I’m afraid I have to take issue with your Cheerios story in the linked comment. You say of the 4% cholesterol lowering claim, “This is false. It is based on a ‘study’ sponsored by General Mills where subjects took more than half their daily calories from Cheerios (apparently they ate nothing but Cheerios for two of their three daily meals).” You link to http://www.askdeb.com/blog/health/will-cheerios-really-help-lower-your-cholesterol/ but that says nothing about how much Cheerios subjects ate.
I found this article that describes the 1998 Cheerios research that is the foundation for the claim: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0813/is_8_32/ai_n15691320/ . It says that participants ate 3 cups of Cheerios per day, while control subjects ate 3 cups of corn flakes. 1 cup of Cheerios is about 100 calories, so 3 cups would be 300, far less than “more than half their daily calories” for any reasonable adult. Further, this article goes on to report that LDL (bad cholesterol) in the Cheerios group fell from 160 to 153, which looks to me like 4%.
Furthermore, my understanding is that the FDA’s complaint is not with the accuracy of Cheerios’ claim; it is that it is making such a claim at all, even if truthful. The FDA has a lot of rules about what kinds of health benefits products are allowed to make. It is not enough that a claim appears to be correct; the question is the depth and strength of the evidence behind it. For specific health claims, the FDA basically requires full blown clinical trials, as with drugs. According to the LA Times, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/shopping_blog/2009/05/fda-warns-general-mills-over-cheerios-cholesterol-claims.html , “The FDA allows some health benefits of foods to be advertised but within strict limits. For instance, a company can say that a diet low in saturated fat and high in fiber-rich foods such as fruit, vegetables and whole grains may reduce the risk of heart disease.”
There are reasonable questions to be raised about what policy we want to have for regulating health claims. But demonizing Cheerios and General Mills does not facilitate rational discussion of the issues. Saying that their claim is false, and exaggerating the amount of Cheerios which was eaten in their study, only serves to put Cheerios in an unjustifiably bad light.
And BTW I typically eat 600-1000 calories for breakfast, often cold cereal. Sometimes I eat Cheerios but usually I mix two or three different cereals. 300 calories of cold cereal is not difficult for me. The hard part is holding myself back to only eat that much.
I think the author’s point was not to claim one side was right and the other wrong, but to say one’s determination of who is right/wrong in a situation like this should probably be more independent of one’s political party affiliation than it actually is. I take that no one actually studied the correlation among people’s opinion on this matter and their party affiliation; my impression was the author was speculating that such a correlation would exist.
A typical comment from an anti-Cheerios advocate. Is this what LW is coming to? Cheerios lovers unite!
Anyway it was probably not clear but I was a little tongue in cheek with my Cheerios rant. I think what I wrote is correct but mostly I was having fun pretending that there could be a big political battle over even the narrow issue of the Cheerios study and what it means.
Hm, I had an article from which I got my numbers, but now I can’t find it anymore. I do see several that say three cups of cheerios per day and 450 calories of Cheerios out of a 1900 calorie diet, but I have no idea where I got that “half your total calories” phrase. Possibly I made a mistake and multiplied 4503, when the 450 is already 3150, or possibly copied from an article that did so.
I’m afraid I have to take issue with your Cheerios story in the linked comment. You say of the 4% cholesterol lowering claim, “This is false. It is based on a ‘study’ sponsored by General Mills where subjects took more than half their daily calories from Cheerios (apparently they ate nothing but Cheerios for two of their three daily meals).” You link to http://www.askdeb.com/blog/health/will-cheerios-really-help-lower-your-cholesterol/ but that says nothing about how much Cheerios subjects ate.
I found this article that describes the 1998 Cheerios research that is the foundation for the claim: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0813/is_8_32/ai_n15691320/ . It says that participants ate 3 cups of Cheerios per day, while control subjects ate 3 cups of corn flakes. 1 cup of Cheerios is about 100 calories, so 3 cups would be 300, far less than “more than half their daily calories” for any reasonable adult. Further, this article goes on to report that LDL (bad cholesterol) in the Cheerios group fell from 160 to 153, which looks to me like 4%.
Furthermore, my understanding is that the FDA’s complaint is not with the accuracy of Cheerios’ claim; it is that it is making such a claim at all, even if truthful. The FDA has a lot of rules about what kinds of health benefits products are allowed to make. It is not enough that a claim appears to be correct; the question is the depth and strength of the evidence behind it. For specific health claims, the FDA basically requires full blown clinical trials, as with drugs. According to the LA Times, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/shopping_blog/2009/05/fda-warns-general-mills-over-cheerios-cholesterol-claims.html , “The FDA allows some health benefits of foods to be advertised but within strict limits. For instance, a company can say that a diet low in saturated fat and high in fiber-rich foods such as fruit, vegetables and whole grains may reduce the risk of heart disease.”
There are reasonable questions to be raised about what policy we want to have for regulating health claims. But demonizing Cheerios and General Mills does not facilitate rational discussion of the issues. Saying that their claim is false, and exaggerating the amount of Cheerios which was eaten in their study, only serves to put Cheerios in an unjustifiably bad light.
And BTW I typically eat 600-1000 calories for breakfast, often cold cereal. Sometimes I eat Cheerios but usually I mix two or three different cereals. 300 calories of cold cereal is not difficult for me. The hard part is holding myself back to only eat that much.
I think the author’s point was not to claim one side was right and the other wrong, but to say one’s determination of who is right/wrong in a situation like this should probably be more independent of one’s political party affiliation than it actually is. I take that no one actually studied the correlation among people’s opinion on this matter and their party affiliation; my impression was the author was speculating that such a correlation would exist.
A typical comment from an anti-Cheerios advocate. Is this what LW is coming to? Cheerios lovers unite!
Anyway it was probably not clear but I was a little tongue in cheek with my Cheerios rant. I think what I wrote is correct but mostly I was having fun pretending that there could be a big political battle over even the narrow issue of the Cheerios study and what it means.
Hm, I had an article from which I got my numbers, but now I can’t find it anymore. I do see several that say three cups of cheerios per day and 450 calories of Cheerios out of a 1900 calorie diet, but I have no idea where I got that “half your total calories” phrase. Possibly I made a mistake and multiplied 4503, when the 450 is already 3150, or possibly copied from an article that did so.