Is Kellogg's a Weight-Loss Food?

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That's Kellogg's mantra in Europe as they attempt to squeeze through a Froot Loop-hole in European Union law to claim ready-to-eat cereals are indeed a weight-loss food, no science required. Food manufacturers love their questionable claims and don't like to give them up. Even as 17 of the bunch just received a warning slip by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to cut it out.

Yet there's no Special K Challenge across the Atlantic. Boxes of Kellogg's Special K don't sport that swirling yellow tape measure image and the claim that you'll "lose up to six pounds in two weeks" because it's illegal. The EU simply does not permit the use of weight loss amounts. But Kellogg's is submitting weight loss claims through two different measures, including one known as Article 13.5

"What is especially creative about this one is the company is filing the claim through "article 13.5" which means the science still remains proprietary and does not require disclosure through this process," Marion Nestle wrote in her blog, Food Politics. Even more suspect, Nestle, a professor of public health and nutrition at New York University, noted that five years after approval of the health claim, the wording can be used by other cereal makers without Kellogg's scientific data made public.

Let's just say Kellogg's wins this EU round (it's still pending). Which of their cereals would claim weight loss? A cup of Apple Jacks has 12 grams of sugar and 110 calories compared to 6 grams and 80 calories in a lesser three-quarters cup of the reduced-sugar Apple Jacks. Or maybe weight loss would only be attributed to the Special K-caliber cereals. Anyone who counts calories would likely agree crunching down a bowl of 110 calories for breakfast and then lunch would promote weight loss. But no one eats that way for long, so while cereal can be part of a healthy diet, it is not exactly a weight loss product.

Kellogg's would like to claim that their products "can help to reduce body weight, can help to reduce body fat, can help to reduce waist circumference." As Nestle deftly pointed out, a chocolate bar for breakfast, another for lunch and a small dinner would work just as well as cereal. But you don't see diet and weight-loss regularly advertised on chocolate bars. Losing weight for good comes from eating a modest variety of healthy and whole foods coupled with regular exercise, and not a steady diet of processed foods.

The saga over labeling also continues here in the U.S.