The front panels of most breakfast cereal boxes are veritable billboards for a variety of health claims. Researchers at the New Haven, CT-based Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University took a closer look into how the nutrition messages on the front of the box related to the data in the products’ Nutrition Facts panel. After polling parents on their perceptions (and misconceptions) of those messages, they determined more supervision is needed to protect consumers. 

In a study published in the journal Public Health Nutrition, the Yale researchers determined that nutrition-related health claims on children’s cereals are often misinterpreted by parents, causing them to infer that products with health claims are more nutritious overall despite actual nutrient quality.
 
Via an online survey, the researchers asked 306 parents with children between the ages of 2 and 11 to view images of actual box fronts of children’s cereals. While the cereals were of below-average nutritional quality, the boxes featured various nutrition-related health claims including “whole grain,” “fiber,” “calcium and vitamin D,” “organic” and “supports your child’s immunity.”  Participants were provided with possible meanings for these claims and indicated how these might affect their willingness to buy the product.
 
Parents inferred that cereals containing claims were more nutritious overall and might provide specific health-related benefits for their children, which predicted a greater willingness to buy the cereals. For example, approximately one-quarter of parents believed that the “whole grain” claim on Lucky Charms and “calcium and vitamin D” claim on Cinnamon Toast Crunch meant these cereals were healthier than other children’s cereals.
 
With the exception of the “organic” claim, approximately half of parents stated that the claims would make them more likely to buy these cereals. Three-quarters of parents believed the “immunity” claim on Cocoa Krispies meant that eating this cereal would keep their child from getting sick. (Note: After widespread criticism from the public health community, Kellogg’s discontinued the use of its “immunity” claim.)
 
The researchers said their study served to demonstrate that front-of-package labeling needs additional government regulation in the interest of protecting consumers.
 
“Promoting specific positive nutrients in products with other, less beneficial, ingredients (e.g. high-sugar cereals) appears to be a highly effective and low-risk marketing strategy for food companies,” said Jennifer Harris, lead author of the study and the Rudd Center’s Director of Marketing Initiatives. “These claims provide an opportunity to enhance product image and increase sales with limited potential for consumer skepticism or other negative reactions.”
 
The tactic, they wrote, seems commonplace especially between competing brands. “If companies profit from this practice, it is unlikely they will discontinue its use in the absence of government intervention,” they said.
 
The researchers offered two potential regulatory solutions. The first was modeled after an approach adopted by Australia, which requires all products with nutrition-related claims to meet minimum overall nutrition criteria to ensure claims do not lead consumers to incorrectly infer that products are nutritious.
 
The second option entailed FDA pre-approval of all types of claims, not just health claims, before companies are allowed to use them. “This approach would ensure that claims are supported by scientific evidence and are not misleading, and is currently in place in the EU and Canada for structure/function types of claims,” they wrote.
 
The researchers made it clear that although the nutrition-related claims examined in the study were “technically accurate,” with most meeting the criteria for such claims set by FDA, their issue was that the majority of consumers misunderstood the meanings of the health claims.

“When these claims are used to promote products that also contain high levels of sugar and/or sodium, they incorrectly imply that the products are nutritious overall; and they can even convey similar health-related benefits as stringently regulated health claims,” they wrote. “Therefore, the common use of nutrition-related claims on otherwise nutritionally poor products raises significant public health concerns… [and] affirming the need for increased regulation in the USA to protect consumers from the potentially misleading information conveyed by nutrition-related claims.”