-fat content is nil, it’s because of an FDA loophole that lets manufacturers round down the value to zero if it is less than 0.5 grams per serving. Unfortunately, no amount of trans-fat is healthy, even 0.45 grams.

What to do at the supermarket:

When buying fruit products such as dried fruit and roll ups, look for minimally processed items. The sugar in fruit makes them sweet enough, and when dried, the sweetness is even more concentrated.

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Once upon a time there was “Cheerios”. For almost 40 years, up until the late 1970′s, consumers had only one Cheerios flavor to choose from. And then General Mills, corporate owner of the Cheerios brand, introduced Honey Nut Cheerios. It was an instant success. Sweeter (mostly due to sugar, not honey) than it’s elder sibling, it quickly conquered the hearts and taste buds of children across America. In the next decade, the two Cheerios brands were served in hundreds of millions of breakfasts across the nation.

But as competition grew, and the need to grow profit too, GM had to continuously innovate to stay ahead. And thus, in the past 15 years, we have seen no less than 15 variations on the “O” theme including Multigrain, Berry Burst, Yogurt Burst, and now Chocolate Cheerios.

Unfortunately, none of the innovations over the years produced a healthier or more nutritious product. Usually a new product meant more sugar added, less fiber, and in some cases additives such as artificial food colorings. But the health claims kept getting better, usually in inverse proportion to the true nutritional value of the product.

So as General Mills has grown, so have our waistlines. We’re not picking specifically on this manufacturer. The phenomena is not limited to GM or just the cereal category. It is the story of the food industry as a whole. Cut throat competition and quarterly earning reports mandate “growth! growth! growth!” in sales.

But on the demand side, there’s only so many calories people can consume in a day. Or maybe this is the reason we’re packing on the pounds?

Anyway, we got a bit carried away. Let’s get back to CC (Chocolate Cheerios) and see how this new product stacks up nutritionally.

What you need to know:

The nutrition facts panel tells an interesting story. At 100 calories per serving (before adding milk), CC is on the lower end of the breakfast cereal calorie count. Nice. But as with most cereals, the 3/4 of a cup serving size does not represent what most people truly consume.

Despite the prominent “whole grain guarantee” by manufacturer General Mills, there is only 1 gram of fiber per serving in here. What a let down. Honey Nut Cheerios has 2 grams of fiber. Not to mention regular Cheerios with 3 grams.

Sugarwise, we’re talking about 9 grams or just over 2 teaspoons per serving. That’s not as high as Cocoa Puffs, but it’s nine times more sugar than in regular Cheerios.

Here is the ingredient list:

Whole Grain Corn, Sugar, Corn Meal, Corn Syrup, Whole Grain Oats, Canola and/or Rice Bran Oil, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Color Added, Salt, Dried Corn Syrup, Corn Bran, Barley Malt Extract, Trisodium Phosphate, Vanillin, Vitamin E (Mixed Tocopherols) and BHT Added to Preserve Freshness. Vitamins and Minerals: Calcium Carbonate, Vitamin C (Sodium Ascorbate), Zinc and Iron (Mineral Nutrients), a B Vitamin (Niacinamide), Vitamin B6 (Pyridoxine Hydrochloride), Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin), Vitamin B1 (Thiamin Mononitrate), Vitamin A (Palmitate), a B Vitamin (Folic Acid), Vitamin B12, Vitamin D3.

Yes it’s made with whole grain corn, but also with corn meal. Notice that sugar is the number 2 ingredient. There are four appearances of sugar synonyms in the product.  The Cocoa Processed with Alkali – Also known as Dutch Processed Cocoa – helps to remove the natural acidity of the cocoa bean. Unfortunately, it also removes the beneficial flavanoids found in the cocoa beans. BHT (E321) is a controversial additive that keeps a product fresh for longer, but at the potential price of hyperactive kids or cancer.

The most maddening aspect of Chocolate Cheerios though is not what we have discussed so far, but rather the bold health claim that appears inside the red heart:

May Reduce the Risk of Heart Disease

You can’t miss it on the box. This claim is qualified in tiny print at the bottom of the box:

Diets low in saturated fat and cholesterol may reduce the risk of heart disease. Chocolate Cheerios is low in fat, saturated fat free, and naturally cholesterol free.

This is such BULL. Of course this product is cholesterol free, it’s not made from any animal products. And obviously a breakfast cereal is not going to be high in fats – it’s a C E R E A L for heaven’s sake. How will all the added sugars help the heart?

As for the logic FAIL. It’s the same as saying diets low in salt are heart healthy; candy is low in salt; pig out!!!

Bottom line: Chocolate Cheerios may be a tasty treat, but not a mainstay nutritious breakfast cereal.

What to do at the supermarket:

If you’re going to buy a Cheerios product, your top choice should be the original. Number 2 should be the multigrain followed by Honey Nut. Leave Chocolate Cheerios product be.

Want to learn more? Download our free ebook with the top 10 tips for choosing healthy cereal.

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This is a guest post by Michele Simon, and originally appeared on her blog Appetite for Profit.

You’ve got to hand it to the food industry. They certainly know how to get the attention of the White House just when they need it most. As announced today by Michelle Obama herself, the nation’s leading food companies have made yet another pledge, this one in the form of an agreement signed with the Partnership for a Healthier America, an off-shoot of the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign.

Mrs. Obama said that 16 corporations accounting for up to 25 percent of the American food supply chain would trim a total of one trillion calories by 2012 and 1.5 trillion calories by 2015. Sounds impressive, but I am not really sure exactly what it means. Trim calories, from what? OK, to be fair, here’s how the press release attempts to explain it:

Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation manufacturing companies will pursue their calorie reduction goal by developing and introducing lower-calorie options, changing recipes where possible to lower the calorie content of current products, or reducing portion sizes of existing single-serve products.

First off, who is the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation? Good question, certainly sounds official, but a quick perusal of the website reveals a virtual who’s who of Big Food: Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kraft Foods, and of course, PepsiCo, whose CEO Indra Nooyi serves as vice chair. (Kellogg’s CEO got the top spot and was at today’s White House briefing, see leadership.)

And you gotta love this mission statement: “Our mission is to try to help reduce obesity – especially childhood obesity – by 2015.” Try to help? Reduce? Especially? Sounds pretty lame. But I digress.

The member companies are pledging to do three things: One, develop and introduce lower-calorie options. But if they are making new products, isn’t that actually adding calories to the food supply? Next, for current products, where possible they will lower calorie content. When is it not possible? Why, when Big Food says so, that’s when.

Finally, they will reduce portion sizes. Now all of the member companies are packaged food manufacturers, not restaurants, where portion sizes are out of control and where Americans spend roughly half of their food dollars. So this just means that we might get more products like the current “100-calorie packs,” which just encourages more packaging waste, at higher prices to boot.

As this is just another voluntary promise by industry, how will we even know if the companies follow through? No worries, they thought of everything. As the press release explains, under the agreement, “the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation will report annually to the Partnership on the progress that we are making toward this pledge.” So I guess that should cover it.

What’s going on here should be obvious to anyone who has been paying close attention to food industry tactics over the past few years. It’s certainly no coincidence that this announcement comes on the heels of last week’s report from the White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity. Indeed, with less than 5 business days in between the two media events, the memory of that comprehensive report, containing 70 policy recommendations is now conveniently overshadowed by Big Food’s promise of 1.5 trillion fewer calories. That’s industry math: 1.5 trillion beats 70.

But before we toss the Task Force report into the historical dust bin, let’s see which policy recommendations might have gotten Big Food upset. First there’s # 2.6: “All media and entertainment companies should limit the licensing of their popular characters to food and beverage products that are healthy.” Uh oh, that could mean no more SpongeBob Squarepants Popsicles, that would stink.

Then there’s # 2.7: “The food and beverage industry and the media and entertainment industry should jointly adopt meaningful, uniform nutrition standards for marketing food and beverages to children, as well as a uniform standard for what constitutes marketing to children.” Meaningful? Uniform? Those are dirty words to Big Food. They prefer words like “try” and “reduce.”

Oh and they really don’t like recommendation # 2.9: “If voluntary efforts to limit the marketing of less healthy foods and beverages to children do not yield substantial results, the FCC could consider revisiting and modernizing rules on commercial time during children’s programming.” What was that, the FCC? Why, that’s an actual government agency named in the report, how did that happen?

Food companies that market to children (including pledgers Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, and PepsiCo) are afraid that Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign might result in actual policy making, otherwise known as laws and regulations, those things that government agencies make when they are doing their jobs.

Every so often, when the threat of government regulation rears its ugly head, the food industry pounces on it to beat it down, by announcing new and improved promises, pledges, commitments, initiatives, partnerships, or coalitions at just the right time, all aimed at keeping government at bay and the public convinced that they are acting responsibly.

Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center on Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University called it right when he told the Wall Street Journal that this move was little more than public relations:

This is where the market is taking these companies anyway, and I don’t know that this represents much of a concession. I also believe that the motive behind this is to fight off government regulation by creating the appearance of voluntary changes by the industry.

Sadly, this time industry made sure that government came on board even before the announcement. At the press conference, Michelle Obama predicted, “In the weeks and months to come, we expect to hear more announcements regarding specific steps on reducing sugar, fat and sodium in the foods that our children eat.” Great, brace yourself for even more PR and empty promises.

If I was skeptical about the likely success of Let’s Move before, I am downright cynical now.

Post-script: For a somewhat less cynical viewpoint, see Marion Nestle’s blog post.

Michele Simon is a public health lawyer who has been writing about the food industry since 1996. She specializes in legal strategies to counter corporate practices that harm the public’s health. She lectures frequently on corporate tactics and policy solutions. She has written extensively on the politics of food, and her first book, Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back, was published by Nation Books in 2006. Read Michele’s latest blog postings here. Follow her on Twitter and Facebook.

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Most people wouldn’t think of  Cheerios as a salt filled food. They sure don’t taste salty. But a single serving contains 190mg of sodium. That’s almost 10% of the daily maximum allowance and MORE than a serving of Doritos!

That’s why we were happy to read that General Mills is announcing an acceleration of sodium reduction plans. The reduction will  be across the product portfolio, spanning brands such as Cheerios, Häagen-Dazs, Nature Valley, Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Green Giant, Old El Paso, Progresso, and Cascadian Farm. In a press release earlier this week, Susan Crockett, Ph. D, vice president, Health and Nutrition said

“General Mills is committed to reducing sodium levels in a series of small steps across our portfolio. We believe making changes in a series of smaller steps is the right way to continue to deliver great taste while reducing sodium.”

The gradual effort will span the next 5 years and reduce the salt by 20% across product lines. Slashing a large amount at once may cause consumer backlash, so the baby step approach makes sense.

It’s no small challenge to remove sodium from processed food. besides the flavor loss, salt has additional roles – from preservative to binding agent to dough improver.

Unfortunately though, we are consuming twice the daily amount of salt we should be, and this leads to a host of health problems, most notably high blood pressure.

Over 70% of our salt intake is from processed foods, the rest is from home cooking or salt shakers. So if all manufacturers reduce their products’ salt levels, it can have a substantial impact on a national level.

Here at Fooducate, we mostly bash companies for their subpar products and misleading marketing tactics, but kudos to General Mills on this. Hopefully they will announce the removal and reduction of other cheap and unhealthy ingredients such as artificial food colorings, especially in products marketed to kids.

General Mill’s announcement comes a week ahead of The Institute of Medicine’s long awaited study,  Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake in the United States, to be released next week at a public briefing in Washington, DC. [Hat tip to Marion Nestle]

What to do at the supermarket:

Salt is found in the least expected places including breakfast cereals, ice cream, cookies, and breads. You really need to keep a watch out for levels higher than 100mg in such products, and for canned soups and frozen meals, values should be lower than 600mg if not 450mg.

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Are you a loyal fan of a specific cereal brand? Is it the flavor? The nutritional value you once took the time to look up? The only thing your kids will eat? Well here’s some bad news. Manufacturers can, and often do, change product formulations, and you don’t even know about it. Sometimes the changes are not necessarily in the consumers best interest.

Thanks to Marion Nestle’s Food Politics blog for pointing out a falling out between loyal customers and Cascadian Farms, an organic food manufacturer that was acquired by General Mills in 1999. (To be precise, it was actually acquired by Small Planet Foods earlier in the 1990′s. General Mills acquired Small Planet in 1999)

The issue at hand – Cascadian Farm Purely O’s Cereal and a recent reformulation that TRIPLED the sugar count without notifying consumers. The company’s website is abuzz with rants by (ex)-loyal customers:

As a mother of three, and devoted Cascadian Farm consumer, I can’t imagine why more sugar was added to previously excellent product. We consumed about 2,3 boxes of Purely O’s per week until my children all the sudden told med how they tasted differently. Naively, I thought it would be marked on the box if any changes of the products had taken place…then I noticed the increased sugar content. This made us lose faith in your entire brand.

OR

How you can call this cereal “Purely O’s” is beyond me. SUGAR!!??? Really???? CORN?? Really?? Why do we need another corn based,sugary cereal in the grocery aisles? And it is very sneaky to not announce a change on the box.

What you need to know:

In the past, Purely O’s had a front of pack label claiming “No added sugar”. This label disappeared a while ago. Then in October, the company changed its product formulation, without informing consumers.

To be fair, the increase in sugar is from 1 gram to 3 gram, which still leaves these O’s a better choice than virtually all other sweetened cereals.

The company lowered the sodium content from 280 to 200mg, which is commendable, but still too high for a breakfast cereal.

Other changes include removing whole grain barley flour and instead using corn meal. To compensate for the fiber loss, they’ve added oat fiber. The total fiber count hasn’t changed and is 3 grams per serving, the minimum you should be getting from a breakfast cereal.

So why hide the change? It’s not like people won’t notice – the ingredient list and nutrition panel are on the box, for crying out loud. Why the need for all this sneakiness? Didn’t General Mills know it would lose its loyal base of Cascadian Farms fans? Most likely, a focus group showed that the loss of a few loyal fans would be compensated for by an influx of new consumers for whom 3 grams of sugar is a 60-70% reduction.

We’ve updated the CerealScan database to reflect these changes. Cascadian Farm Purely O’s is still a top scorer, but for a group of (no longer) loyal customers, that doesn’t matter anymore.

What to do at the supermarket:

When buying a breakfast cereal, look for low sugar (6 or less grams. 3 grams is considered very low), high fiber (3 or more grams), and less than 150mg sodium per serving. Obviously, artificial colors are a big No No. These factors are much more important factors for your heath than whether the cereal is organic or not.

And just to reiterate, despite the changes, Purely O’s are still a better choice than most other cereals out there.

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