Tom Brady's Good Sense

Football player Tom Brady has made (in my opinion) reasonable comments about healthy eating:

New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady lashed out at Coca-Cola, calling the soda "poison for kids," while accusing other food companies of lying to Americans in a recent interview.

"You’ll probably go out and drink Coca-Cola and think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s no problem.’ Why? Because they pay lots of money for advertisements to think that you should drink Coca-Cola for a living? No, I totally disagree with that," Brady said in an interview with Boston sports radio station WEEI.

"The fact that they can sell [Coca-Cola] to kids? That’s poison for kids," he said.

Brady also ripped into Kellogg's Frost Flakes cereal, saying he couldn't believe that Americans actually think it qualifies as food.

"I think we’ve been lied to by a lot of food companies over the years, by a lot of beverage companies over the years. But we still do it. That’s just America," Brady said. "We believe that Frosted Flakes is a food."

"You keep eating those things and you keep wondering why we do have just incredible rates of disease in our country," he added.

Of course the companies in question were not pleased:

Coca-Cola and Frosted Flakes later hit back at Brady.

"All of our beverages are safe and can be enjoyed as part of a balanced lifestyle," Coca-Cola said in a statement reported by Fox Business. "We offer more than 200 low‐ and no‐calorie beverages in the U.S. and Canada and a wide variety of smaller portion sizes of our regular drinks,” the spokesperson added. “As a responsible beverage company and marketer, we prominently provide calorie and sugar information for our beverages so people can choose what makes sense for them and their families."

No one questions whether the beverages are “safe” (in the sense that consuming them constitutes an imminent health danger) but whether they are healthy, and whether the consumer would be better served drinking something else (like water) rather than this product.  Asking people to “choose what makes sense for them and their families” seems to me a bit disingenuous, given that, given the obesity epidemic, people clearly are not making the right choices, and also given that children can buy and consume these beverages without necessarily having a fully developed capability to make an informed choice.

This video is of relevance in understanding the agenda of food companies and their claims about their commitment to consumer health. 

After 125 years of advertising sugary, calorie-packed beverages and greatly contributing to the obesity epidemic, many found Coca-Cola’s “willingness” to step forward and play an important role in the epidemic laughable and ironic.

And then we read Kellogg’s take on this issue:

Kellogg released a statement saying its cereal "is a delicious and nutritious breakfast."

"Numerous studies show that a cereal breakfast is associated with lower BMIs (body mass index) in both children and adults. As a matter of fact, a serving of Frosted Flakes with skim milk has just 150 calories and delivers valuable nutrients including calcium, B vitamins and iron," the statement reads.

Breakfast cereal associated with lower BMIs?  Is this at least partially a function of people eating breakfast, and that eating breakfast – even one not optimal – is better than not eating breakfast at all and gorging on doughnuts later in the day?  Further, there are clear differences in types of breakfast cereals. There’s a difference between, say, Shredded Wheat and Frosted Flakes in their nutritional profile.  And do people really eat the “single servings” that food companies list on their packaging, or do they routinely eat several times more per sitting?  And, yes, while these cereals may be fortified with vitamins and minerals, there are healthier breakfast options that provide these nutrients without the added sugar.