Chocolate Cheerios Will Not Lower Your Cholesterol, No Matter What Ads Say
An advertising watchdog's split decision on whether Chocolate Cheerios are "healthy" illustrates just how close to the wind food brand managers are sailing with nutrition and disease claims. General Mills' (GIS) uses of a heart graphic with the words, "May reduce the risk of heart disease," on Chocolate Cheerios.
The Council of Better Business Bureaus' National Advertising Division ruled that this "did not convey a false message about the cereal's health benefits," but that General Mills should stop advertising them in conjunction with regular Cheerios because consumers might wrongly believe that the heart and cholesterol benefits of the original brand are present in the chocolate brand. They're not -- Chocolate Cheerios don't contain the same soluble oat fiber as the original, NAD said.
The decision is doubly confusing in light of the FDA's warning last year that accused General Mills of making such specific cholesterol-lowering promises that it was marketing Cheerios as an unbranded drug. The FDA threatened to seize every box in the country if the company didn't clean up its act.
And the Chocolate Cheerios' web site sure make it look as if the alleged cholesterol benefits of regular Cheerios magically apply to chocolate. In the top left corner there's a link that states, "Lowering cholesterol":
That link actually leads to a page that has nothing to do with Chocolate Cheerios, but who's to know? Per NAD, General Mills' ad showed:
... a drop of chocolate falling from a spoon and a voiceover that stated: "Try new Chocolate Cheerios with a touch of delicious chocolate taste in every bite." Once the drop reached the spoon, what appeared to be Cheerios were transformed into Chocolate Cheerios.The food industry is under heavy scrutiny from the FTC, FDA, and the court system for bogus or misleading health claims.
It's not at all clear that eating chocolate is good for your heart. Here's a study of 31,823 Swedish women aged 48 to 83 that shows eating chocolate up to three times per month is correlated with reduced heart failure but that eating it more often than that is correlated with increased heart failure.
Don't hold your breath waiting for General Mills to advertise Chocolate Cheerios as a heart healthy cereal for only three mornings per month.
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