990302 Navigating the Maze of Health Claims

"But what if someone likes mustard on hamburgers?" a colleague asked after seeing the new print ad from Heinz that puts ketchup in the spotlight as a potential cancer fighter. "Does he have to switch to ketchup now?"

It's the type of question that is reverberating through the supermarket aisle these days, as consumers are faced with a dramatic increase in the number of ads and package labels hawking particular foods for health benefits. Granted, most of the promotions do not make a direct link between consumption of a food and reduced risk of disease. That type of wording requires preapproval by the federal government to be legal, and there are not many cases in which approval is granted. From the consumer's point of view, however, there's often little or no distinction between one kind of health claim and another.

The ketchup ad, for instance, while not specifically saying that ketchup lowers the risk for cancer, shows a bottle of Heinz ketchup and the words "prostate and cervical cancer" in large-size type. A bag of Wyman's frozen wild blueberries comes with the words "the #1 antioxidant fruit" on a bright yellow banner. Wine can now be sold with a label that refers to its "health effects." And a newspaper's Sunday circular has a $1-off coupon next to the message that "Kellogg's Mini-Wheats . . . can help reduce the risk of heart disease."

The last of these is the only one that, with government approval, makes a direct health claim, but all of them have the same ring. And the effect is that it almost seems like avoiding heart disease, cancer and other illnesses can best be accomplished by eating a bowl of Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats topped with Wyman's blueberries and Heinz ketchup, followed by a cabernet chaser.

Nutrition professionals are not happy about the trend. "Making a health claim on a food is intrinsically misleading," says Irwin Rosenberg, director of the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. "The body does not respond physiologically to individual foods. It responds to the whole diet. If you ate a dose of blueberries and didn't do anything else beneficial for your diet, what would the overall impact be? It would probably be quite minimal." Practically speaking, Rosenberg adds, "you could only make a health claim about a diet," not about a particular food.

Marion Nestle, the chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University, takes a similar view. "I'm in favor of eating blueberries," she says. However, she notes, "I don't think health claims should be allowed on foods or supplements. The public's confused enough about what a healthy diet is.

"You need to look at dietary patterns as a whole," Nestle argues, noting that if you eat more ketchup, you're probably also eating more of the foods on which ketchup is used--hamburgers, French fries, and other items that are high in calories and high in fats that could result in clogged arteries.

The researchers whose work leads to the claims aren't cheering either. Says Edward Giovannucci, a Harvard scientist whose investigations suggest a link between tomato products such as ketchup and a reduced risk for various cancers, "no study actually looked at ketchup per se. People can get the wrong message."

He's even circumspect about the plant chemical in ketchup--lycopene--that has specifically been associated with a lower chance of getting tumors on the prostate as well as other organs. "Our knowledge is relatively limited," he says. "I would be particularly cautious at this point to focus on a specific nutrient. 'Eat a variety of fruits and vegetables' is much more important than 'eat more tomato products.' "

Giovannucci points to research on the plant chemical beta carotene. A lot of studies, he says, have shown that fruits and vegetables that are high in beta carotene appear to be linked to lower rates of various cancers. But when studies with large numbers of people examined the effect of supplements containing beta carotene by itself rather than as part of foods, cancer rates went up in groups taking the pills.

The man whose research is behind the blueberry claim also feels that his findings have been taken to mean more than they actually do. Ronald Prior, who heads the Phytochemical Lab at Tufts, did find in test-tube research that blueberries have the highest antioxidant activity of 40 fruits and vegetables. But, he says, "We don't know what happens [inside the human body] in terms of digestion. There's no research that people who eat the most blueberries have a better health outcome."

Ironically, consumer polls suggest that, if anything, health claims make people less likely to improve their eating habits. Consider an American Dietetic Association Survey that's conducted every two years.

When the survey was conducted in 1991, about 35% of the respondents fell into the "I know I should, but . . . " category when asked whether they were doing all they could to achieve balanced nutrition and a health diet. In 1997, well after health claims on foods started to take off, the percentage in that camp remained about the same. But the gap between what they felt they should be doing and the degree to which they were actually attempting to do it widened it by more than 50%.

Why, then, do food companies make the claims?

Brian Wansink, who, as director of the University of Illinois Food & Brand Lab, studies consumers' purchasing decisions, explains that food companies are not specifically trying to get people to eat more ketchup or whatever. What they're really trying to do, he says, is get people to buy their particular brand. How?

A health claim "validates a choice consumers have already made," he points out. For instance, he says, if someone eats ketchup and then sees that Heinz says ketchup is good for him, he might say to himself, "I feel pretty good about that. I have a 40 cents-off coupon for Hunt's, but I'll still buy Heinz."

"That's how it gets coded in their minds," Wansink comments.

From that point of view the whole health claims push might seem harmless. But, remarks Tufts' Rosenberg, there's a "possibility of unintended outcomes."

"The highfalutin argument" from industry, he says, is that " 'all we're trying to do is educate the public.' " But the whole thing, he comments, "ends up in consumer confusion to some extent." And that, he says, points up "the capacity of these claims to mislead."

This Article Compliments of...