Kellogg Kellogg's claims sugary "Cocoa Crispies" cereal can boost your child's immunity
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Kellogg
Kellogg's claims sugary "Cocoa Crispies" cereal can boost your child's immunity (opinion)
Tuesday, November 03, 2009 by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Key concepts: Kellogg's, Food and Cocoa
View on NaturalPedia: Kellogg's, Food and Cocoa
(NaturalNews) The world of bizarre nutritional claims by sugary cereal makers just got a little more weird this week when Kellogg's began shipping boxes of Cocoa Krispies emblazoned with the ridiculous claim, "Now helps support your child's IMMUNITY."
If processed white sugar, partially-hydrogenated trans fat oils and synthetic chemical vitamins could enhance human immunity, Kellogg's would be King of the Hill, but in reality, of all the many foods for boosting human immune function, Cocoa Krispies somehow isn't even on the list.
In fact, you might say that Kellogg's claim of boosting immunity with a sugary cereal sprayed with synthetic vitamins is one of the most hilarious claims yet floated by a cereal company, but what's definitely not funny is the fact that the FDA openly allows this deceptive, fraudulent food labeling to continue even while threatening, arresting or prosecuting nutritional supplement companies that make similar but true claims.
For example, it's illegal in America to claim that vitamin D boosts immune function (even though it does), but it's perfectly allowable for Kellogg's to claim their sugared-up Cocoa Krispies boosts immunity (even though it doesn't). What's wrong with this picture?
Why doesn't the FDA (or the FTC) send threatening letters to the CEO of Kellogg's, threatening them with arrest and prosecution while confiscating Kellogg's cereal inventory for "misleading labeling?" This is exactly what the FDA would do if the product in question were an herb or a bottle of vitamins. Somehow, Kellogg's gets away with outright labeling fraud while regulators twiddle their thumbs and pretend to be doing their jobs.
Synthetic vitamins and loads of sugar
By the way, you might be curious why Kellogg's thinks they can make such a claim on a box of Cocoa Krispies. The front of the box loudly proclaims "25% daily value of antioxidants & nutrients, vitamins A, B, C & E." This, apparently, is the basis for their claim.
Except they aren't using actual food-based vitamins A, B, C and E. Instead, they're using synthetic, artificial chemicals that have been given the names "Vitamin B12" or "Vitamin C" and so on. These aren't holistic vitamins like the ones found in nature. They're synthetic, sprayed-on nutrients concocted in a chemical factory somewhere. To even call them vitamins is an insult to real vitamins found in real food.
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. As one person quoted in USA Today said about this, if Kellogg's can claim their vitamin-sprayed sugared-up puffed rice boosts immune function, then you could spray synthetic vitamins on a pile of leaves and make the same immune boosting claims about them, too!
Highly-processed sugary cereals are not medicine. They do not enhance or increase human immune function. If anything, the high acidity of the sugar used in the product causes the body to become more acidic, which suppresses immune function. I'm willing to bet that if you take a hundred people with the healthiest immune systems in the world, you won't find their pantries stocked with Cocoa Krispies.