Major Cereal Producers Fight FDA For "Healthy" Label

The sugary cereals that millions of Americans eat each day are far from healthy, but thanks to a loophole in FDA regulations, they can still be labeled as “healthy” to fool consumers. And now that the FDA wants to change that, some of the biggest cereal makers are spending big money to make sure the change doesn’t happen. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

You know all that sugary cereal that millions of Americans eat every day, well, it's not exactly healthy, but thanks to a loophole in FDA regulations, they can still be labeled is really healthy, good for consumers, good for your children, good for your health. And now the FDA wants to change that. Some of the biggest cereal makers are spending millions of dollars to make sure that they can call it healthy. Pick it up.

This is a truly bizarre story because it's not something people would typically think about. Like, what do we care about cereal? Well, we're lying to consumers is what these cereal companies want to continue to do. They're going to the FDA, they're spending millions on lobbyists to tell them we've gotta be able to lie because if we can't slap that healthy label on, I mean, look how brightly colored the sugar is, then we can't sell it. And we're talking about cereals that typically studies have shown children do, you know, double the serving size, which means they're getting as much sugar for breakfast. It's the equivalent of eating just a Snickers bar for breakfast.

Okay. So, so here's their argument. Well first of all, the craziest argument is, you know what constitutionally, we have a right to lie. We can lie to consumers. It's our constitutional right to lie to consumers. Yes, we are lying to consumers and it's okay and you can't change that. That's the first argument. The second argument is, you know what, we're really doing this for the American public because poverty stricken people, they wanna make it more affordable and accessible for people who can't afford a lot. So give this to the kids, let 'em fill up on sugar, send 'em off to school and everything's gonna be okay. Some of it falls on the parents, right? I mean, some of this really does fall on the parent. A parent reads this, Fruity Pebbles. I mean, Lucky Charms. Don't you say, well there's, you know, probably some sugar here? Don't you at least check that out? But the problem is they're selling it as a healthy, safe product for your children.

Yeah. And look, there's some vitamins in there, you know, they do pack it in there. But it's the sugar that of course is the problem. I mean, diabetes is an epidemic here in the United States and these cereals sure as heck aren't helping that. And to argue that, you know, as a, you know, producer, you have the right to lie. That's no different than a car manufacturer saying, listen, there's a good chance this car could fly.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe you wanna buy it because it could fly.

And constitutionally we can lie to you.

Right.

So try to fly it and if it doesn't work, we're still okay.

You just gotta go really fast off that cliff. It'll fly for a little bit.

Yeah.

But that's where we're at. And these, unfortunately these manufacturers, you're talking about Post, General Mills, Kelloggs, they've got a good chance at being successful here because they've successfully avoided this loophole closing in the past.

The real ugly part of this are the freaks that are doing this for them. Talk about, it's this really shady kind of PR group. They were the same people that argued on behalf of the Oxycontin industry.

Yeah.

Saying, oh, this is, you know, you don't have any problems with this. This is not gonna be something that's addictive. These are the same people that the cereal industry, they take 'em. Okay. The Oxy, the Oxy experience killed 150 people a day for what, two decades. Now let's talk about this because we wanna make your little seven year old Freddy into a sumo wrestler. We don't care if he's morbidly fat.