FDA's Flurry of Warning Letters Signals the End an Era of Audacious Health-Food Claims

After yesterday's crackdown on food claims, companies may want to put their packaging departments on notice for a little extra overtime in the upcoming months. In an unprecedented move, the FDA sent 17 warning letters to food manufacturers accusing them of making false or misleading health or nutritional claims on their packaging or web sites.

Lucky companies to get the letters include Nestle, Sunsweet Growers, Beech-nut, Diamond Food (DNMD) and POM Wonderful, which not only cited pomegranate juice's role in a better sex life, but also its powers to help ease hardened arteries and high blood pressure.

Some of the FDA warning letters highlight somewhat technical violations -- for instance, you can't use any health claims on products for kids under 2. They're still a loud warning shot that government food regulators, which for years yawned at the proliferation of exclamation points and infomercial-esque health claims on food packaging, aren't going to sit back and take it anymore.

After all, for a company like Beech-nut to slap language like "fortified for enhanced functional benefits" and "low sodium" on its jars of baby food isn't exactly the worst form of hucksterism, but you have to assume that Beech-nut, which has been selling baby food since forever, knows about the under 2 restriction. Ditto with Nestle's Juicy Juice Brain Development Fruit Juice Beverage. Maybe they just forgot.

In an open letter to the food industry -- which actually starts with the salutation "Dear Industry" -- FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg put food companies on notice that they are being watched. "We continue to see products marketed with labeling that violates established labeling standards," she said.

Some activists claim the agency is just getting started. "The party's over for misleading health claims," Bruce Silverglade, legal affairs director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a conference call with journalists. CPSI has been harping about exaggerated food claims for years

CSPI has conveniently provided the FDA with a long list of food claims it deems illegal or deceptive. Among them: Carnation Instant Breakfast that supports your immune system, packages of Graduates Juice Treats for preschoolers that show a harvest of fruit but contains almost no actual fruit juice, and Minute Maid's Cranberry Apple Cocktail, which says it's all natural but contains high fructose corn syrup.

Let the editing begin.

Photo credit BrokenSphere, Wikimedia Commons