Good News! Wonder Bread Is Now a Health Food, Hostess Tells Us

(MoneyWatch)  In the annals of food companies' dubious efforts to limn their products in a health halo, a new campaign by Hostess Brands, the makers of Wonder Bread, deserves special mention. Right up there with Kellogg's (K) ill-fated decision to slap a "Smart Choices" sticker on boxes of Froot Loops.

This month, in a series of TV and print ads, Hostess is informing moms that a serving of Wonder Bread is now a healthy and nutritious choice. Perhaps you thought that white bread was one of those processed, nutritionally deficient foods that your body almost immediately converts into sugar. Not so, says Hostess.

For instance, did you know that Wonder Bread has vitamin D, fiber and as much calcium as a glass of milk. A glass of milk! A new product called Wonder Smartwhite has no less than nine vitamins and minerals, including iron and folic acid.

Unfortunately this amounts to little more than nutritional window dressing, since what the ads understandably don't bother to tell you is how all those wonderful nutrients got into the white bread -- which, of course, got white in the first place via a process that stripped out nearly all naturally-occurring nutrients. Synthetic vitamin D and calcium are cheap commodities that are easy to add to food and are often made through a chemical process using coal-tar derivatives. It's a well-established strategy to make food look healthier than it is. Even Froot Loops is an alphabet soup of synthetic vitamins -- A, B, C, and D.

And while some added vitamins might be helpful in some cases, recent research shows that too many vitamins might not be a good thing and that it's often better to get them naturally from food, where they come in concert with other nutrients.

Then there's the fiber, which Wonder touts left and right in its products. The Kids Wonder brand, for instance, boasts that it has "the fiber of 100% whole wheat," though it's unclear how they're pulling this off since there is no actual whole wheat flour in the product. Plain wheat flour, water and high fructose corn syrup are the first three ingredients.

Hostess Brands, no doubt, has huge marketing challenges. And with sales of Wonder bread down 15% last year versus a 2% category drop, according to SymphonyIRI Group, the company is eager to do something to revitalize the brand. But trying to convince people that white bread is healthy doesn't seem like the best way to go when consumers are increasingly looking for honesty and transparency.

Last fall, Eileen Kennedy of Tufts regrettably defended the Smart Choice label on Froot Loops by pointing out that at least sugared cereal is better for you than a doughnut. A campaign based on the slogan, "Wonder Bread: Better for you than Ho Ho's" probably wasn't in the running at Hostess Brands, but it's a much more credible approach than the one they're taking.

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