Rice Krispies Claims Immunity

The latest cereal to jump on the dubious-health-claims bandwagon is Rice Krispies, which boasts in giant type on its boxes that it "Now Helps Support Your Child's Immunity."

Shirley S. Wang of the Wall Street Journal's Health Blog decided—after the recent flare-up between the FDA and General Mills (GIS) over that company's health claims about Cheerios—to scope out other cereals making ridiculous promises.

Kellogg (K), apparently undaunted by the FDA's warnings, added to the amounts of various vitamins in Rice Krispies and Cocoa Krispies. Now, the cereals contain 25 percent of the recommended daily values of vitamins A, B, C, and E. The amounts had been 10 percent of the RDV.

Susanne Norwitz, Kellogg's director of brand public relations, e-mailed Wang to cite studies that have determined that those vitamins "play an important role" in boosting the immune system.

True. But Kellogg is—let's not kid ourselves—basically telling parents that if they feed Cocoa Krispies to their kids, they'll be less likely to get sick. They're marketing their cereal as preventive medicine. Never mind that fruits and vegetables are far better for ensuring that kids get enough vitamins.

Now, Rice Krispies (if not Cocoa Krispies) is a pretty healthy cereal, relatively. It doesn't contain that much sugar, for one thing. But it's more accurately described as "not bad for you" than as "good for you."