Mother Earth News and Un-Smart Choices

I recently discovered that Mother Earth News, the nation's largest magazine focusing on sustainable, DIY, green living, is published here in Kansas. I take this as further proof that Kansans are the most awesome people ever. Even though the premise of the magazine is environmental, its focus is positive and practical. Mother Earth's articles are about what people can do in their homes to reduce their impact on the environment, improve their lifestyles, and become reinvested in the land they live upon. The magazine is half hippie and half traditional farmer, a mixture that appeals strongly to my Midwestern dislike of wastefulness.

I love their website, so I decided to follow their Twitter account to get their updates more efficiently. Their most recent tweet took me to Jennifer LaRue Huget's column for The Washington Post. Huget writes on health and food for the Post, and today's column "Smart Grocery Shopping: Check! No, Wait . . ." is all about the flaws and foibles of the Smart Choices Program.

Smart Choices is trying to put check-marks on the front of all processed foods that they deem healthy. Like Froot Loops.

Yeah, those Froot Loops.

The Program is clearly faulted; not only are Froot Loops high on sugar and low on nutritional value, but Huget points out that only companies that buy into the program will be rated, which means that much more healthy foods won't be given a check mark, while less healthy foods from paying members will be.

Huget reports that Smart Choices is taking a break to regroup after the Froot Loops fiasco and will be working with the FDA to create better standards for its foods. But Huget suggests that the FDA drops Smart Choices and endorses something closer to her own favorite program Guiding Stars, which is a universal rating system (meaning it's not limited to paying companies) monitored by a panel of scientists.

Near the end of the article, Huget mentions in passing that "we could adopt something like the traffic-light system that's been in use in Europe for a few years (green for stuff you should eat lots of, red for foods to eat in moderation)." I love this idea. Not only is it incredibly simple and easy-to-understand, it's also keyed into a system that most of us already respond to instinctively; we all know that red stands for stop and green stands for go from the flash cards parents waved in front of us when we were three years old.

Because this labeling latches on to a symbolic system so deeply embedded in our culture, I think red/green labeling could have a dramatic impact on the way we eat. Think of how guilty you would be when you tore open a red-striped bag of Little Debbie cakes, and how self-satisfied a sack of green-banded Sun Chips would make you feel. Maybe the color red would start to repel you if you were on a diet: you would begin to associate guilt with seeing red, while green would become attached to your sense of responsibility and healthiness.

I'm not sure that we need a labeling system at all--I've never had a problem reading nutritional panels or understanding that Oreos will make me fatter than a bag of broccoli crowns--but if we choose to use one, it certainly needs to be clear, simple, and rigorously evaluated.

Just as long as no one is evaluating anything I bake. I'd weep if I saw my cinnamon rolls robed in a pall of red cellophane.