(HealthDay News) — U.S. consumers are being misled by the health claims made on the packaging of foods and supplements, according to a new report by the Institute of Medicine, because those claims do not undergo the same scientific rigor required for such claims on medications.
A box of cereal that proclaims the breakfast food will lower your cholesterol, for instance, has not had to pass the same government standards as the claims on the packaging of a cholesterol-lowering drug.
“There is evidence that things get on the market because the standard is lower,” said Dr. John Ball, executive vice president of the American Society for Clinical Pathology and chairman of the committee that wrote the report, which was released Wednesday.
“Consumers probably assume that if the FDA said it’s OK, it’s OK,” Ball said. “But in fact, the OK for drugs is a much higher OK than the OK for food supplements.”
Faced with a barrage of health claims for foods, the FDA asked the committee to develop a way in which those claims could be better evaluated, Ball said.
Most health claims on food packaging, he said, are based on the supposed beneficial effects on biomarkers, which are a measure of a biological process, such as blood pressure or cholesterol. A cereal might be sold to consumers as being good for the heart when, in fact, that clinical outcome has not been tested.
Dr. Robert H. Sprinkle, an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, described food marketers’ use of biomarkers in making health claims as “misappropriated” because “they may not mean much in the context in which they’re cited.”
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I don’t know about cereal, but I know that the Promise Supershots that claim to lower cholesterol did work for myself and my husband and countless other people. Too bad the company (I believe) was forced to remove it from store shelves. Worked a lot better and was a lot cheaper than the cholesterol medicine I have to take. Apparently, that was the problem.
What would you expect from the “Institute of Medicine”……..more accurately stated as the Institute of Bodily Poisons”.
While oatmeal may not lower cholesterol, it is an absolute fact the wonderful supplement, red yeast rice, does!
This site should perhaps stick to less medical association propaganda.
I tend to agree with the Institute of medicine.
My first response to the headline and ‘Institute of Medicine’ was: “That’ll be right’.
But, I too am cynical about margarine and breakfast cereals, for instance, that claim to lower cholesterol and to be beneficial for the heart.
Some people may interpret this as eating more packaged breakfast cereal and smearing more margarine on the bread may be good for their health and may compensate for an otherwise bad diet.
Cereal manufacturers want to sell packaged food to gullible consumers who are too lazy to change their diet and prepare their own breakfast from unprocessed wholesome food. After all they need to make business and increase production to achieve greater profit.
I have overweight friends with high cholesterol, high blood pressure and diabetes, who eat plenty of margarine that claims to lower cholesterol, who refuse to change their diet because they believe the more cholesterol lowering margarine they eat the more their high cholesterol will be lowered. This is so stupid it is beyond belief.
I do not understand why they are not just stop eating the stuff that makes them sick in the first place and change to a healthy diet based on unprocessed food. Essential fats can come from unprocessed food like avocado, nuts, fish, etc. but all in moderation.
The promotion of packaged food that claims to benefit or cure diseases that come from a bad diet ought to be prohibited unless rigorously tested.
With a healthy diet based on natural unprocessed food, prescription medicines to treat high cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes may not become necessary.
Through exercise and food both BP and Colostoral can be reduced. However, Medicine which are often prescribed are generally found to have serious long term effects both on Kidney and other organs of the body. It is always better to use certain food habits and exercise for controlling these discease.
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