Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Just Because You Can Pronounce It Doesn't Mean It's Good For You

It's sad to see the cooptation of Michael Pollan's message of not eating anything with ingredients you can't pronounce.

True, that message is exceedingly oversimplified and does lend itself to chemophobia, but ultimately I believe Pollan meant it as a means to steer people away from relying on products in place of produce, or at the very least steer them to products that were closer to produce.

And here's Kellogg's capitalizing on Pollan's very popular and well known message with their ad up above whose copy reads in part,
"Made with simple ingredients you recognize, Rice Krispies cereal makes a great bedtime snack for little ones"
So what simple ingredients are we talking about?

Rice, sugar, salt, malt (corn flour, malted barley), bht.

Putting aside the fact that I'd imagine most parents wouldn't recognize "bht", those ingredients certainly aren't what I'd be rushing to feed my kids as a bedtime snack.

Moreover, why do kids need a bedtime snack? Is that a great habit to build in yours?

I'd encourage you to champion produce to your little ones, not products, and never let a shmaltzy ad dupe you into believing that health comes in boxes, or that pronunciation is in and of itself actually a virtue.