Posted by
lge on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 9:26:34 PM
The humorless pinheads in government bureaucracies -- that is, the power-tripping tinhorn dictators squirreled away in the pens and warrens of Washington, D.C. -- have decided to crack down on Cheerios. The Wall Street Journal reports:
Cheerios' Health Claims Break Rules, FDA Says
by Jennifer Corbett Dooren
The Food and Drug Administration slapped General Mills Inc. with a warning over its Cheerios cereal, saying the box's claims about heart benefits contain "serious violations" of federal law.
In a May 5 warning letter sent to the company and posted on the FDA's Web site Tuesday, the agency said statements that the product is "clinically proven to help lower cholesterol" make the product a drug under federal law.
. . . General Mills spokesman Tom Forsythe said the Cheerios box's message saying the cereal can "lower your cholesterol 4% in six weeks" has been used for more than two years. . . . "The clinical study supporting Cheerios' cholesterol-lowering benefit is very strong," he said.
The FDA said such specific cholesterol-lowering claims can be made only for drugs, and it suggested that if General Mills wants to keep the box labeling as is, it should file a new-drug application for Cheerios.
Let me get this straight: you can't say a product is "clinically proven to help lower cholesterol" even if that statement is true? Does the federal government now have the power to suppress true statements?
And when the FDA says, "such specific cholesterol-lowering claims can be made only for drugs," does that mean that they believe
only drugs can lower cholesterol? That's not true! Bran and whole grains are acknowledged to help lower cholesterol. You damn-sure can
raise your cholesterol by what you eat, so I have to believe you can lower it by dietary choices.
It's not just drugs that control it.
So WTF? Here the pinheads are, going after one of the cereals most nutritionists like best (because it has little added sugar -- the kiddies add their own, later!). Are the bureaucrats denying established facts of nutritional science? Or are they denying a company's right to print the truth?
Where do they get off?