Why?
Consumers, when faced with a shelf of products all of which claim to be healthy, safe, nutritious, educational, etc. cannot tell the exemplary products from those with misleading claims.
The Competition:
MISLEADING SEALS AND AWARDS:
Most ‘healthy’ seals of approval are not what the public perceive them to be.
The Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval is simply an extended 2 year warrantee and not a lab tested quality product as is perceived. The participating company promises to replace a product if it goes faulty in 2 years—valuable in the 1960s but not now with automatic warrantees.
Other seals are not what they seem. Companies who pay to sport the seal only have to agree to TRY to make healthier products over the next 20 years.
Most ‘best products’ awards Numerous awards and seals are marketing tools set up by advertising companies as a way to drive sales. They appear to be independent awards but are paid for by the manufacturers to the advertising company. You pay the advertising company for your product to win the award.
COMPETITION BUSINESS METHODS:
For most major seals, it is a three-step payment process:
1. The manufacturer first pays a fee to become an ‘Associate’
2. Being an Associate allows you to pay for advertising on the entity’s magazines or website.
3. After the Associate has paid for a certain level of advertising, they can then pay money per product to be tested for the Seal.
Underwriters’ Laboratory is an exception. The manufacturer pays a fee per product but the criteria are for electric operation and safety and is easily tested and quantified.
Minor seals and awards are chosen by boards whose members are never identified or often have no expertise in the area and never state their criteria of the award or seal.
The famous Oppenheimer Toy Award has nothing to do with the famous Oppenheimer Corporation but indirectly benefits from the name familiarity. The toy award is run by two sisters named Oppenheimer who are moms with MAs in Early Childhood Development. They test toys sent to them, rejecting age inappropriate toys and toys that break easily coming out of the box. Then they distribute their toys for testing (to their kids and friends’ kids) to see what they like best. They test however many toys they have time for or are sent to them. In the toy field, it is better than no testing, is not an advertising ploy, so, in 7 years has grown to have some value.
How the Seal of Approval works:
1. Paranoid Parents will concentrate on
Nutritional content of food using modified European White Paper guidelines
Toys—looking at quantifiable exemplary quality control in production and design
2. Companies pay money to have us test each product, sharing with us confidentially the complete ingredients list, including proprietary information, which we test against our guidelines. In the two years that the seal runs, we will perform at least one random lab test.
Testing Areas
From my two years of research, I have come up with suggestions to for guidelines. Apologies to the experts in the particular areas for my basic efforts—but I am the average parent who wants basic quality assurance.
Fresh Produce
Product: fresh fruits and vegetables and products, fruit juices, etc
Criteria:
Bronze: Nutrition (fruit juices are in the controversial category of the European white paper on Nutritional Profiling because of their high sugar content but we want to steer consumers away from high fructose juices with colorings and additives)·
Silver: acceptable near-organic, sustainable agricultural methods, organic farming methods, near-organic level of soil. What is perceived as ‘natural’·
Gold: organic and nutritious (many, many organic products are not nutritious) Importance: Through varying technicalities, some produce manufacturers cannot qualify for the organic label. We do not want the definition of organic should not be diluted to include them but there should be a distinction demonstrating the exceptional quality of the produce. These fine companies have to display their produce in stores next to low-quality produce with no distinction. The companies are lobbying in Washington and particularly in California for an alternative labeling. It is opposed not primarily by the organic manufacturers but the large companies (Monsanto, etc) responsible for the low-quality produce (which in the worst cases, come from countries which allow fertilization with human excrement.) Large Organic grocery changes are advocating loosening of the organic standards to include the high-quality products. We feel that our seal would distinguish the high quality while allowing the distinction with organic (which could also carry our label). Our Seal would stop Organic from being compromised. Many lower income families perceive organic pricing to always being prohibitive regardless of the reality. Often they avoid fruit and vegetables entirely: they can’t afford organic, they don’t think other fruit and vegetables are good enough or might be bad, so buy none. The board needs to discuss its stand on milk production, factory farming and genetically modified produce.
Processed Foods
Products: We will be targeting children’s products in particular.
Criteria: We have selected the European Parliament White Paper on Nutritional Profiling as our standard. (See attached.) Prepared over 10 years, the world’s top doctors and nutritionists, economists and childhood specialists have determined a formula for accessing the nutritional content of food. Basically, the fat, salt and sugar of 100 grams of a product are given a rating and added up, then the protein, fiber, fruit and vegetable content, and natural vitamins (not fortified which do not absorb or act like natural vitamins) are given a numerical rating. The ‘healthy’ number is subtracted from the ‘unhealthy’ content and a number is reached, usually between -4 and 30---although most food should fall between 0-10. Foods under 4 are considered nutritional. Those about 4 are not healthy. In the testing that Paranoid Parents has done of 500+ foods, very few ‘normal’ American common children’s foods had a rating under 10. We therefore proposed to class foods with a 4, not 3, or under, nutritionally acceptable. We would not be able to approve enough foods to make it a significant Seal if we had to approve under 4. For example, we tested 36 brands of ORGANIC macaroni and cheese. Only one came in at a rating of 4. The majority were in the 10-12 range making them totally unacceptable—their fat and salt content were higher than Krafts Macaroni and Cheese. We would still prefer parents by organic to avoid the chemical cocktail of colorings and additives, but even organic can be very bad for children. Surprisingly some common children’s non-organic cereals rated highly in nutritionally terms—pink frosted Shredded Wheat with sparkles rated 3 ½. Appearances can be deceptive. There is an adherent problem, that the formula is based on 100 grams, and that if parents or children believe a product has a nutritional seal, that there may be portion abuse, we still feel that it is better to be eating too much of a nutritional product than an unhealthy one. And with a nutritionally sound product, low in additives, salt and fat, but high in fiber, the child will probably feel full faster and for longer. Additionally, we would like to make the FDA rules that apply to colorings and additives in drug products apply in food products. For example, Blue Dye #1 must carry a warning label in children’s Tylanol, etc—may cause cancer and may cause behavioral disorders in some children.The FDA regulates food differently and Blue Dye #1 can be in children’s food products, as much as 10 or 100 times the amount without carrying a warning label. Blue Dye #1, or Blue E4 in Europe, is actually banned in Europe, Australia and most of the world.
Importance: Most countries will not allow certain types of advertising to children. America has no similar restrictions. The affects of unregulated advertising does most damage in relation to children. Not only are children misled but their parents are as well. A company making a fruit juice can call itself “100% Fruit, 100% Natural” can print that all over the box while the product inside has 0% fruit and be 0% natural. A parent rushing to grab something healthy will grab it because it says 100% Fruit, 100% Natural but that is the name of the company, not the description of the product. We hope this Seal would go a little way in countering the product endorsements by stars and association with TV characters and programs. Parents would be more willing to buy a product with a Seal, so children could be taught to choose those. We are not against junk food. Kids can easily have 300 calories a day in junk. But parents need to know what is junk.
Toys
Many toys are striving to achieve higher standards. They are fun toys but produced to a higher quality, using eco-sustainable methods, consulting educational and development specialists in their design, some using recycled materials. Some are making ‘safer’ products especially in the area of Arts and Crafts, using food quality dyes and ingredients that are truly non-toxic.
We want these better products to stand out on a shelf of inferior products.