FDA says KIND bars can’t advertise as ‘healthy’
First they came for the KIND bars, and I said nothing
The same monstrous federal agency that brought us food pyramids, plate graphics, and encourages America to eat vegan is after health food bar maker, KIND.
Recently, KIND received a love letter from the FDA citing multiple labeling violations. “However, none of your products listed above meet the requirements for use of the nutrient content claim “healthy,”” wrote the self-appointed arbiter of healthy declarations. The FDA letter to KIND is a fantastic example of how the federal bureaucracy is a vacuous waste of money. Tax money is spent paying people to sit in offices (where they’re forbidden from watching porn) while they stress over 1.5 g of saturated fat in a nut bar.
Four of KIND’s health food bars received FDA scrutiny. In order for KIND to properly utilize the healthy designation, their health food bars cannot contain more than 1 g of saturated fat per Reference Amount Customarily Consumed (RACC). The Fruit & Nut Almond & Apricot and Peanut Butter Dark Chocolate + Protein bars contain 3.5 g, Fruit & Nut Almond & Coconut clocks in at 5 g, and the Dark Chocolate Cherry Cashew + Antioxidants contains a whopping 2.5 g of saturated fat, said the FDA.
KIND’s health food bars are made largely without preservatives or other fillers and fake food stuffs found in similar products. They’re also exceptionally tasty. But a regulation is a regulation.
KIND released a statement today, saying:
The FDA pointed out a number of items that we’re correcting, and there’s one that we feel is particularly important to discuss as it cuts to the core of who we are. We’ve built a brand centered around creating wholesome and great tasting snacks. While this will never change, some of our products do not follow the FDA regulatory standard for using the word “healthy” on a label, which says, among other things, that a snack food can’t have more than 3g of total fat or 1g of saturated fat per serving.
Nuts, key ingredients in many of our snacks and one of the things that make fans love our bars, contain nutritious fats that exceed the amount allowed under the FDA’s standard. This is similar to other foods that do not meet the standard for use of the term healthy, but are generally considered to be good for you like avocados, salmon and eggs. Here is just some of the recent news and research on the significant nutritional benefits of nuts.
Our team at KIND is fully committed to working alongside the FDA, and we’re moving quickly to comply with its request. We’re also taking it upon ourselves to conduct a thorough review of all of our snack food labels and website information to ensure that they’re compliant.
At least the federal government is concerned about important things.
[H/T Bloomberg News]
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Comments
I don’t believe that the FDA really knows what is healthy. Dietary fat is not unhealthy, per se. Just as Carbohydrates are not exclusively healthy, as the FDA’s food pyramid would have you believe. KIND bars are tasty. They do have more fat than I like, but sometimes you can work them in, depending on daily activity and what else you might have eaten.
The FDA is FOS when it comes to dietary advice, and their recommendations, which have resulted in the misimpression that a high carbohydrate, very low fat diet is healthy, may well be the cornerstone to the nation’s obesity epidemic.
The FDA should get completely out of the business of making dietary recommendations. They can and should stay in the business of verifying the composition of products as reflected in their labeling.
I blame Upton Sinclair.
Upton was my neighbor. The blame should not be placed on that old gentleman’s shoulders.
Sometimes I have to wonder if the government wants the populace to be fat and stupid.
The FDA requirements are wackery nonsense. The almonds and coconut are healthy, but by their nature are fatty (the good fat).
How much sugar can they put in and still call it healthy?
Answer: all the sugar they want, sugar’s not unhealthy
cite: http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/GuidanceDocumentsRegulatoryInformation/LabelingNutrition/ucm064916.htm
That’s what gets me about this kind of propaganda. You’ve got moms out there buying their kids “low-fat yoghurt” for snacks because it’s “so healthy!”, and the FDA lets it say “HEALTHY!” right there on the label, but in many cases they’ve had to add extra sugars to make up for the lack of anything else. So a little single-serving tub of “healthy” no-fat yoghurt can easily have 21g of sugar in it – almost 5 teaspoons! — more than a Twinkie!
I’ve always found the “so called” health food stores (chain stores) carry lots more “junk food” than regular grocery stores.
I always look at the labels and almost all the self-proclaimed “health foods” are just cram packed with sugar upon sugar – and other unhealthy stuff.
Hey, organic cane sugar from Cuba is still gonna rot you out.
That is the prepared or processed “health food” products are….
And if you eat fat, it tends to supress gorging on carbs later on. Which is why the French stay thin eating pate and Americans get fat eating processed refined carbs.
The French that stay thin also eat tiny portions.
The food they eat may be super rich in fat and calories – plus super expensive – but they eat tiny portions.
They do not gorge on all you can eat buffets!
Dr. Walter Williams had an interesting column years ago that talked about the FDA and its effects on the public at large since its been in existence. I believe the FDA came into existence sometime in the 60s.
It was a basic statistic that showed the number of deaths from new medications (drug reactions etc.) to be greater AFTER the FDA started drug testing than before it was even in existence.
There should be an Underwriters Laboratories for the drug business then we could shut down the FDA altogether.
The article actually may have been written by John Stossel or even Dr. Thomas Sowell.
Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are both economists who lean towards the Friedman-ite side of things, and Friedman himself was a big critic of the FDA, so any of them could have written it. I’ve seen suggestions before for an UL-type organization for testing/certifying drugs. A quick google throws up this one: http://fee.org/freeman/detail/economists-against-the-fda
It has long been known that government “regulatory” agencies always end up in the control of the parties they are suppose to “police.”
So it appears to me that the FDA is simply a PR and Promotion agency for the food industrial/media complex.
FDA says KIND bars can’t advertise as ‘healthy’
Neither can the FDA.
Healthy: meat and fat.
Unhealthy: carbohydrate.
Granted, government might be telling a different story if grain producers had lost the battle with meat producers back in 1978 and the McGovern commission on nutrition, but as it turns out, the past nearly 40 years of nutrition advice has actually created epidemics of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and other chronic diseases.
Not all carbs are bad, veggies and fresh fruits are great. Green and dark colored leafy veggies are especially great. But grains and potatoes are not and the more processed they are the worse they are for you.
Please. I hope the KIND Bars company doesn’t cop out and reduce the fat in their bars. Their sales will plummet.
Does anybody remember how good McDonalds fries were twenty years ago? They were awesome. Well, they also were cooked in 40% saturated fat. The anti-meat crowd forced McDonalds to switch to all unsaturated fat. The result was predicable. Their fries today taste like salty stalks of nothingness.
Dammit man, give me the freedom to die with the taste of animal fat on my tongue!
It’s not hard to make your own at home, using beef tallow or lard (I prefer tallow), and they’re probably better for you as well (in moderation!). I’d rather have real french fries once a month, with hamburgers cooked on the grill and a nice salad, than McDonald’s once a week. Click.
Take a walk through most any government office and you will notice the employees have no trouble filling out their government issued chairs. In fact, often said employee not only fills the chair, said employee also has copious amounts of employee ass hanging over the edges.
I am confident the offices of the FDA are no different.
🙂 I’d like to see John Stossel or Jessie Watters – somebody like that – wait outside the FDA building where reviews and decisions such as those cited in the article are made. Interview every federal fatass that waddles out and ask them some questions about nutrition content and whether or not they support the FDA’s regulations concerning labeling. Ask them what, if anything, they’ve learned about a healthy diet since becoming an employee for the FDA.
On the one hand, KIND is on the right side about dietary fat, and their ingredients are pretty good.
On the other hand, founder and CEO Daniel Lubetzky’s is a political enemy of Netanyahu, to the extent that his organization OneVoice International helped Israeli leftists bring Obama activists to Israel to try to defeat Netanyahu in Israel’s recent elections – so he can gei in drerd arein.
Thanks for that fact.
Time to be “un-kind” to KIND products then?
This is fallout from the provision of the Food & Drug Act that says you can’t make health claims for foods and drugs unless you can prove them. This means lengthy and expensive clinical trials. Who’s going to do that for a candy bar?
My question is why are they going after candy bars, when all these quack drug nostrums are flooding the market with outrageous claims?
Loren “I don’t believe that the FDA really knows what is healthy.”
I will go farther and say that the FDA doesn’t really care what is healthy. Its chief interest is in maintaining and increasing its power to tell us what we may and may not say. Because it’s fun to run other peoples’ lives. And lucrative.
According to Debbie Schlussel, Kind is kind to Palestinians and not kind to Israel so stop buying them anyway…http://www.debbieschlussel.com/76876/dont-buy-anti-israel-pro-palestinian-kind-snacks-the-food-that-funds-jihadist-one-voice/