Companies Mislead Kids Over Fruit Content in Food

If you’ve put Froot Loops, Yoplait Go-Gurt Strawberry Splash yogurt or Tang on your shopping list to add fruit to your children’s diet, cross them off. They contain no fruit whatsoever, according to a new study.

Hi-C Fruit Drink, Capri Sun ("All Natural") and Sunny Delight fruit drinks contain only minimal amounts of fruit, despite the various glistening berries and fruits splashing into water or juice on their packaging.

These are among a long list of products pitched at parents as nutritious foods with their illustrations of gleaming fruits.

But they are not what they appear to be, says a study just released by the Prevention Institute and Strategic Alliance for Healthy Food and Activity Environments. It reveals less than half of the most vigorously advertised processed foods aimed at children and bearing pictures of fruit or the word fruit on their packaging contain any fruit at all.

Leslie Mikkelsen, managing director of the Prevention Institute and a registered dietitian, ran the four-month research project, titled "Where’s the Fruit?"

Harassed parents rushing through supermarkets with irritable kids in tow use the visuals on packaging as guides to good nutrition and making healthy food purchases. If it shows fruit, if it says it contains "natural fruit flavorings," surely that means it is full of the goodness of the real fruit. Wrong.

A picture of a berry doesn’t mean the product contains any of the nutritional value of a berry. Only close scrutiny of the package’s label will reveal the product’s healthy contents. But it’s almost impossible for a lay person to assess the merit of the individual elements listed.

On General Mills’ Fruity Cheerios box, in a list of 31 ingredients "Natural Flavor" appears at number 24, way past "Red 40, Yellow 6, Blue 1 and other color added." These are presumably what gives those Os their LifeSaver look-alike fruity association. Web site copy for its "Naturally flavored" Fruity Cheerios promises they will "give your kids the flavor they adore with a touch of real fruit juice in each fruity ‘O’. No more compromises needed!"

The Oakland-based coalition of California’s leading public health, physical activity and nutrition organizations points an accusing finger at General Mills as one of the prime offenders that don’t deliver the fruit some of their packaging suggests their foods contain.

The study analyzed 37 such supermarket products emblazoned with fruit on their packaging. They found that the illustration on the front didn’t automatically relate to a corresponding ingredient on the label on the back.

Manufacturers of processed foods like to break down the content of their products into different vitamins, minerals and other nutrients. It makes them sound like perfect health-delivery systems.

Zinc deficient? Then eat a breakfast bar with added zinc and your problem is solved. It’s so much simpler than cooking up a helping of baked beans on a slice of whole grain toast. Short on potassium? We more readily put our faith in swallowing a multivitamin-and-mineral supplement containing potassium than reach for a banana.

The more we depend on processed foods to feed our families, the more likely it is that our children will grow up on disturbingly low intakes of minerals and vitamins. Factor in the diminished amount of time this young generation spends on exercise and you have a recipe for future heart disease, osteoporosis and obesity. In the meantime, their concentration levels at school may fall and their immunity to illnesses diminish.

Not all packaged products are bad. Low-sugar whole-grain breakfast cereal served with calcium-rich milk is full of goodness. Better still, make steel-milled hot oatmeal for breakfast. Pour them a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. Or slice them an unpeeled (but scrubbed) orange in boat-shaped segments to rip the fruit off with their teeth.

If they take lunch boxes to school, pack them with whole-grain sandwiches or pita bread filled with a mix of a meat, canned tuna or cheese and raw vegetables. Buy pure peanut butter without added sugar. Feed them snacks of carrot sticks, apples, yogurt, and handfuls of raisins or nuts. When they get home, make them baked beans on toast, a fruit salad or some humus to dip toasted slices of pita bread into. A tortilla wrap spread with humus and rolled ’round fine shreds of cabbage and strips of chicken will prevent the temptation for them to exchange this healthy food for packaged snacks. Explain to them that these are the foods that will make them strong.

And give yourself enough shopping time to study manufacturers’ labels and evaluate their claims.