Notable & Quotable

"Food marketers must go beyond offering yo-yos, decals and plastic toys. They must learn to communicate nutri­tional value effectively and appealingly."

John Gage, Marketing Manager, Food and Nutrition, Hoffmann-La­Roche, Inc., in "Facing the challenge of the dissatisfied consumer," Food Product Develop., 8(No. 4) :37, May 1974.

"Junk food can he defined. It is food that is not nutritious. A nutritious food is a food which contains signifi~ant

amounts of nutrients other than calories and which is not debased by excessive amounts of fat and-or sugar. That defi­nition includes peanuts, pizza and lots of other likeable foods-not only raw car­rots. Nutritious foods belong in schools; junk foods don't. "

Joan Gussow, Nutritionist, Columbia University, New York, in a letter to the editor, Food Management, 9 (No. l) : 17, .Tan. 1974.

"Oddly enough, the kind of general outlook that will prevail in 1994 will he a synthesis of idea,s coming out of today's low-technology communes and high­technology industries .... High tech-

C urrent Topics

Food Labeling: Phase IV

On June 14, the Food and Drug Ad­ministration released a fourth major set of food labeling and nutritional quality regulations (Fed. Reg. , 39:20878, June 14, 1974). Both proposed regubtions (open for 60 days for public comment, subject to revision) and final orders (ef­fective as written) are included in the set of regulations. The .Tune 14 regula­tions supplement the existing labeling regulations.

The new proposed regulations cover: 1. Principles governing nutrient addi­

tion to foods (fortification, enrichment and restoration);

2. Nutritional quality guidelines for five classes of fortified foods (ready-to­eat cereals, hot breakfast cereals, en­riched farina, formulated meal replace­ments, and breakfast beverages);

3. Common or usual names for plant protein products (i.e., meat extenders or

86 I Journal of NUTRITION EDUCATION

nology, much better planned and man­aged, and important scientifi;: advances will still be the basis for progress. But that progress will be guided by many of the new values being expressed by young people today .... By this, I do not mean simply one in which beer cans and Coke bottles are all returned to the supermarket but one in which virtually all materials used are re-used indefinitely and virgin resources become primarily the makeup materials to account for the amounts lost in use and production .... "

Glenn T. Sea borg, formerly Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, and currently Professor of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, in an address to the American Associa­tion for the Advancement of Science,

'" February, 1974.

"Governments need, more than ever, additional help in developing nutrition policies, starting with simple systems of monitoring the food situation in various parts of their countries as it affects the population, especially children. They need help in encouraging the local pro­duction of food legumes which are such an important source of protein. They need village-level production and storage facilities to prevent the loss and de­terioration of household food between harvests. They need help in measures to educate parents and other influential

replacements) and diluted fruit or vege­table juice beverages;

4. A uniform procedure for listing in­gredients on food labels (covers both standardized and nonstandardized foods and prohibits misleading vignettes on labels);

5. Source labeling for fats and oils (e.g., "cottonseed") as part of ingredient listing:

6. Proposed standard "serving" sizes for five classes of food for purposes of nutrition labeling;

7. Uniform method of (voluntary) declaration of percentage ingredients in foods (this proposal is in response to a petition filed by Giant Foods); and

8. Exemption from nutrition labeling for multiunit packs (i.e., internal pack­ages contained in already-labeled ex­ternal packages).

The final orders announced are (a) amendment of the standard of identity of tomato juice to allow voluntary vita­min C fortification to the level in orange juice; (b) establishment of final U.S. RDAs for infants; (c) use of Interna­tional Units for vitamins A and D; and

members of the village COmmUnItIes. One encouraging aspect is that, as we have seen demonstrated many times, much malnutrition can be prevented when enough families are taught how to feed their children with foods that are in fact available or can be grown locally."

Henry R. Labouisse, Executive Di­rector, UNICEF, in opening state­ment to the UNICEF Executive Board Session, May 13, 1974.

"The popularity of pseudoscience books at universities should be a source of concern to academic people, par­ticularly scientists. The new trend comes at a time when many universities have abandoned requirements that students be exposed to as little as one science course. It is not pleasant to contemplate a situation in which our future leaders are being steeped in fantasy and are exposed to a put-down of science with­out effective response. The university community has a special obligation which it has not been meeting very well. It should move toward providing anti­dotes to the new intellectual poisons. In meeting these challenges to rationality, we should all remember that although humanity is eager to accept mysticism, it is also capable of yearning for truth."

Philip H. Abelson, Editor, Science, in "Pseudoscience," Science, 184: 1233, June 21,1974.

(d) a standard of identity for table syrups.

Nutrient Additions The regulation that is perhaps the

most far-reaching is the long-awaited proposed regulation of nutrient addition to foods. According to Alexander M. Schmidt, M.D., Commissioner of Food and Drugs, FDA, this regulation will help prevent "an irrational nutritional horsepower race ." He said: ''There must be some assurance that fortification will be at the proper level-that a common sense balance between over fortification and under fortification is struck .... These guidelines will assure that nutri­tion labeling is not exploited or abused by those who would seek to gain unfair promotional advantage or promote a worthless food as something it is not."

The proposed nutrient addition regu­lation sets up definitions clarifying the use of the terms "fortification," "enrich­ment," and "restoration" and gives five different circumstances in which nutri­ents may be added to food.

I. A nutrient may be added to a food which is not naturally a significant

Vol. 6, No.3, July-September, 1974

source of the nutrient if certain condi­tions are all met. They are (a) a demon­strated low intake of the nutrient among a significant number of people; (b) the food to which the nutrient is added makes a significant contribution to the diet of those with low intakes; (c) the amount added makes a significant contri­bution to the diet of the population in need; and (d) the nutrient is stable in the food, physiologically available, and with no risk of toxicity from excessive intake. (These conditions are similar to those specified in position statements of the Council on Foods and Nutrition, Ameri­can Medical Association, and the Food and Nutrition Board, National Research Council).

II. Nutrients may be added to foods for which nutritional quality guidelines have been established in order to meet those guidelines.

III. Nutrients may be added in pro­portion to the calorie content of the food. (This provision covers foods which are not comparable to any existing foods, e.g., fabricated foods such as instant breakfast.) An intake of 2,800 Calories per day is proposed as a stan­dard calorie intake. A food which con­tributes 280 Calories per serving (10% of the standard day's intake) could have nutrients added to provide 10% of the U.S. RDA per serving, i.e., in balance with calorie content.

Products with nutrients added under this provision would need to contain all nutrients for which there are U.S. RDAs established (protein, 12 vitamins, and 7 minerals) in proportion to the calorie content. This provision is de­signed to allow "balanced" nutrient ad­ditions and to guard against over­fortification and low-nutrition foods.

IV. Nutrients may be restored to foods that lose nutrients in processing-pro­vided that the amount lost in processing is at least 2% U.S. RDA per serving.

v. Nutrients may be added to substi­tute foods to make them equivalent (with respect to certain key nutrient~)

to the food replaced, e.g., addition of vitamin C to noncarbonated breakfast beverages (which is proposed in another FDA regulation released the same day) .

The above five conditions apply to foods which are not the subject of a standard of identity. Label claims for "enrichment" "fortification" and "restor­ation" and for the "balanced nutrition" concept would be permitted only if the nutrient addition is at least 10% U.S. RDA per serving. However, this would not preclude claims of specified amounts

Vol. 6, No.3, July-September, 1974

of a nutrient, e.g. , "This product con­tains 6% U .S. RDA of per serving."

Labels on foods with nutrients added under any of the above provisions may state: "This product provides nutrients in amounts appropriate for this class of food as determined by the U.S. Govern­ment." (Note: Which nutrients are con­tained depends on which provision is used for the addition of nutrients. All foods with added nutrients are required to carry nutrition labeling.)

Foods which have nutrients added outside the range of the guidelines (e.g., at levels exceeding established maxima or containing added nutrients not speci­fied in the guideline) will be regarded as misbranded unless they bear the fol­lowing prominent statement: "The addi-tion of ___ _____ .... has been determined by the U.S. Government to be unnecessary and inappropriate and does not increase the dietary value of the food."

Serving Sizes Another important provision of the

proposed FDA regulations is standard "serving" sizes for nutrition labeling purposes. In the FDA nutrition labeling regulations, serving sizes were left to industry to cooperate and work out uni­form serving sizes. Since such uniformity has not emerged, FDA is taking steps to specify "standard" serving sizes by regulation. Those now proposed are (a) breakfast beverages (noncarbonated)-6 oz (infants and children 4 oz); (b) ready-to-eat and hot breakfast cereals-1 oz; (c) fluid milk beverages-8 oz; and (d) formulated meal replacements-the amount intended to replace a single meal.

There is no doubt that these proposed regulations-in whatever form they are finally adopted-will have great impact on food labeling, technology, and mar­keting. Nutrition educators, too, will at least be assured of uniform guidelines regarding manufactured foods and their nutritional modifications. It may, how­ever, be some time before the proposals are revised and published in final form.

Council on Child Nutrition Takes Stronger Stand For Nutrition Education

M.C.P.

Nutrition education is the key recom­mendation of the Third Annual Report of the National Advisory Council on Child Nutrition. The council's task, legislated by Public Law 91-248, is to

make a continuing study of child nutri­tion/ school lunch programs. The report stresses the importance of nutrition edu­cation in improving the nutritional status of both children and adults and urges that " .. . a project-by-project approach will not get the job done nationally .. . it is necessary to make nutrition aware­ness and concern a significant part of their total educational experience, so the lesson learned in the classroom is con­stantly reinforced and not lost in the crush of other pressures."

Six specific recommendations in the report are:

1. Federal, State and local officials should work toward the development of comprehensive nutrition education pro­grams in every school.

2. Pending the development of com­prehensive nutrition education programs, school officials should take advantage of existing opportunities for nutrition edu­cation.

3. The Department of Agriculture and State educational agencies should con­tinue the nationwide drive to extend the child nutrition programs to schools cur­rently without food service.

4. The Department of Agriculture and State educational agencies should step up efforts to increase the level of student participation in schools with food service programs.

5. As an important part of increasing participation, efforts to upgrade school food service personnel through training and other means should be continued.

6. Federal funds to help strengthen State administration of the child nutri­tion programs should be increased.

This latest report takes a stronger stand and places more emphasis on the importance of nutrition education than did previous reports. There is much material in it that could be quoted in support of many kinds of efforts to in­crease nutrition education in schools ranging from a letter to a legislator to inservice training for teachers.

M.C.P.

Children's Spending Habits

How children spend money and the effect, if any, of TV advertising on their spending habits are areas of great con­cern to nutrition educators.

A study by the Committee on Chil­dren's Television (CCT) of 54 San Fran­cisco children aged 8 to 12 years indi­cated that all of the children in the group had some money available to them and that 82% of these were not required to

Journal of NUTRITION EDUCATION I 87

spend the money on any particular item (1). The CCT study cited the Rand Youth Poll, which reported that children between the ages of 8 and 12 spent 2.5 billion dollars in 1973 (1).

The children in the CCT study report­ed spending about one-half of their al­lowance each week on snacks. That this practice can have nutritional conse­quences is borne out by another study of 54 children (average age about 10 years) done by a University of California nu­trition student (2). In this study, the chil­dren reported consuming an average of 1.6 cans of soft drinks per day (with some children reporting much higher consumption-7 to 10 cans a day). Fifty­nine percent in the study said they would choose Coke over milk. Further, most children reported having an afternoon snack, which consisted of a candy bar or pastry 20% of the time.

However, these studies do not portray an absolutely bleak picture. When the CCT study children were asked what they would do if given $10-a larger sum of money than most ever see at one· time, only 3.8% said they would spend it on snacks and more than half said they would save it. Sixty-one percent re­ported that they were already saving for a special purpose. It would be interesting to find out, CCT says, if children really would spend larger sums of money dif­ferently from smaller sums, such as weekly allowances.

The CCT study seemed to indicate that many children were influenced by TV in the kinds of snacks they bought but less so in other areas. The children said they relied to a large extent on peers when they bought snacks, toys, books, games, and sports or hobby equipment that cost between $1.50 and $10.00. The children did not report relying on adults for consumer advice when shopping with them. Even so, most children indicated that they would welcome consumer in­formation.

In the second study, bright spots are: average milk consumption was 3.3 glasses per day (despite the children's

claim that they'd rather have Coke); 96% of the children liked fruit and 74% said they would eat it in preference to a candy bar if they had a choice; 81 % preferred supper over snacking; and 86% usually ate vegetables. The CCT study found that most children could do some cooking, although more could make cookies, cakes, pancakes, or pop­corn than could cook other types of food.

CCT has organized a "consumer mes­sage team" usually consisting of a med­ical practitioner, a child development expert, nutrition experts, and represen­tatives of the racial and ethnic groups of the San Francisco Bay Area (approxi­mately 39% of San Francisco school children speak a primary language other than English). This team works in con­junction with TV stations to produce nutrition-oriented public service an­nouncements. Although no impact study has yet been done, children are reported to notice the "ads" as they call them, to call their parents' attention to them, and to request some of the snacks portrayed (t). CCT says further research is needed into the needs, interests, and problems of children as perceived by the children themselves since it is now known that children do not reason like adults. CCT believes TV can be changed from an exploiter to an educator of children and that it can be "an important source of consumer education" for this age group. A study which attempts to quantify the effects of TV food advertising on chil­dren's food behavior appears on page 93 of this issue of JNE.

Kathleen Carpenter, Dept. of Nutri­tional Science, University of Cali­fornia, Berkeley.

REFERENCES 1. Williams, S., Television and the Young

Consumer, unpublished paper, mimeo, presented at the International Festival of Children's Television, March 31-April 2, 1974, Washington, D.C. Available from Committee on Children's Television, 1511 Masonic Ave., San Francisco, CA 94117.

2. Compton, D. M., Adverse Effects of Ad­vertising on the Diets of Pre-Adolescents, unpublished study, March 1974.

The New 1974 RDAs

The revised Recommended Dietary Allowances handbook 1 now available from the National Academy of Sciences reflects several changes from both the 1968 RDAs and the revised RDAs an­nounce<;l last Fall (see 1. Nutr. Educ., 5:236, 1974). The most noteworthy changes are the reduced allowances for protein, ascorbic acid, vitamin E, and vitamin B-12. The protein and vitamin B-12 allowances have been changed to bring them more in line with the FAO/ WHO recommendations. The ascorbic acid recommendations have been set at a level sufficient to replace the daily metabolic loss and maintain an "ade­quate body pool size."

The vitamin E allowance has been lowered in recognition of the fact that vitamin E deficiency is rarely seen in the U.S. at average dietary intakes of ap­proximately 11 to 13 I. U. per day. The most noteworthy revision of the RDAs announced late in 1973 is the change in the ascorbic acid allowance for nursing women from 60 to 80 mg to cover the needs of both the mother (45 mg) and the infant (35 mg).

The only addition to the RDAs is zinc, reflecting the fairly recent realization that marginal zinc nutrition exists in seg­ments of the U.S. population. The whole section on minerals has been expanded to reflect the research currently being carried out in this area. The section called "General Considerations" has been considerably expanded and deals with topics such as what the RDAs are; legitimate use of the RDAs; and how the allowances are determined. The new RDA handbook shows an increased awareness of the social and political con­cerns of nutrition as well as the biochem­ical and physiological.

Kathleen Carpenter, Dept. of Nutri­tional Sciences, University of Cali­fornia, Berkeley.

I. Food and Nutrition Board. National Research Council, Recommended Dietary Allowanco!, 8th rev. e:!., Washington, D.C. 1974.

Plan ahead! Plan now to attend:

SNE Eighth Annual Meeting/ August 19-22/ 1975 Sheraton-Harbor Island Hotel, San Diego, Calif.

88 / Journal of NUTRITION EDUCATION Vol. 6, No. 3, July-September, 1974