"Turns out the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is an academy in the same way this (Kraft Singles) is cheese." — Jon Stewart, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart."
You see a label on a food that says "Kids Eat Right." Even if you are paying attention in a grocery store with your kids, you might not take too much time to look into what the label means.
If you do look closer and you see that the label is brought to you by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, you would be justified in thinking this was an endorsement of the food.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has a program called Kids Eat Right. The organization says food companies that help with that program get rewarded with a "Kids Eat Right" label on their products.
As horrible as that idea sounds, the only thing that would be worse is picking a really horrible example as the first food to get the label. Enter Kraft Singles.
Kraft Singles were traditionally allowed to positioned itself as American cheese when it was "pasteurized process cheese food" -- a category that only allows for 51% cheese yet could be called cheese. Now Kraft Singles are legally classified as "pasteurized prepared cheese product." The FDA prohibited Kraft from referring to the product as "pasteurized process cheese food," a step higher in the food chain but a long way from actual cheese.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) — formerly the American Dietetic Association — is no stranger to corporate tie-ins with food companies. The AND says the label is not an endorsement, though Kraft said this was an endorsement. The label does walk and talk like an endorsement from an organization of dietitians.
(Full disclosure: I once interviewed for a job at the organization, back when it was the American Dietetic Association. I did not get the position.)
This "endorsement" against "pasteurized process cheese food" comes from Sargento, a company that makes real cheese.
In the weeks leading up to this embarrassing AND/Kraft Singles PR disaster, Sargento has been running an ad advertising 100% cheese: "Real cheese people don't eat pasteurized process cheese food" and how pasteurized process cheese food is "only required to contain 51% real cheese."
Remember that Kraft Singles isn't even good enough to be "pasteurized process cheese food."
If the dietitians that I know were setting the rules, the AND would put stickers on fruit and vegetables containers that say "Kids Eat Right." But those companies don't have the resources to advertise, much less put in enough money to sway the interests of the AND. Kraft does.
Some dietitians are fighting back with a petition to the AND to get the organization to rescind the policy. They don't want their hard work to be overshadowed by a financial arrangement that looks like fake cheese is getting rewarded.
There is a divide among dietitians. Some dietitians work for PR agencies that represent food companies or directly for the food companies. They use their dietary knowledge and expertise as a cover for food companies to try to convince us a food is healthier than its actual reality.
Dietitians are good and bad; human like the rest of us. Doctors and nurses are also good and bad, but they aren't working for companies that are trying to do the opposite of what they learned in their education.
I know dietitians in both camps; I find them to be good people. But most people don't know a dietitian. Many people who could use the help of a dietitian aren't sure where to turn. A lot of those dietitians who could help can't because they work for PR agencies and food companies with designs to embrace strategies to convince consumers to eat a particular processed food.
One major resource where people can go to find a dietitian is the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Yes, we see the irony.
Dietitians who want to work with people to help them have been overshadowed by corporate food interests for some time. Those dietitians are trapped in a tidal wave of messages from advertising, food companies tricks on the front labels of products and one particularly bad trick on the ingredient label.
The Kraft Singles controversy is an extreme example in the desire for some dietitians to suck up to large food companies. But the dietitian world shouldn't pretend that this is the only problem.
video credit: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart/photo credits: Kraft; Sargento