The Des Moines Register
By Kevin Marchman
Special to the Register
February 1, 2007
Excerpt…
A bag of fresh apples costs a lot more than a bag of cheese puffs. And guess what most kids prefer?
Feeding your children healthful meals has never been easy, especially if you’re barely making ends meet. Junk food is cheap, easy to serve and all too tempting for children.
But good parents forge ahead, choosing nutritious alternatives, even when they cost more. It’s good for the kids, so parents make the sacrifice.
That’s why it’s particularly galling when companies try to take advantage of these well-meaning parents, fooling them into wasting their hard-earned money on false promises of “healthier” or “more nutritious” foods.
One of the more egregious examples is the growing number of dairy processors marketing milk as “hormone free,” “rBST free,” or “no added hormones.” Dairy farmers have been using rBST…for more than 10 years to help their cows produce more milk. Scientists say this milk is absolutely no different from milk from cows not given the supplement.
None of this would matter much except that so-called “rBST free” milk costs more than other milk – as much as a dollar a carton. This means lower-income parents struggling to feed a family are confronted with an unwelcome dilemma: to spend more of a limited grocery budget on high-priced milk that is identical to less expensive milk, or worry that the milk they can afford is somehow less safe.
The most troubling prospect is that some parents, not being able to afford the expensive milk but worried about regular milk, will walk right past their grocery-store dairy case and opt for giving their children a less healthful alternative.
After all, sodas and “fruit” punch cost a lost less than milk. (And how many kids will turn down soda or punch?)
Nutritionists agree that dairy products are an essential part of a healthful diet, providing calcium and protein at an affordable price for low-income families.
Milk is even more important for people of color. As Dr. Meir Stampfer notes in a recent Newsweek article, most African-Americans have low levels of vitamin D.
“Melanin, the pigment that provides a darker tint, acts as a sunscreen, so darker-skinned individuals require at least six times as much sun exposure to form a given amount of vitamin D, compared with a very light-skinned person,” wrote Stampfer, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Milk is a great source of vitamin D. That’s why it’s vital that people of color have complete confidence in the safety and wholesomeness of the milk products they buy.
All of us, of course, have a right to know what’s in the food we’re buying, including milk for our children. But these misleading labels and deceptive marketing claims go far beyond informing consumers. They misinform consumers, creating confusion and making their daily choices more difficult than they need be.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and many independent organizations have concluded that milk from cows receiving rBST is perfectly safe. Nobody puts rBST into milk. In fact, there is no such thing as “hormone free” milk: All milk, including organic milk, contains naturally occurring hormones.
The bottom line is that milk is milk.
But you wouldn’t know if from this labeling. When dairy processors are allowed to put profits over people and scare consumers about a product that is essential to the health and well-being of children and the elderly, something is terribly wrong.
FDA regulators have the authority to act. It’s time for them to do the right thing: Stop this deceptive labeling.
KEVIN MARCHMAN is board secretary for the National Organization for African-Americans in Housing.