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BLUEBERRIES: File photo of seasonal worker picking blueberries. It is becoming increasingly common for food packaging to display food-like pretense advertising. (Michael Urban/AFP/Getty Images)
I splurged on two packages of organic blueberries last week. Blueberries are a favorite of mine, but due to cost and availability they’re an indulgence I rarely get the chance to enjoy. I suppose that’s part of what makes them special.
The blueberry is a true original and the shrub on which they’re grown is a true native to our land. But the fruit’s popularity has produced a lot of copycats—cheaper and more accessible blueberry-flavored alternatives fill the grocery aisle. While packages may suggest that these muffins, cereals, and tarts are genuine, a recent video from the Consumer Wellness Center reveals that many products said to contain blueberries, actually feature a chemical mix engineered to imitate real fruit.
The video profiles a wide range of ersatz blueberry products, including Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats Blueberry Muffin flavor, with fresh, plump blueberries prominently displayed on the package. However, instead of actual fruit, the cereal is found to contain "blueberry flavored crunchlets"—made from sugars, soybean oil, red 40 and blue 2 [food dye].
Surprisingly, these food-like pretenses are perfectly legal. A Kellogg’s spokesperson told NPR that their product is "labeled in compliance with applicable laws and regulations."
The same companies peddling these berry imposters recently announced a new voluntary labeling effort to “help busy consumers—especially parents—make informed decisions when they shop.”
Industry groups such as the Grocery Manufacturers of America and Food Marketing Institute are promoting an easy-to-read, front-of-package (FOP) Nutrition Keys initiative that they say is designed to help people make better choices and stave off obesity by offering consumers quick insight into an item’s calories, sodium, saturated fat, and sugar amounts.
While it’s nice to think that these industry giants have our best interest at heart, analysts such as Marion Nestle, New York University professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, say that the scheme is an attempt to head off U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) plans for their own FOP guidelines to be announced later this year.
As the FDA decides what to include in its own system, allow me to offer some suggestions. If you really want to see consumers make better choices, than force food manufacturers to give a true portrayal of their product. Instead of sugarcoating our nutritional information with some new gimmick, why not simply decide to call a spade, a spade?
How about restricting the words “whole grains” to products consisting mostly of whole grains, instead of to those that just contain a token amount so they may enjoy the privilege? How about restricting the words “trans-fat free” only to items that are actually free of hydrogenated oils, instead of to those that merely meet a legal definition?
How about letting us know which foods contain genetically modified ingredients? How about letting us know which dairy products contain rBGH? The FDA may still assert that such information is "false, misleading, or deceptive” as a disclaimer on the label, but I think consumers at least deserve the chance to make up their own minds.
Identifying true food was not always so complicated. The 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act declared that unless a product was based on strict standards consisting of ingredients that most consumers would find in their own pantry, it was labeled an “imitation.” Evidence for these standards was based upon recipes from cookbooks, some of which dated back 200 years.
As a variety of chemical preservatives, cheap fillers, and other edible innovations were developed, food manufacturers fought to end this “imitation” label. By the early 1970s, the FDA decided that if a food was “nutritionally equivalent” to a standard recipe (i.e. enriched with enough synthetic vitamins to meet the nutritional levels of a standard product) the “imitation” label could be dropped.
Decades later, consumer confusion in determining healthy food is at an all time high. If we really want to establish some clarity, how about, instead of imposing a fancy new label system, we simply return to a policy of telling the truth? Unless it was picked from a shrub, it doesn’t deserve to be called a blueberry.
