THE FOOD FORTIFICATION FRAUD

...And what if the imitation food contains much more of an undesirable constituent than the real food...

...Rickets resulted in terrible skeletal deformities...

...With one spritz of vitamins, a manufacturer can transform his or her image from an evil destroyer of teeth and health to a leader in the campaign for good nutrition...

...Companies recognized that they could add a pinch of vitamins, and the labeling would make a food highly desirable — regardless of its sugar, sodium, cholesterol, or saturated fat content...

...But after years of neglect, the FDA has announced it will address problems related to the addition of nutrients to foods...

...She also notes it would be more economical for a person to buy a regular candy bar and a vitamin pill than Nestle's "Go-Ahead...

...But at the supermarket, a twelve-ounce box of Wheaties costs about seventy-five cents, while the same size box of Total costs $1.03 — 37 per cent more...

...Marketing people are shown how a flashy "vitamin fortified" claim on the front of the box can give an old product a new lease on life and extend its survival in the marketplace...

...The presence in the imitation product of excessive amounts of certain constituents (sodium in imitation meat, for example) should be declared prominently on labels...

...Its cause: niacin deficiency...

...These include: ¶ Fortification should be allowed only when a real need for the nutrients has been demonstrated, and then only in those products that health officials deem to be appropriate vehicles for delivering the nutrients most effectively...

...Kool-Aid is now fortified with vitamins C and A.) ¶ What if technical reasons (solubility, taste) prevent the addition of a nutrient to an imitation food...

...The Center for Science in the Public Interest has examined fortification and has made several recommendations to the FDA...

...From a psychological point of view, one can imagine how adding vitamins to candy would relieve any pangs of conscience a manufacturer might have...

...Milk was first fortified with vitamin D in the 1930s...

...Its cause: vitamin D deficiency...

...The food industry, of course, does not admit publicly that it uses vitamins as a promotion gimmick, much as it might use a colorful new package design...

...Nutrition textbooks, National Dairy Council brochures (the major source of nutrition education materials), and nutrition education movies all dwell at length on vitamins and deficiency diseases...

...Foods that contain more than a certain amount of fat, sugar, cholesterol, or sodium should not be fortified at all...

...Should not this imitation meat contain roughly the same levels of vitamins and minerals as real meat...

...As Jeanne Schultheis, director of the Syracuse Office of Consumer Affairs, points out, "Candy, dressed up in nutritional claims, even supportable claims, can play a decidedly destructive role by replacing necessary dietary elements...

...The two breakfast cereals (legally, Total is not a cereal but a "vitamin-mineral supplement" because of its high level of fortification) look and taste identical...

...Long after the vitamin deficiency diseases were eliminated as major health problems earlier in this century, the study of nutrition in Dr...

...It seems quite reasonable to allow — or even require — manufacturers to restore nutrients that may have been lost in processing or that would be absent from imitation foods, as in the following examples: ¶ Vitamin C is lost when potatoes are converted into dehydrated potato flakes (instant mashed potatoes...

...In the past ten years, the impetus to fortify foods has shifted from the public health community to the food industry...

...The first highly fortified products led people to think that every food should contain 25, 50, or 100 per cent of the recommended daily allowances (RDA) for a variety of nutrients...

...Imitation foods should be required to be of approximately the same nutritional value as the real counterparts...

...We can show you why it pays to fortify...

...The ads remind industry how cheap vitamins are — as little as two-tenths of a cent per serving for 100 per cent of the RDA for ten vitamins...

...Any effort to reduce the role of fortification will meet with stiff resistance from manufacturers whose product line includes fortified foods...

...Claims on labels and in advertising of the nutritional merit of fortified, enriched, or restored foods should be regulated strictly to prevent deception, even to the point of prohibiting any mention of the added nutrients other than in the list of ingredients...

...Since then, everything from Kool-Aid to candy bars to tomato juice to baby foods has been seen as an appropriate carrier for extra vitamins...

...Then Robert Choate, a persistent critic of television ads aimed at children, put cereals in the spotlight by charging that many of them were virtually devoid of nutritional value and loaded with sugar...

...But now fortification is being used for new and questionable purposes...

...Is a product like orange-flavored Kool-Aid an "imitation orange juice," and should it be required to contain all the nutrients present in orange juice — if they could all be identified...

...In addition to listing nutrient contents on the side of the box, manufacturers also attracted attention to their products by touting the added nutrients with a big notice on package fronts...

...Imitation meat typically contains ten times as much sodium as natural meat...

...Skim milk is also fortified with vitamin A, because the naturally occurring vitamin is removed from the milk along with the milkfat...

...The current champion in the fortification race is Nestle's "Go-Ahead" candy, which is fortified with 10 per cent of the recommended daily allowances for nineteen vitamins and minerals...

...Michael Jacobson is executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D. C. This article appeared in somewhat different form in the Center's publication, Nutrition Action...

...In general, these measures were accepted by the public as reasonable public health measures...

...Sometimes "profits" is spelled f- o- r-1- i- f- i-c-a-1- i- o- n. While adding vitamin C to tomato juice just so it will be as rich in that vitamin as orange juice seems patently frivolous, as is the conversion of a breakfast cereal or candy bar into a vitamin pill, the production of new kinds of foods raises interesting questions and suggests that the addition of vitamins and minerals to some new foods might often be appropriate and beneficial to health...

...Nutrition labeling emphasizes the vitamin and mineral content of foods...

...their ingredients are essentially the same, except that Total is fortified with 100 per cent of the RDA for nine vitamins and one mineral (iron), while Wheaties is fortified with "only" 10 or 25 per cent of eight vitamins and one mineral...

...The cereal companies responded to this criticism by adding large quantities of vitamins to virtually every product on the shelf...

...Manufacturers of fortified junk foods are fond of saying, "A nutritious food is worthless if people won't eat it...

...should not that vitamin (and any other lost nutrients) be replaced...

...The preoccupation of nutritionists— and the public — with vitamins (and, to a lesser extent, with minerals) has had two particularly unfortunate consequences: First, while nutritionists congratulated themselves over the defeat of deadly deficiency diseases, most were blissfully unaware that the major current killers — hypertension, heart attack, diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver — are caused, in part, by dietary excesses...

...With the public's "thirst" for good nutrition and vitamins pulling the food industry from the front, the major vitamin manufacturer was pushing from behind...

...This price difference has resulted in consumer overcharges totaling about $31.6 million between 1973 and 1976...

...In the 1940s, millers and bakers began restoring to white flour several of the many nutrients that were lost in the refining process...

...Just consider some of the major health problems of just a few decades ago: Pellagra killed thousands of people a year in the southern United States...

...Perhaps unintentionally, the FDA-approved format for nutrition labeling has promoted what has been called a "nutrition horsepower" race...

...Should an imitation food be allowed on the market if its nutritional content does not match the natural counterpart...

...As one might expect, the rationale for fortification has shifted from protecting the public's health to expanding commercial markets...

...lodine has been added to salt since 1923 to prevent thyroid goiter...

...Suddenly an excellent food such as whole wheat bread, containing modest levels of many nutrients, looked like a poor nutritional buy compared to Fortified Fatty Frips, which was labeled as containing 25 per cent of ten different vitamins and minerals...

...At that time, a few cereals were highly fortified...

...Hoffman-LaRoche Advertisement When the food industry is not harming consumers by adding poorly tested or hazardous substances to the food we eat, it is trying to cheat consumers by adding "good" substances, such as vitamins and minerals...

...Rather, it contends that the extra nutrients make up for deficiencies caused by poor eating habits — and that it is much easier (and more profitable) to get children to eat vitamin-fortified Sugar Snizzles than to develdp a national nutrition policy that would promote excellent eating habits and eliminate the need for fortification...

...Companies have been allowed to do just about anything they wanted and have treated foods as if they were toys to which sequins, baubles, and bells are added...

...American grade schools, high schools, and colleges has remained focused on those diseases...

...The food fortification fraud There's gold in them thar vitamins Michael Jacobson "Recent research indicates that more and more mothers everywhere are aware of the need for vitamin and mineral fortification, and are even willing to pay a little extra for it...

...These diseases and a number of others led people to have an enormous respect for the importance of vitamins to human health...

...Should not bakers and millers be required to restore all the nutrients lost from flour in the milling, aging, and bleaching processes...

...Nutrients lost in processing should be restored to the original levels...

...Scurvy was once a major scourge in many parts of the world...

...Public health officials have recognized for several decades that adding vitamins and minerals to foods can be a highly effective means of preventing dietary deficiencies and their consequent diseases...

...Food manufacturers are presented with case histories of how vitamins have been used imaginatively in pizzas, doughnuts, and applesauce to gain greater shares of the market...

...Despite the FDA's good intentions, it is possible that the enormous commercial investment in fortification represents an irreversible fait accompli...

...Something should be done to stem the tide of junk foods...

...Perhaps the answers to the above questions are self-evident, but consider the following: ¶ If one demands that white flour be restored to the nutritional value of whole wheat, why refine it in the first place...

...To date, the FDA has had a laissez-faire attitude toward fortification, deriving from the fact that most of its relevant regulations date from the Nixon-Ford era when the top echelon was peopled with former (and, as it turned out, future) food industry executives, lawyers, and scientists...

...The big push toward a fortified food supply may have begun around 1970 in the breakfast cereal market...

...Come now, everyone knows how important they are to good health...

...Label statements should also note that imitation foods can never duplicate the original food...

...Should the manufacturer of the imitation product be allowed to claim that its product is nutritionally equivalent to the original...

...Second, as the quote at the beginning of this article indicates, vitamin and food manufacturers have discovered that adding vitamins to foods opens new doors to profits...

...Or is it just colored, flavored water, to which no added nutrients should be required or even allowed...

...Its cause: vitamin C deficiency...

...One can calculate that the cost difference to General Mills is about one or two cents per twelve-ounce box...

...Vitamins and minerals used to cheat people...

...As the price of meat increases, more and more processed foods will contain or be made of vegetable protein that has been processed to resemble meat...

...For several years, Hoff-man-LaRoche, which has a virtual monopoly in the vitamin field, has been running double-page color ads in trade publications (Madison Avenue, Advertising Age, Food Technology) read by advertising writers, package-design artists, and food technologists...

...The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will be the focal point of heated debate over the next few years as that agency determines how — or if— fortification should be regulated...

...The race was on, and manufacturers began adding fiber, iron, vitamin C, or whatever else suited their fancy to as many of their products as possible...

...A pair of General Mills products, Total and Wheaties, exemplifies how fortification can serve as a foundation for an apparently new product, a vigorous advertising campaign, and windfall profits...